watercolor, gouache, paper, 35.5 × 50 cm
Signed in double pencil l. g.: Muter and at bottom: Muter
Provenance:
Gmurzynska Gallery in Cologne
Private collection, Poland
The painting depicts the harbor of an inland canal with the stern of a moored barge visible, with a lockmaster's house and a shelter (in which a small work pontoon is floating for maintenance work in the lock chamber). Also visible is the wall of the so-called lock head (painted in less detail - the green spot to the left of the shed). This is probably an inland shipping channel in northern France. At that time, from several French ports on the Atlantic, cargo barges reached Marseilles via rivers and canal system all the way to Marseilles. Today, these waterways are mainly used for tourism. (Information courtesy of Mr. Marek Blus)
"Mela Muter also paints landscapes. In landscapes she seeks the same [as in portraits] inner truth of things, a deeply hidden character, and often imposes her own spiritual physiognomy - sadness, seriousness - on the landscape. As in the old paintings of small Polish towns or in the compositions of motherhood, she is attracted now, too, not to the joy of life, but to its fallow, forgotten fragments."
M. Sterling, "From the Paris studios. August Zamoyski - Mela Muter," Voice of Truth, 1929, no. 6, p. 3.
