Royal Iron Foundry

The charcoal drawing in landscape format shows a larger vessel and two smaller vessels used for casting iron. All three have a fork-like device on the left and right that can be used to tilt the vessels so that the hot and liquid iron can flow into a casting mould. A house or shed wall with three windows is suggested in the background, and there are a few other things lying in the grass in front of the house that seem to belong to a workshop. The drawing is a preparatory study for ‘Iron Rolling Mill (Modern Cyclops)’, one of Adolph von Menzel’s best-known paintings from 1875. For this work, he produced over 100 preparatory studies. This one was probably executed in the Königshütte in Upper Silesia, which can be seen in the painting. However, the equipment drawing does not appear in this form in the finished work. The artist Menzel attached great importance to understanding an object through the drawings, even though they were not direct models for his paintings.