Säckingen 1 - 1877

Hans Thoma sketched ‘Säckingen’ with pen and brown ink sometime in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Säckingen is a small town in Southern Germany, close to the Swiss border, and the image presents us with a bird’s eye view of the town, nestled in its rural surroundings. The town developed around a religious institution, the Fraumünster Abbey, and it is the kind of tranquil rural place that artists and writers were drawn to in this period. The image presents an ordered, settled world, undisturbed by the Industrial Revolution and the social problems of the big cities. In Germany at this time, the art academies and museums were becoming important institutions in defining a sense of national identity, and artists like Thoma played a role in creating idealized images of the German landscape. You can learn more about Thoma and the art of this period by exploring the museum’s collection and archives.