Still Life with Garland - Kunstsalon Franke

Transcription

Kunstsalon Franke-Schenk
Centenary exhibition
11
edited by
Dr. Rolf Schenk and Catherine Franke-Schenk
Kunstsalon Franke-Schenk
Munich
All works are for sale. Price on request
Alle Werke sind verkäuflich. Preis auf Anfrage
Toutes les œuvres sont à vendre. Les prix sont optenus sur demande
© 2013 Kunstsalon Franke-Schenk GmbH, Munich
All rights reserved, in particular for digital reproduction.
www.kunstsalon-franke-schenk.de
Contributors
Dr. Bettina Best (BB)
Dr. Felix Billeter (FB)
Dr. Gert Fischer (GF)
Dr. Angelika Grepmair-Müller (AGM)
Dr. Hildegard Kretschmer-Mellenthin (HK)
Dr. Claudia Nordhoff (CN)
Kristina Piwecki
Prof. Dr. Thomas Raff (TR)
Dr. Rolf Schenk (RS)
Translaters
Michael Foster: Article no. 16
Margaret Fryer: Article no. Preface, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 15, 17, 19, 20, 24, 28, 30, 31
Sophie Leighton: Article no. 4, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 21, 23, 26, 27, 29
Dr. Gudrun Dauner: Article no. 5, 22, 25
Wolfgang M. Geyer: Compilation
Photos
Philipp Mansmann, München
Layout and design
Kathrin Thalhammer, freiStil Grafikstudio, Freising
Printing and binding
Druckerei Fritz Kriechbaumer, Taufkirchen
Remarks on the Economics
of the Art Trade
»Kunstsalon Franke« in the Royal Palace,
Goethestr. 7A, Leipzig, in the 1920s
H
umankind finds self-realisation
in ownership. People give a face
to their individuality by focusing their
attention on something they can identify with. They collect and confirm their
self-awareness in their choice of objects.
As even children show us, collecting is in
the human DNA. The keeping of things
or information has grown from a rite
of play into an occupation of the mind.
Repetitive viewing of and deep intellectual absorption by personal acquisitions produce a self-reassurance which is
an ideal support when coping with life’s
demands. Collecting conveys strength
and the delight of inspiration.
Intelligent and purposeful collecting
goes far beyond mere pride of possession.
The joy of ownership does not come from
Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein,
the power possessions might bring but
Goethe in the Campagna, 1787
(Staedel Museum, Frankfurt / Main) from active involvement with them. This in turn generates knowledge, perception, recreational pleasure and above all it enables people to share with others of like
mind. Goethe knew that »collectors are happy people«, hungry for knowledge, full of
admiration and awed comprehension. His estate listed about 26,000 collector’s items.
Collectors as cultural mediators
Collectors who decide to buy a work of art are, per se, cultural mediators even
if they only allow the desired object to be viewed on their own premises. Art may
bask in the sun of widest possible publicity and the purchaser might relish the
heady prestige, but only time can make a lasting appraisal of that elite form of
transaction. Price and value often differ widely in the art market and have to find
their correct balance. This means that the art dealers’ expertise is of the highest
importance. They are obliged to pass an unerring verdict, not just on the situation
at hand, but also on possible future value. Works of art are not to be regarded as
trophies to be frequently passed on. Their monetary worth is merely superficial,
their aura and charisma cannot be expressed in terms of cash. The market value
tends to vary due to supply and demand, publicity and management, frequency of
exhibitions and provenance.
The social circle determining an artist’s career are often small but powerful. As
to works by artists already deceased, art historians, museum curators and art dealers
are also responsible for bringing their know-how to their appraisal. Yet collectors
also have some influence on the appreciation and importance of an artist. If they
already own established art, a new acquisition will gain status from the existing
objects and acquire a higher prestige.
