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The German artist Maria Slavona realised her life's work in the circle of the French Impressionists. Born into an aristocratic family in Lübeck in 1865, she was one of the few German artists to achieve great fame in France and to develop an independent Impressionist style.
From 1887 she learned the basics of painting and drawing at the Künstlerinnenverein in Berlin. In 1888 she continued her studies at the 'Frauenakademie' of the 'Künstlerbund' in Munich, where she first came into contact with the art of the French Impressionists. Back in Lübeck, her decision to seek out the artistic centre of French Impressionism was confirmed. In 1890 she left for Paris, which was to be her adopted home for 20 years. In the art capital, she studied the works of Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh, as well as those of Theodore Géricault and Camille Corot. She made friends with other Impressionists such as Camille Pissarro, Eugène Carrière, Théodor Duret and Gustave Geffroy. Slavona mainly painted landscapes and nature scenes, as well as portraits of women and children.

The painting 'Landschaft an der Oise' was donated to the collection of the Barmer Kunstverein in 1913 by Friedrich Wilhelm Boelling, a factory owner and councillor from Barmen. The work shows the technical subtlety with which Slavona transferred her impressions to the canvas. The River Oise is surrounded by vast cornfields and the composition allows the eye to wander towards the horizon. Three girls, dressed in summer clothes and wearing straw hats, linger in the thick bushes on the dirt road along the riverbank. Although Slavona's contemporaries largely praised her work and gave it good reviews, she did not achieve any lasting recognition in Germany and was initially forgotten after her death in 1931.
The paintings in this exhibition address two themes: Firstly, the lesser-known position of the artist, and secondly, the landscape painting opens up an overview of the various classical genres of painting, which will be developed below.