Liverpool artwork of the day - Monday October 8 2007. 'The Oyster Girl' by Karl Gussow (Havelberg, 1843-1907) at the Walker

From the Catalogue of Foreign Art Acquisitions, 1984-2006

This portrayal of a young serving-girl, neatly-dressed in rural peasant costume, holding out a plate of opened oysters and a lemon, is typical of Gussow’s minutely detailed realism.1 Gussow was considered a leading nineteenth-century German exponent of the growing school known as ‘Naturalism’. Anton von Werner, the Director of the Berlin Academy, where Gussow taught between 1875 and 1880, described Gussow’s ideal as being “the exact reproduction of nature�.2 He also noted the artist’s liking for dazzlingly coloured costume-pieces. Gussow’s delight in detail is evident in 'The Oyster Girl' where he has painted even the tiny chips on the rim of the decorated tin-glazed earthenware bowl.

The plate is definitely not the type of luxury ceramic produced by the internationally renowned Berlin porcelain factories. However, the manner in which Gussow has painted the servant-girl’s skin, with its creamy, glowing complexion, and the satiny sheen of her lilac dress-shawl, recalls the effects and colouring of the popular porcelain plaques that were produced in Berlin. The fine and meticulous detail in the Walker’s painting is also reminiscent of the work of seventeenth-century Dutch artists of the so-called fijn-schilder (fine-painters) school, such as Frans van Mieris (1635-1681) and Gerrit Dou (1613-1675). According to the distinguished German art historian Karl Pietschker, the 'Oyster Girl' was the first in a small series of ‘Cabinet-pieces’, which also included 'The Tankard Girl' and the 'Girl with a Shell to her Ear'.

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