Footnotes

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Michael Berger. This work will be included in the forthcoming Alfons Walde catalogue raisonné, currently being prepared.

Provenance
Fred Ashbaugh Collection, US (acquired directly from the artist in the late 1950s).
Private collection, US (by descent from the above).
Private collection, Montana (by descent from the above).

Exhibited
Vienna, Künstlerhaus Wien, Berge und Menschen der Ostmark, 4 March - 30 April 1939, no. 790 (later travelled to Berlin, and possibly also Nuremberg, Bamberg, Würzburg, Mannheim, Heidelberg and Stuttgart).


In the quiet heart of Tyrol, where the Austrian Alps rise like ancient sentinels cloaked in snow, Alfons Walde found his sacred ground. His easel perched near weathered wooden chalets, he painted the land not merely as landscape, but as an evocation of life itself. It was here, amid crisp air and the rhythm of mountain labour, that Walde's brush captured the essence of a people shaped by earth and sky – farmers, peasants and mothers bound to their rugged environment with tender strength.

So too did Fred Ashbaugh, a member of the United States Navy, carry a deep appreciation for this Alpine spirit. After the cataclysm of the Second World War, Ashbaugh found himself drawn to the ski lodges of Austria, their hearths alive with warmth and the echoes of a complex past. It was in one such lodge that Ashbaugh first beheld Walde's Bauernmutter, taken by the thick, impassioned brushwork animating the scene with a gritty, rhythmic vitality. In it, a farmer's wife emerges from a swirl of paint, her tanned skin etched by years beneath an Alpine sun, her simple garments rendered with the rough sincerity of the Tyrolian soil. She cradles her child tenderly, both seemingly carved from the very landscape itself – the snow, the deep azure sky, the burnt orange of her skirt all interwoven with dense impasto. The painting is less a picture and more a hymn to endurance, to the stoic grace of mountain life.

The stark contrasts of blue and white, characteristic of Walde's mature period, situate this mother and child in a vivid world of winter light. Shadows deepen in royal blue across the snow, while the soft curves of hills and the angular presence of a simple farmhouse to the left root the composition in domestic familiarity. A sleigh, just discernible on the right, hints at daily toil and movement, while the woman's serene, narrowed eyes speak to a quiet contentment – a celebration of Tyrolean identity through and through.

Walde's oeuvre from the 1930s to the 1950s increasingly focused on winter landscapes peopled with rural figures, reflecting his deep engagement with the farming communities of his homeland. A comparison with the strikingly similar Mutter in den Bergen (circa 1930) in the Leopold Museum, illuminates his expressionistic approach: the interplay of thick and thin strokes, the tension between pure colour and subtle mixing, the crafting of a three-dimensional depth that invites the viewer into the scene's tactile reality. But while the Leopold Museum's titular mother stands among a pale sky and the long shadows of a dwindling day, the present work's mother faces the vivid light of morning, meeting the viewer's gaze beneath an impossibly blue sky. The artist himself evidently prized the present work, reproducing it as a postcard through his Kunstverlag Alfons Walde publishing house, a testament to its emblematic significance.

After the war, Fred Ashbaugh's own journey intersected with this work in an almost providential fashion. While skiing the Austrian slopes, the painting's vivid portrayal of Alpine life left an indelible impression. Years later, now working with the United States Government Services Administration in North Africa, Ashbaugh learned through his European connections that Walde was preparing to part with the piece. With characteristic resourcefulness, he secured passage back to Europe with the assistance of an American army colonel, determined to reconnect with the artist who had so moved him.

The story of that meeting reads like a quiet chapter from history – an American veteran and an Austrian painter sharing an afternoon over coffee, their conversation bridging cultures and experiences in a postwar world still raw from conflict. Ashbaugh's family recounts how Walde showed him a modest collection of paintings for sale, before Ashbaugh chose this very work, the painting becoming a companion on his continuing travels through Europe and America. According to his family, Ashbaugh spoke often, with admiration, of the artist's warmth and quiet dignity.

The present work's peripatetic journey across continents mirrors the tangled histories it silently witnessed, having been entwined with the fraught political landscape of late 1930s Austria, as the Anschluss and subsequent Nazi regime cast a shadow over culture and identity. The presence of the work among three other paintings by Walde in the 1939 exhibition Berge und Menschen der Ostmark at the Künstlerhaus Wien reflects the tension between art and propaganda. While the show, which was later presented in Berlin under the patronage of Hermann Göring, celebrated regional folklore and 'folk culture,' it was deeply imbued with ideological aims to mythologise the German Ostmark and impose an idealised notion of belonging.

Walde himself occupied a precarious position during this era. Despite being represented prominently in exhibitions endorsed by Nazi officials, he was simultaneously investigated by the Gestapo over suspicions of subversive activities. Though no evidence was found, and no official ban was issued, regional authorities effectively boycotted him in subsequent years. His complex relationship with the regime – both exploited and marginalised – echoes the contradictions that plagued artists living under totalitarian scrutiny.

Stylistically and thematically, Walde's focus on farmers and peasants embodies a romanticised yet gritty vision of Tyrolean life. His paintings from this period offer a potent blend of regional pride and expressionistic intensity, capturing not only the harshness of Alpine existence but also its warmth and resilience. In the present work, we behold this synthesis at its most affecting: a poignant human figure embraced by the immutable natural world, made vivid through the artist's singular technique.

Bauernmutter stands as a compelling testament to Walde's artistic legacy, bridging the intimate and the political, the personal and the universal. It invites us into a moment of serene labour and maternal love while gesturing toward the complex history of its creation and preservation. In this way, the painting encapsulates not only the spirit of the Tyrol but also the entangled histories of its era, testifying to both the intimacy of its subject and the complexities of its time.