Through the advocacy of the landscape painter Ferdinand Konrad Bellermann, Karl Hagemeister got the opportunity to learn painting in Friedrich Preller's studio at the ‘Fürstliche freie Zeichenschule’ in Weimar. Hagemeister studied there until 1873 and in the meantime made several study trips to the coast of the Baltic Sea, to the island of Rügen and, after he had completed his studies, to the mountains in Upper Bavaria, where he made the acquaintance of Carl Schuch and Wilhelm Trübner, with whom he would travel in Belgium and the Netherlands in 1873/74. Last but not least, this trip certainly helped him to familiarize himself with the school of realistic landscape painting prevalent in the Netherlands. The present landscape suggests his interest in this school, which is characterized by realistic depictions, simplicity and atmospheric content, as the painting is a fascinating document of the search for individual artistic expression. Together with Carl Schuch, with whom he became close friends in1873, Hagemeister rediscovered the lake district south-east of Potsdam, where he grew up. He settled in Ferch am Schwielowsee in 1877, although he still made a few trips to the Netherlands and Italy at that time. Between 1878-1882, Schuch visited Karl Hagemeister regularly in Ferch am Schwielowsee. In the land of lakes the artists found scores of motifs and view which they used as studies of composition and color scheme. These works are documents of the intensive painterly reflection on the genre of landscape painting in the exchange between the two artists. The simplicity of the subjects, often sketched in a dark tonality that rejects any kind of complaisance, captures the movement and atmosphere of nature, is characteristic of the fruitful artistic symbiosis of this time and which laid the foundation for Hagemeister's later work. The search for their very own forms of expression and the rejection of broad public taste find their beginnings in the early Märkische landscapes: “Nature that is as simple as possible, containing nothing but the problem. This is of course far removed from the pretty little pictures that the philistines demand, and what is more, they remain largely experiments and studies” (quoted from: Karl Hagemeister, Karl Schuch, Berlin 1913, p. 95). [KT]

The painting from the artist's early days comes from the famous collection of the Berlin textile manufacturer Julius Freund (1869-1941). The collection, compiled over decades with a keen eye for quality, mainly comprises German paintings, drawings and prints from the 19th and 20th centuries. Julius Freund and his wife Clara, née Dressel, and their two children, Hans and Gisela, a famous photographer and photo historian known by her alias Gisèle Freund, increasingly suffered under repression as of 1933, because of their Jewish origins. While Gisèle Freund decided to flee as early as in 1933, going to Paris first and then to Buenos Aires after Germany had occupied France, Hans Freund managed to escape to England. In 1939 her parents also fled to London. The valuable art collection of the Freund family had been on loan at the Kunstmuseum Winterthur since 1933, in the safe custody of a good friend and no less well-known collector, Oskar Reinhart.
After years of reprisals and flight, Julius Freund's death in 1941 hit Clara Freund hard. In 1942, the heirs were forced to sell the collection through Galerie Fischer in Lucerne. In her foreword to the auction catalog, Gisèle Freund stated: “My father Julius Freund had been collecting for decades and always with an eye on the artistic value, never with the thought of monetization. […] His collection was a constant source of happiness for him. […] Now the collection will be scattered to the four winds, and I sincerely hope that the new owners will enjoy it just as much, and that some of them may commemorate the previous owner Julius Freund from time to time.”
A total of 300 paintings, drawings and watercolors from the auction found their way into museums in Cologne, Speyer, Münster and Heidelberg and into the hands of private collectors. In its first case, the Advisory Commission negotiated the restitution of three paintings by Carl Blechen and a watercolor by Anselm Feuerbach, all of which had been acquired in the auction at Galerie Fischer for Hitler's "Sonderauftrag Linz". In 2005, these loans from the Federal Republic of Germany to German museums were returned to the heirs of Julius and Clara Freund. Hagemeister's “Märkische Landschaft” ended up in the hands of private collectors. All the better that it is now available on the auction market again thanks to a "fair and just solution" in the sense of the Washington Principles, and free from restitution claims. A wonderful reminder of Julius Freund and his love of art and his expertise. [SvdL ]