Lot 25: JOSEPH PETZL

JOSEPH PETZL GERMAN 1803 - 1871 THE CAPTIVES signed and dated 1836 lower right oil on canvas 94.5 by 82cm., 37¼ by 32¼in.

Friedrich von Boetticher, Malerwerke des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, Dresden, 1901, vol. II, p. 254, no. 25, catalogued (as Einem Pascha werden gefangene Griechinnen zum Kauf angeboten)

Count Lerchenfeld, Munich

Painted in 1836.

Joseph Petzl studied at the Munich and Dresden Academies before joining King Otto on his journeys to Greece. Following one of these trips he returned to Germany via Constantinople. The present work was clearly inspired by these sojourns, and can be read as an allegory of the Greek struggle for independence from Ottoman oppression.

Petzl depicts a number of female Greek captives being offered as slaves to the Turkish Pasha. The subject is reminiscent of works such as Francesco Hayez Flight from Chios of 1833 and Nikiforos Lytras' The Abducted Maid.

The exotic frisson that the act of abduction conjured up in the minds of the bourgeois audiences of the time was a rich theme for Romantic writers and artists. It was also a theme that held consistent appeal in depictions of the Greek War of Independence. The drama of chaste young girls being carried off as booty portrayed the ultimate treachery of the heathen.