8
David Teniers d. J., Archduke Leopold Wilhelm’s Art Collection in Brussels, 1650 – 52
(Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)
Art: demanding and stimulating
Art needs publicity because its inherent intentions are oriented towards faceto-face communication. But art also demands intimacy to convey its subjective‐
substantive message through concentrated dialogue with the viewer, thus creating value. The influence of its silent presence gains significance in proportion
to the extent to which art-lovers engage with what is set before their eyes and
signal readiness to acquire knowledge in order to evaluate an artistic statement with a cultivated and broad-based sense of quality. As every good work of
art contains riddles insoluble even to competent deciphering, the engagement
remains in flux and extremely vivid. That is undoubtedly the great fascination
which art offers us and to which we enthusiastically succumb. Art is at once
demanding and stimulating. The more perfect it is, the greater our duty to trace
its spirit and improve our own knowledge. To informed art-lovers and passionate collectors that is an existential process. For them art becomes the medium
for experiencing a world beyond commonplace trivialities. Their elitarian standard also stimulates their own self-questioning in their search for meaning – not
in purely theoretical abstraction but while enjoying an object of art.
The epigram by a philosopher from the world of late antiquity »Bonum est
diffusivum sui« 1 goes to the very heart of the interpretation here – that which
9
1 This epigram is attributed by
Bonaventura (1221 Bagnoregio / Viterbo – 1274 Lyon) in substance
to Pseudo-Dionysius the
Aeropagite (6th century AD).
is good diffuses, pours out. If a work of art meets
the criteria of high quality standards, its effect is
preserved and it continues to inspire.
Art historians as art dealers
2
Lovis Corinth, Capriccio, 1898
(Kunstsalon Franke, Munich,
private collection, Germany)
As »art conveys the inexpressible« it needs
mediators to take the lead and elucidate, who have
the knowledge to find an approximate definition of
»the inexpressible« and set it within the historical
context style. Art historians as art dealers assume
this position when a work of art is being acquired
or a collection started. Those who take intelligent
advice can avoid the longterm errors which are all
too often committed with illconsidered spontaneous
purchases. People who want to live with art do not
have to keep up with trends or bask in fast-fading
glory. An extreme example of fast-track media hype
is the attitude of a nouveauriche art buyer who was
asked what sort of artworks she bought and replied
in all seriousness, »I collect Sothebys and Christies«.
Sincere art dealers, passionate about their profession, buying or taking into commission important
works through of luck, intuition, knowledge and
conscience so as to pass them on to interested collectors, are morally responsible for their recommendations. If they deal in avant-garde art which has
not yet been incorporated into any historical canon
of style they should also be equipped with seismographic powers to enable them to give market-
based confidence to their bold ventures. A high degree of knowledge, continuously
updated, is essential here.
The art dealer as a collector’s friend
2 J. W. Goethe, Maximen und
Reflexionen, Brocardicon. Berlin
edition. Art theory writings and
translations (vols. 17 – 22), vol. 18,
Berlin 1960 ff., pp. 529 – 532
(6th volume, fascicle 1, 1827)
Good art dealers, by continually giving advice, should also form friendships
with collectors, as usually happened in former times in the case of large collections. The basis of trust required, the psychological empathy over and above the
knowledge of art, the continuous dialogue about purchases worth pursuing, the
permanent quest for suitable objects at acceptable prices, the careful observation
of the oscillating and unpredictably volatile market require commitment and an
investment of time which only a passion for art can plausibly justify. Nothing
in this context may be allowed to become routine. Even the research of a specific
picture, the proof of uninterrupted provenance, the clarification of publishing
10
rights, the drafting of expert opinions, the often necessary restoration of a work – 
all that must be done, taken into account, paid for and documented. Digitalisation
for promotion and publicity purposes is an additional task. The Grail guardians
of good taste then stand at the end of the value chain and allow collectors to reap
the fruits of their work. It is only right and proper then that the payment should
be appropriate. The famous art historian Alfred Lichtwark wrote in his essay
»The Collector« over 100 years ago: »The market value of a work of art of the
highest rank will rightly surpass the value of all the other products of a nation. But
this does not exhaust the importance of a work of art. Its greatest worth lies not in
the price it attains but in its effect«.3
The art market as
visual education
Culture needs education. Experienced art dealers do
not merely sell commodities; along with the objects they
have often taken great pains to acquire, they also pass
on their wealth of knowledge and experience. They will
do their utmost to recommend the treasures warmly to
their new owners so that they can understand the uniqueness of the acquisitions within their stylistic context
and justly appreciate their quality. Dealers will even, if
necessary, take over the placing and hanging of a painting in the homes of their clients in order to achieve
maximum charisma and visual effect. The gallery or
the art dealership is in fact a place of communicative
encounter. It is training for the eye, both for the layman and the connoisseur. It is a source of inspiration for
the artistic and spiritual exchange, a place of discoveries and surprises. In conversations about art the sensual
horizon is extended most elegantly, without degenerated bloodless theorising. Whoever engages intensively with art will find that it
becomes an existential need. Art is the most beautiful and pleasurable means of
enjoying the unfathomable secrets of human existence. It is given to art to supplement and extend our own imagination again and again with new potential.
