Rathskeller Neubau, Halle (Saale), Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, Mezzanine Plan

Peter Joseph Weber · c. 1887

Medium

Graphite, ink, watercolor, and tempera on paper

Original size

61 × 84 cm (24 × 33 1/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Realism

The mezzanine plan for Halle's Rathskeller Neubau is a remarkable example of late nineteenth-century German architectural draughtsmanship — precise in its geometry yet warm in its palette of layered washes and tempera highlights. Peter Joseph Weber worked in an era when presentation drawings were considered persuasive documents as much as technical blueprints, and his command of graphite, ink, watercolor, and tempera on paper produces a richness of tone that goes well beyond functional notation. Each spatial division is rendered with a care that reflects the civic ambition of the Wilhelmine building programmes reshaping German cities in the 1880s. The interplay of ruled linework and fluid color wash gives the plan an almost painterly quality rarely seen in architectural records of the period. Rathskeller restaurants — the vaulted dining and drinking halls beneath German town halls — were central institutions in urban civic life, and the Neubau in Halle represented a significant investment in that tradition at a moment when Saxony-Anhalt's regional cities were competing to express their prosperity through architecture. The hand-painted oil reproduction translates Weber's intricate layering into the texture and depth of oil on canvas, preserving the warmth of the original washes while giving the composition a physical presence that suits a contemporary wall as naturally as it suited a nineteenth-century drawing office.