Musicale at the Prellers'

This drawing depicts an afternoon or evening soirée hosted by Preller, a renowned German landscape painter, and his wife. The piano is the focus of the domestic social gathering. Among the young women gathered around the instrument are two sisters, Malvina and Olinda (with the eye patch), daughters of a professor of aesthetics, Fredrich Bouterweck. Olinda studied painting with Preller and was very close to the artist’s family. Preller’s sons called her "aunt Olinda," and she appears in several of Preller’s drawings from the 1830s and ’40s, easily identifiable by the eye patch.