12024-01-16T19:50:14-05:00"Anguish" by August Friedrich Schenck, contributed by Hannah Shin (2023)2plain2024-01-16T19:52:39-05:00August Friedrich Schenck’s Anguish, colloquially referred to as “the sad sheep painting,” screams grief. A mother sheep sighs in utter despair while shielding the corpse of her beloved lamb from a flock of murderous crows. She is precisely in “anguish”; the painting’s title is searingly self-explanatory. Anguish is displayed in the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne, Australia. It has twice been voted by NGV visitors into the top five rankings of the gallery’s most popular works, first in 1906 and once again over a century later in 2011. Anguish is timeless, as is the human experience of loss.
