Youth Picking Oranges

Although officially considered a third member of the so-called German Romanists, Hans von Marées, long resident in Italy, moved far from the dramatic narrative of Böcklin or the ponderous perspective of Feuerbach. The Berlin-trained von Marées was Germany's major prophet of Modernism, filling a critical role as that nation's Puvis de Chavannes, the French master who was thirteen years his senior. Like Puvis de Chavannes, von Marées followed the Nazarene and Pre-Raphalite revival of wall painting. His major commission was the 1873 murals for the Library of the German Marine Zoological Station on Naples.

The Youth Picking Oranges is a life-size oil sketch preparatory to the fresco on the south wall of the library. Though this work is strikingly reminiscent of Cézanne, two years von Marées junior, the French painter was almost certainly ignorant of the German's art.