Wilhelm Runze German Genre Oil — Five Men at Cards in a Tavern View Watchlist >
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Lot # F779
System ID # 30339632
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Wilhelm Runze German Genre Oil — Five Men at Cards in a Tavern
Oil on canvas by Wilhelm Runze (1887–1972, Frankfurt am Main), signed W. Runze upper right, depicting five working men gathered around a plain wooden table in a dim tavern interior. Two players hold their hands close while a cigarette-smoking figure in a black cap rests his chin on his palm, and a bearded standing man leans in over the group. Runze works in a deep earth-toned palette — olive, umber, and the single warm accent of a rust-colored jacket at center — with each face individualized and rendered with the structural discipline of his academic training. The composition reflects Runze's mature transition from Romanticism toward Expressionism without loosening its underlying draftsmanship.
The card-game subject sits in a genre lineage running from Dutch Golden Age tavern scenes through nineteenth-century German Realism, but Runze strips it of moralizing or caricature: these men are given full dignity, the bearded figure commanding the canvas.
History
Runze received a rigorous tri-city academic formation — the Städelschule in Frankfurt under Wilhelm Amandus Beer, the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Otto Seitz, and the Académie Colarossi in Paris — before establishing himself as one of Frankfurt's notable figurative painters. His official portraits of Frankfurt mayors Ludwig Landmann and Walter Kolb hang in the council hall of the Frankfurt Römer, and additional works are held in the Städel Museum and the Bavarian State Painting Collections. That institutional record separates this canvas from the anonymous genre work that fills the same market segment.
Collector's Note
A multi-figure composition is more complex and more sought-after than the single-figure tavern studies that dominate this category, and the five distinct characterizations here carry the work. For a Frankfurt-region or German decorative-art focused buyer, the confirmed signature and verifiable museum biography give this piece a reference point that anonymous examples cannot match.
CONDITION
Good. Paint surface shows age-appropriate craquelure throughout with some minor loss. Frame has minor scuffing. No remarkable damage. Framed without glass.
DIMENSIONS / SPECIFICATIONS
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Signed: W. Runze, upper right
- Artist: Wilhelm Runze (1887–1972)
- Visible (sight): 27 1/2" × 35 1/4"
- Overall (framed): 34 1/4" H × 42" W × 1 1/2" D
- Frame: Later cream-painted wood, without glass
