(Vienna 1805–1854)
The Supplicants, signed, dated Ranftl 1842, oil on canvas, 78.5 x 61.2 cm, framed (frame damaged)

Provenance:
Collection of Dr. Arthur Mussil (1911–1999), Klosterneuburg;
His sale, Dorotheum, Vienna 18 June 1968, lot 88;
Private Collection, Vienna.

Johann Matthias Ranftl studied at the Viennese Academy of Arts under Johann Baptist Lampi, Anton Petter and Johann Peter Kraft. He travelled extensively - however it was a trip to London which deeply influenced his work. As part of the entourage of Prince Paul Esterházy, Ranftl met Edwin Landseer and discovered for himself English painting and graphics, it was after his exposure to English art that he started dedicating himself seriously to genre painting: the Biedermaier subject par excellence.
Genre painters of the Viennese Biedermaier did not pursue an honest depiction of everyday life, but they aspired to capture reality and enhance it with moralistic, pious, educational or patriotic undertones, of which the following artwork is a good example. Here a young mother huddling her three children is shown begging door-to-door, such representations of social misery aimed to wake in the viewer an emotional response and to feel compassion towards the vulnerable and unlucky.
Other artists of the Biedermaier, such as Waldmüller, also explored similar subjects and social realities by often including beggars and particularly helpless children in their paintings.