Children on Their Way to Work in the Fields

Peter Fendi painted 'Children on Their Way to Work in the Fields' in 1840 in watercolor, a medium in which he was equally accomplished as in oil and which he used for subjects requiring a particular delicacy of emotional register. Fendi was the leading Viennese genre painter of intimate domestic and childhood subjects in the Biedermeier period, specializing in scenes of lower-class life that combined genuine sympathy with impeccable technical refinement. Children sent out to agricultural labor was a social reality in early nineteenth-century Austria, and Fendi's choice to depict it without sentimentality or condescension marks him as an observer of unusual honesty among Biedermeier artists, who more typically softened hardship into picturesque charm. The Albertina's holding of this watercolor—alongside its companion 'The Evening Prayer'—reflects Fendi's status as a master of works on paper; the Albertina's mission to collect the finest drawings and watercolors made his work an obvious acquisition target. By 1840 Fendi was at the height of his powers but also suffering from the tuberculosis that would kill him in 1842, giving his late work a quality of intensified, concentrated observation.

Fendi's watercolor technique was among the most accomplished in Vienna, combining the English tradition of pure transparent wash with the miniaturist's precision in describing facial features and textile textures. He worked with a methodical approach: establishing the composition in light pencil, applying broad atmospheric washes, then building up detail through successive wet-on-dry layers. Children's faces received the most concentrated attention, with tiny sable strokes defining individual features within a very small area.