Munich’s Schack Gallery is one of the most important collections of nineteenth-century German art. It was founded in 1909 by Adolf Friedrich von Schack (1815–1894), whose purchases supported mostly younger artists who were either unknown or had received little attention: Anselm Feuerbach, Arnold Böcklin, Franz Lenbach, Moritz von Schwind, and Carl Spitzweg. Their paintings depict spheres faraway from the world of that time: myths and fairy tales; characters and themes from world literature; southern countries such as Italy, Greece, and Spain. With his collection, Schack, a German poet and European intellectual, shaped a unique visual cosmos that provides profound insight into the dreams and desires of the era.
This volume, which contains color illustrations of all of the works on exhibit as well as in-depth commentary, is being published on the occasion of the one-hundredth anniversary of the gallery’s founding.
 
Exhibition schedule: Schack-Galerie, Munich, November 18, 2009–December 31, 2010