Flight of Stairs at the Dresden Zwinger

In keeping with his chosen motto “Nulla dies sine linea” (No day without a line), Menzel drew around 4,000 individual drawings, filling 80 sketchbooks. “All drawing is good, and drawing all [everything] is better,” according to Menzel, who, for the most part, recorded fleeting observations in his sketches. The drawing Flight of Stairs at the Dresden Zwinger has been elaborated in its most minute detail. Unusual for its vantage point and tensioncharged in its staging of light, the work shows one of the double flights of stairs that connects the court of the Dresden Zwinger to the ramparts. The viewer’s gaze is directed from the dark landing, along the imposing Baroque facade, to the treetops. This drawing was made during Menzel’s summer trip to that city in 1886. Its atmospheric tonality reveals it as typical of Menzel’s late drawings, which he carried out with a soft, almost chalk-like carpenter’s pencil. In addition to 60 drawings and a sketchbook, the Kunsthalle Bremen is in possession of more than 550 of Menzel’s prints.