playing card D4: Goya: Portrait of the Duke of Wellington (1814)
April 15, 2020
Carl Spitzweg: The Love Letter (1846)
completed
stolen
longest side (cm)
est. value ($ mill.)
Carl Spitzweg "The Love Letter"
The oil painting by Carl Spitzweg “Der Liebesbrief” was completed in 1846. It has the dimensions 24 x 21 cm and was robbed by two men on September 4, 1989 from Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin. Since then, the painting has disappeared without a trace with Spitzweg's “The Poor Poet”. Spitzweg's pictures are mostly small because he often used the backs of his cigar boxes as canvas for his snapshots.
Description “The love letter” by Carl Spitzweg
Pictured are two seated women on a house wall. The younger lady has turned her back on the viewer and is holding a book. Apparently she is reading something to the older lady. Leaning against the table is a kind of loom or sewing utensils. A postman peeps further back behind the house wall, greets with a top hat, holding a letter in his hand. The letter has a red seal.
Art theft in Berlin: “The love letter” has been lost to this day
In 1989 the painting for the exhibition 'Art of Biedermeier' was loaned to the Charlottenburg Palace. It was there until September 4th in the ‘Hall of the Romantics’ alongside the oil painting ‘The poor poet’, another very well-known work by Spitzweg. On that beautiful autumn Sunday, two men mingled with the visitors - one in a wheelchair (with the 'Zero Problem' sticker) and the other as his supervisor. Suddenly they pounced on the pictures, tore them off the wall and brought them out of the building under tumultuous scenes. An overseer was knocked down. The museum director at the time had offered the perpetrators 50,000 DM for the return - to no avail: Both paintings have disappeared without trace since the robbery - without any indication of where their stay might be.
Carl Spitzweg: The love letter (1846). The artwork was stolen in the Charlottenburg castle in 1989 and has been considered lost since then.