Sturm's Idyll. Mural by Georg Sturm, Restaurant, Central Station, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Today's the Twelfth Day of Christmas. Obviously that brought to mind the well-known Christmas song 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' with its cumulative chain of lines beginning with:
'On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me
A partridge in a pear tree.'
It ends, of course, with a list of twelve complicated gifts the last one of which leaves you quite out of breath if you try to sing it in one piece.
No, this mural doesn't show a partridge in a pear tree. Rather, I think, a turkey under an apple tree, and a kind of cornucopia of fruits. But it's bright and pretty, nonetheless, on these gloomy days at the beginning of the New Year.
The other day I wandered into the restaurant at Platform 1 of the grand Central Station of Amsterdam where this painting has recently been nicely restored. That station was built in a Gothic-Renaissance style between 1882 and 1884 by versatile Petrus Johannes Hubertus Cuypers ('Pierre', 1827-1921) also the architect of the Rijksmuseum. He was responsible, too, for the station's decoration scheme with many murals. Their design was actually by Georg Sturm (1855-1934), who was born in Vienna but spent most of his career in The Netherlands. The murals were executed by Jan Visser Jr (1856-1938) and by muralists of the firm owned by Gerrit Hendrik Heinen (1851-1930)
Sturm's Idyll. Mural by Georg Sturm, Restaurant, Central Station, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Today's the Twelfth Day of Christmas. Obviously that brought to mind the well-known Christmas song 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' with its cumulative chain of lines beginning with:
'On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me
A partridge in a pear tree.'
It ends, of course, with a list of twelve complicated gifts the last one of which leaves you quite out of breath if you try to sing it in one piece.
No, this mural doesn't show a partridge in a pear tree. Rather, I think, a turkey under an apple tree, and a kind of cornucopia of fruits. But it's bright and pretty, nonetheless, on these gloomy days at the beginning of the New Year.
The other day I wandered into the restaurant at Platform 1 of the grand Central Station of Amsterdam where this painting has recently been nicely restored. That station was built in a Gothic-Renaissance style between 1882 and 1884 by versatile Petrus Johannes Hubertus Cuypers ('Pierre', 1827-1921) also the architect of the Rijksmuseum. He was responsible, too, for the station's decoration scheme with many murals. Their design was actually by Georg Sturm (1855-1934), who was born in Vienna but spent most of his career in The Netherlands. The murals were executed by Jan Visser Jr (1856-1938) and by muralists of the firm owned by Gerrit Hendrik Heinen (1851-1930)