This still-life, painted in the Bavarian town of Pöttmes, has a German austerity thanks to the black background and the framed silhouette cut out of black paper, as was popular in the Biedermeier period. The artist Anna Sołtanówna-Römer (1895–1974), who lived on the estate of her husband Antoni Kazimierz Römer at Janapol, near Rezekne, in present-day Latvia, travelled quite a lot around Europe. Her biographers do not say how she came to be connected with Bavaria, but there were clear ties, for she fled from Janapol to Europe to avoid the Soviets. Anna Sołtanówna-Römer would paint even when travelling. She painted mostly landscapes, but also produced several still-lifes. For instance, among her other works in the collection of the National Museum of Lithuania, there is a watercolour Still-life with a bouquet of flowers and a candle from 1931. Anna Sołtanówna-Römer was sensitive and interested in life on the estate, and she must have inherited a love of German culture from her mother Amelia Weyssenhoff, who wanted her to feel her German ancestry.
Text author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė
Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album
OBJECTS ON SHOW (2017). Compiler and author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė
Expositions: "Women Artists in Interwar Vilnius. Between Expectations and Possibilities",
15 December
2021 –
24 April
2022, Vytautas Kasiulis Art Museum, Vilnius. Curators Algė Andriulytė and Ilona Mažeikienė.
