Klecksel the Painter (Mahler Klecksel)

A small boy watches a decorative painter as he applies smudges with a rag in dark blue over a field of light blue. Food, wine, and schnapps are featured nearby. Smudge painting has been practiced for hundreds of years and is similar to contemporary decorative sponge painting.
The title of the painting, Maler Klecksel (Klecksel the Painter) refers to an epic poem from a children's book by Wilhelm Busch of the same title written in 1884. The protagonist of the book is an unfulfilled artist who tries working first as a decorative painter, then attends a fine art academy. Klecksel leaves the academy and later tries his hand at historical painting, landscape painting, and finally religious painting before ending up as the keeper of a tavern where his paramour works as bar maid.
It is interesting to note that genre painter Otto Piltz first worked as a decorative painter in 1860 before attending the academy in Weimar in 1866 as a figurative painter. At one time it was thought that perhaps Piltz saw a bit of himself in Busch’s tome and was inspired to create this painting, as both he and Klecksel aspired to be fine art painters. However, a Museum patron provided insight to the contrary.
The great-grandson of Otto Piltz, Mr. Richard Büning of Nuremburg, Germany visited the Museum on April 5, 2010, and was impressed with the quality of this painting. In discussions with the Museum Director, he proposed that Maler Klecksel is perhaps a title attributed the painting by someone other than Piltz himself, as is likely has more to do with Piltz's personal history rather than Busch's poem. After all, the painting (1874) was created a decade before the poem was published.
Büning noted that Piltz is likely the boy featured in the painting, and that it is autobiographical in nature—a memory from his youth. So rather than the poem inspiring the painting, perhaps it was the other way around.