Stuttgart (Southwest Germany), c. 143 x 212 cm, around 1900. Silk embroidery made with “Gütermann” sewing silk with wool parts on silk ground, both artistically and technically in high-quality execution, with a metal gossamer border. According to written information, the artist is Anna Kogel (née Schwarz, born in 1853) from Stuttgart. She produced this embroidery around 1900 and subsequently exhibited it in the Vienna Secession. There is also an original postcard with a picture of one of the artist’s embroideries, in which Mrs. Kogel sent her daughter poetic New Year greetings in old script. The postcard is provided with a German Reich postage stamp from around 1933.

Description of the image:
The picture is based on a poem by the famous writer and politician Johann Ludwig Uhland (b. 26 April 1787, d. 13 November 1862) and depicts the Saint Remigius Chapel (so-called ‘Wurmlinger Kapelle’), a popular excursion and pilgrimage destination near Wurmlingen, in the district of Tübingen in Baden-Württemberg. This place was the source of inspiration for the poem “The Chapel”, which is now affixed to the baroque chapel in a commemorative plaque. A music-making shepherd boy with a young dog and his flock of sheep is discernible in the summery foreground. A path, built in around 1687, leads steeply uphill across the fields to the chapel with adjoining cemetery. A funeral procession with figures dressed in black moves along the path, accompanying the deceased person, who once lived in the valley, to his final resting place. The embroidery is in superb colour condition and overall state of preservation.

Further reading:
Joachim Köhler and Dieter Manz, Die Wurmlinger Kapelle, Sage, Geschichte, Dichtung, Kunst; Johann Ludwig Uhland, Uhlands Schriften zur Geschichte der Dichtung und Sage, vols 1-5.