German School mid 19th Century

German School mid 19th Century The dining room at Kolešovice (Kolleschowitz), Bohemia, Czech Republic Watercolour over traces of pencil heightened with bodycolour and touches of gold, inscribed verso: Speiszimmer in Kolleschowitz/Wallis, in a gold-leaf frame with a ribbed moulding 30.5 x 44 cm; 46 x 59.5 cm framed Provenance Paul Walter, U.S.A. Kolešovice is near Rakovnic in central Bohemia and became part of Czechoslovakia at the end of World War II. This room is presumably one of the dining rooms of Kolešovice Castle, the home of the Wallis family from 1724. Georg Olivier, Count von Wallis (1671-1743) a field-marshal of Irish descent in the service of the Holy Roman Empire, and the last Habsburg regent of the Kingdom of Serbia (1738-1739), bought the estate of Kolleschowitz in 1724 and restored the mid 16th century castle, collecting Old Master paintings and creating a large library. His descendant Stefan Olivier von Wallis built a Neo-Renaissance new castle next to the old one in the 19th century and created a large English-style landscape garden. Today the buildings are used as an old people’s home. The interior contains fashionable Biedermeier furniture, a French style chandelier, porcelain and glass under the watchful gaze of a clutch of ancestral portraits hanging on the wallpaper. The drawing belonged to Paul Walter, the New York collector whose collection was dispersed by Christie’s in 2017. His parents Fred and Anna Walter were co-founders of the New Jersey industrial instruments firm Thermo Electric. They instilled in him a love of art which saw him become active in the art world of New York, as a collector and patron of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.