Otto Edmund Gunther (1838-1884) was an original painter and pedagogue. He graduated from the Düsseldorf Academy and the Weimar High school of Fine Arts. In his youth, as an artist, he took part in several military campaigns of the Prussian army and was particularly interested in soldiers’ everyday life. After the Franco-Prussian war, Gunther changed military themes and turned his attention to scenes from everyday life of ordinary Germans.

Gunther spent in total four years in Konigsberg: from 1876 to 1880 he was a Professor at the local Academy of Arts and was the tutor of Lovis Corinth — one of the most famous artists of East Prussia. Gunther was the youngest teacher at the Academy, and his teaching approach was different from the traditional one.

This can be seen in the painting “An elderly aristocrat with a baby and a pipe near the barn”. The composition resembles a Nativity scene – a theatrical or puppet production of the Christ birth scene. Only instead of usual Magi, shepherds with sheep and angels, Gunther depicted yard chickens and dogs. And the aristocrat himself hardly resembles anyone from the Holy Family. The artist skillfully played with the genre of everyday life, not allowing the work to turn into a caricature. Still, the author’s irony is visible in the details, color choices and compositional features of the painting.