This artwork is by the Austrian Anton Romako (1832-1889) and I think is noteworthy for the huge loaf of bread in the painting. The gallery notes that this is about realism and perhaps it’s the case that the painter is very good at painting bread, but even so, I can’t help wondering what exactly the mid-nineteenth century middle classes thought they were getting here. Perhaps a celebration of honest labour, a wholesome emblem of daily sustenance, or just a rather accomplished bit of bread painting, but the poor girl in the painting seems to be playing a rather unsupported role (excuse the pun) in the whole arrangement.
But, I digress, it’s Romako that’s interesting here as he travelled Europe widely and was something of a success as a painter. He had great sadness as two of his daughters committed suicide in 1887 and he never recovered from that, died in a state of some disarray in 1889. As an aside, some of Romako’s artworks were purchased by Jewish families and they were stolen from them during the Nazi period and ‘acquired’ by art dealer Wolfgang Gurlitt who it’s fair to say wasn’t the most wholesome of figures.
The gallery doesn’t have provenance information about their artworks on their website, but it’s likely from the collections donated by Ormós Zsigmond who was an art collector in the mid nineteenth century and he not only founded this gallery, but donated all of his collection to it.