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"Struwwelpeter" or Shock-Headed Peter Sloven Child Portrait
Ref: 0872
"Struwwelpeter" or Shock-Headed Peter was a character in a series of childrens’ rhymes written and illustrated by a Frankfurt doctor, Heinrich Hoffman, in the 1840s – Peter is pictured on a pedestal as a parody of a great general or worthy, “Look at him, there he stands...the sloven, i declare/ Never once has combed his hair;/ Anything to me is sweeter/ Than to see Shock-Headed Peter.” Hoffman was a superviser in lunatic asylums, his thoroughly non-pc tales record the unfortunate fates of nasty children, and capture a spirit of the times in their empathy for the subversive and through their implied interest in child psychology, the outsider and the social outcast. Hofmann’s vivid characters quickly became part of folklore and this work whether a real portrait or an illustration of a literary character is work of folk art, or outsider art that embodies this “zeitgeist”.
It is an oil on card attached to a paper board, an inscription in Hungarian is on the reverse, and it was purchased from the house of an art collector in Hungary.
Austria-Hungary mid-19th century
H: 49.5cm (19.5in)
W: 36.5cm (14.4in)
D: 1.5cm (0.6in)
SOLD
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