Iron Hammer I-III

‘Eisenhammer I-III’ is among the first objects to be allocated to the Siegerlandmuseum even before it opened. The three-part painting shows metalworking scenes in the hammer mill of the Hesse & Schulte company in Weidenau, which was brought back into operation especially for the painting. The lighting is warm and dark; brown and grey tones predominate; the rooms are only sparsely lit by the fire of the furnaces. Each picture shows a worker carrying out one step in the work process. ‘Iron hammer I’ shows a man in dark overalls. He is standing in front of the flame furnace where raw iron is transformed into wrought iron. He turns his upper body towards a man with a hat and full beard in the middle picture, who is sitting on a stool. He holds a whitely glowing piece of iron with tongs under the mechanical, so-called tail hammer. On the third picture to the right, we see a man in overalls bending over, attending to the hammer’s mechanism. All three works are a smaller version of the painting ‘Old Iron Hammer in Siegerland’, which Ludwig Heupel-Siegen created for the Düsseldorf Industrial and Trade Exhibition in 1902.