ARNO DRESCHER | A study of a horse chestnut tree in flower

Private collection, Germany;

Anonymous sale, Cologne, Van Ham, 19 May 2017, lot 709.

Arno Drescher started his path as a professional painter in 1905, when he put aside his teaching career to enroll at the Academy of Fine Art and Drawing in Dresden. He quickly became a successful and well-recognised artist in Germany - he was appointed professor of Graphic Art at the State Academy in Dresden and he exhibited with the most prominent German artists of the time, including Erik Heckel, Karl Hofer, Oskar Kokoshka, Max Liebermann, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein and Christian Rohlfs. 

The present work was painted in 1946, after the devastating effects of World War II, which included the bombing of Leipzig in 1943 that destroyed his studio and many of his previous works.