A strange 1940 bavarian painting by

Paul Mathias Padua

Can you tell me its whereabouts ?

Read  at the bottom of this page the answer a reader sent me

Padua, 1940 ; click for higher definition

I found this postcard at the sunday flea market near the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan. I immediately wondered it this was not a kind of german realist painting aping another more known. Back home I looked at the painting I thought the above was inspired from, Géricault's Radeau de la Méduse, the perfect allegory of human sufferings for which he had taken so many drawings of agonising people in Paris hospitals.

 

But this is not it, although it may have inspired the german painting. In any case, agonising people on a raft could not inspire official nazi art, and the soldiers above are much more in control, and much less expressive. They all look sad, except for the leader, who look like if he were summoning Odin to free them from the torment.

 

washcrossdelaware.gif (163533 bytes)
Then a reader sent me the picture above, Washington Crossing the Delaware, by the german painter  Emmanuel Leutze, the original of which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and a copy at Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania. What do you think ?

Finally, I received an email in June 199 from a reader in the Netherlands :

I have a copy of this painting (big print) I have bought in Ceslovakia. It is in it's original frame. It is the painting off the german painter Paul Mathias PADUA, and he mede this painting for the "Deutsche Kunst Ausstellung Im Haus der Deutsche Kunst Berlin 1941" The Painting is titled "10 mai 1940" and is a scene off German soldiers crossing the river "the Maas" in the Netherlands the day taht they started the war ageinst my country, the Netherlands. P.M.Padua is an "good" artist from Germany who lived intill the 1970's. His regular paintings are word good prices in Germany. Between 2000,- and 10.000,- D.Mark.

Good luck,

Martin de Jong

After all, somebody finally found my bottle in the sea !

 

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