Hans Porwoll: 'Woman from Mönchgut' Maria Kliesow from Mariendorf

• Hans Porwoll (1898-1984), 'Woman from Mönchgut', Maria Kliesow from Mariendorf,
  oil of canvas, Göhren, around 1930;
  height: 45 cm

The 'Woman from Mönchgut' portrait shows Maria Wilhelmine Luise Kliesow, née Looks, who was born in Altreddevitz on 19 January 1869. She married the cooper Heinrich Johann Karl Kliesow in St Catherine's in November 1893. Maria Kliesow died of a heart attack in 1940, aged 71.

A native of Hamburg, the painter Hans Carl Theodor Porwoll read art in Stuttgart and married the daughter of the game keeper Schwartz in 1926 in Mönchgut. He returned to Hamburg, but travelled frequently to work in Göhren until 1935.

His precarious financial situation often forced him to sell his paintings for room & board, which 'earned' him the moniker 'bread painter'. Evidently a popular style at the time, he regularly produced portraits of fishermen and farmers in Mönchgut or of mundane scenes from village life.

The artist has the eye of a trained observer, and his works are an important source of information for the Mönchgut Museums. The portrait 'Woman in Mönchgut' was submitted to the office of the GDR trade organisation HO.