(Kassel 1856–1927 Düsseldorf) Marching Geese, signed and dated Ad. Lins, (19) 20, and Ad. L., oil on board, 68 x 49 cm, framed, (W)

Adolf Lins Lins studied at the Academy of Arts in Kassel, spending 1874 in Willinghausen in der Schwalm to study, on the advice of his teacher. Friendship with Düsseldorf artists including Heinrich Sondermann, Hugo Mühlig and Hans Richard von Volkmann induced Lins to move to Düsseldorf in 1877 where he settled in the premises of the G. Paffrath joinery and art shipment house, initially working with F. Brütt. Drawings and studies resulted from numerous further stays in Willingshausen and, after 1908, close by in Roillshausen as well as on the Lower Rhine. Lins exhibited his scenes of children and the many village scenes and landscapes peopled with decorative figures from 1877 onwards, primarily in Berlin, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Munich and Vienna. From the 1880’s onwards he preferred to paint streams and meadow landscapes, dotted with cows and sheep but especially with chickens, ducks and geese, leading to his sobriquet of Geese Lins. Works around 1885/90 are evidence of the artist staying with the painter’s colony at Dachau. His oeuvre also included portraits of his painter colleagues from Düsseldorf. From the 1890’s onwards Lins increasingly concentrated on landscapes, his painting style becoming ever more characterised by an impressive, almost hard brushstroke. (Compare: Lexikon der Düsseldorfer Malerschule, Düsseldorf 1998, Vol.2, p. 351f.)