Children at the roadside

The image shows a rural scene—a country road, with cottages to the right and left, hedged gardens and trees. To the right of the foreground, four children - two girls and two boys - are seated at the roadside. They are looking towards the viewer and appear to be waiting.

Margarete Heymann-Loebenstein immigrated to Great Britain in 1936 and was confronted with a new rural landscape quite different to her home in Brandenburg. This sketch is dated 1938, by which time Heymann-Loebenstein had lived two years in Britain. It shows a cottage with a thatched roof that is typical for historical cottages in the Staffordshire region. This is also the year in which Heymann-Loebenstein remarried and she signs the painting with her new surname: “Marks.”