What do the chemist Carl Remigius Fresenius, the artist Ludwig Knaus and members of the Dyckerhoff, Kalle, Albert and Knoop entrepreneurial families have in common? They all had themselves painted by Kaspar Kögler. Yesterday, as today, social networks enriched private and professional life.
To commemorate the 185th anniversary of the birth and 100th anniversary of the death of Kaspar Kögler (Molsberg / Westerwald 1838 to 1923 Wiesbaden), the sam invited visitors to discover the artist's multifaceted oeuvre in the exhibition "Kaspar Kögler - In a small circle".

The versatile artist worked as a painter, draughtsman and writer. After years of traveling as a church painter, Kögler came to Wiesbaden in the early 1860s, where he worked as a decorative painter in public buildings such as the theater (auditorium and foyer) and the new town hall (Ratskeller). Through his studio neighbor and later brother-in-law Wilhelm Bogler, Kögler was commissioned to paint the "Festsaal" (today Friedrich-August-Saal) of the Wiesbaden Casino Society, which was completed in 1874 according to Bogler's plans.

This commission reveals Kögler's very pronounced interweaving of private and professional life, which is why the exhibition sheds light on the artist's network. This also includes a three-part painting (triptych), which Kögler created around 1900 for the Biebrich industrialist family Dyckerhoff and which formed the focus of the concentrated special exhibition at sam. At the beginning of the anniversary year 2023, the Wiesbaden City Museum Foundation succeeded in acquiring the object and thus permanently integrating it into the collection.