Port of Wustrow with washerwomen

Carl Malchin was one of Mecklenburg's outstanding landscape painters at the end of the 19th century. Born in Kröpelin, he first trained as a surveyor in Munich. A scholarship from the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin enabled him to study at the Weimar School of Art under Albert Brendel and Theodor Hagen from 1873. From this time on, the Schwerin court acquired paintings by Malchin. In the summer of 1879, the artist was given a lifelong position as chief conservator of the Schwerin art collections with their then already high-calibre holdings of 17th and 18th century Dutch painting. The Dutch model and the influence of the Weimar School of Painting determined Carl Malchin's relationship to the landscape of his northern German homeland, which he studied and interpreted painterly on widely ramified paths of exploration - always in search of the precious moment in the sight of the ordinary. In the less spectacular nature of Mecklenburg with its spaciousness and changing light moods, he found a motif world that corresponded to his artistic striving for truthfulness. His sense of reality and respect for the rural world led him to themes that had already caused a furore in Weimar - prompted, among others, by Max Liebermann. Although they were frowned upon as "poor people's or dirty painting", they struck a chord with the times.

Years before the artists' colony of Ahrenshoop was founded, Carl Malchin was also on the move on the remote Fischland. As early as 1882 he drew the harbour of Wustrow. In the later painting, the washerwomen were added. Malchin captured the motif with drawing accuracy and meticulous attention to detail. As a painter, however, he particularly saw the differentiated nuances of colour over the water and in the transparent, clear air. Involuntarily, the proportions of the sky and the low-lying horizon suggest a parallel to the Dutch landscape of the "Golden Age".

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