Tobacco Art: Carl Spitzweg

(Eric Squires) The Romantic period of the first half of the 19th century was born in rebellion against the embrace of science, reason, and the advancing Industrial Revolution which defined the Age of Reason by itself embracing flights of dramatic fancy, emotional and philosophical turmoil, and an idealized (often unrealistic) Medievalism. But then the Romanticists of central Europe got all the Sturm und Drang they could handle, via bloody political upheaval. Following this came, unsurprisingly, another art movement (defined less by a fixed time period, and more by a central mood) which brushed all of that aside for a focus on quieter, more sentimental subject matter; the Biedermeier. Given the introspective nature of this movement, I wasn't entirely surprised to find plenty of pipes popping up in the works of one of its more famous figures, the autodidactic Bavarian artist Carl Spitzweg. Continued