Finally, a More Beautiful Home

With the exhibition “Finally, a More Beautiful Home: Color Oil Prints Between Kitsch and Artistry,” the Feld-Haus – Museum of Popular Print Art will dedicate its next annual exhibition, opening on May 10, 2026, to the diverse facets of oil printing.

Colorful elves dancing, bellowing stags, or sentimental images of the Madonna—appropriately framed and sometimes in special formats such as the so-called “bedroom picture”—colorful oil prints became widely popular around 1900. While many of the popular motifs differed significantly from museum art, some companies specialized in deceptively realistic facsimile prints. Thanks to a glossy varnish layer and textured surface, they were virtually indistinguishable from genuine oil paintings to the untrained eye.

Produced in large print runs and targeted for specific markets, the oil prints found their way into working-class and lower-middle-class households. There, these affordable reproductions became the preferred wall decoration—the much-cited “room wallpaper” of the common man. Through them, masters of art history such as Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael soon found their place in modest living rooms far removed from the art world.

In this way, the oil print contributed significantly to the dissemination of an art-historical canon that was simultaneously adapted to popular mass taste: formats and image details were altered, colors rendered more vividly, and motifs modified as needed. Around 1900, the popularization of art was closely linked to the goal of providing aesthetic education to broad segments of the population. Given the enormous circulation of these images, the significance of the oil print thus extends far beyond that of an everyday decorative object.

Drawing on some 80 exhibits—some of which are rare or being shown for the first time—from the museum’s own collection as well as from private holdings, the exhibition “Endlich Schöner Wohnen” offers a fresh yet nostalgic perspective on the colored oil print, situated between kitsch and treasure.

The exhibition project is accompanied by an academic symposium (Fri./Sat., October 30 and 31, 2026) and a publication, and is being organized in cooperation with the Collaborative Research Center 1472 “Transformations of the Popular” at the University of Siegen. In conjunction with the exhibition, courses will also be offered at the Department of Art and Art History at the Technical University of Dortmund and at the Institute of Art History at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main.