Engagement with art prevents intellectual stagnation.
Maerten v. Heemskerck,
Portrait of a Woman in ThreeQuarter Left Profile, 1530
(private collection, Kunstsalon
Franke-Schenk, Munich, private
collection, Europe)
Art as investment
Art is incontestably also capital investment. According to statistics over the past
ten years, the increase in the value of art has easily outstripped the performance of
shares. Albeit, any generalisation has its pitfalls and a detailed list would look quite
different. But artworks of genuine quality have not only maintained but consistently
increased their concrete value over centuries.
11
3 Alfred Lichtwark, Der Sammler.
In: Wolf Mannhardt (ed.),
Alfred Lichtwark. Eine Auswahl
seiner Schriften, 2 vols. Berlin 1917,
vol. 1. Quoted from the special
edition for Walter von
zur Westen, Offenbach 1921, p. 7
Rachel Ruysch, Still Life with Flowers, 1685
(Kunstsalon Franke, Baden-Baden, private collection, Germany)
As the art market has gone global and dealing in art takes place all over the
world, there will always be people and institutions able to make financial commitments even in times of crisis. If its quality is incontestable, a work of art is
to a great extent immune to the distortions of the capital market. Also, as more
and more museums are being built and enlarged with donations and loans added
to them, popular interest is continually renewed. Media attention sustains that
process. Speculation is legitimate and cannot be ruled out. People want to enjoy
what is considered expensive. As good art does not grow on trees, supply and
demand determine the market price. An extremely rare item increases pride
of possession. Not art degraded into a convertible asset, but the miracle of its
incomparable pleasure-giving uniqueness determines the price. Art is a financial
investment but also a fascinating one. It compensates collectors for much that
they might have to forgo on its account.
Ownership brings responsibilities
Fortunately the meaning of the term »enrichment« does not have to be
confined to its economic sense. The distinction between substance and idea is
the criterion for the expected appraisal.
Ownership manifesting itself in the simple accumulation of money is above all
an expression of one’s own fear of loss.
Owning art, on the other hand, demands
sharing it with others, in the best sense.
Art which cannot be engaged with
because it is kept secretly behind doors is,
in a sense, imprisoned. Art needs the public, because its comprehension cannot be
confined within an absolute standard.
This means that collecting is a moral
activity. People owe it to the work of art
and to the artist to set an exceptional
and singular achievement within a context which allows engagement, interpretation and last but not least admiration. Even the German Constitution,
article 14 section 1, says that »ownership
brings responsibilities«. So it is essential for collectors always to keep in mind
that their activities have a moral dimension. It is they who draw attention to the
artists – even to artists who have passed
away. They are obliged to allow others to
Carl Spitzweg, The Hermit, 1860 (Kunstsalon Franke, Munich,
private collection, Germany)
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experience the »aura of the original« (Walter Benjamin) – an aura which no reproduction can ever
replace. Good art is always part of artists’ personalities. They reveal themselves in the work and thus
lay themselves open to the point of extreme vulnerability. This awareness demands art to be treated
carefully. It must not become a means of power and
prestige. Nor is it intended as a mere realisation of
corporate identity or as a status symbol.
The collector’s creativity
Collecting is a rather creative and demanding
activity if characterised by the enriching assemblage of artworks or by finding specific renditions
and structues of historical or contemporary stylistic epochs and technical design. The thrill of risk,
when relying on one’s own knowledge and taste
for works not confirmed by art history is inconceivable without the courage of making creative
decisions. Those who do not allow themselves to
be steamrollered by »mainstream« and fashionable
trends and resist anything in art that is said to be
»happening«, are creative in the true sense. Even
the risk of a subjective error of judgement has
Ferdinand Hodler, Walking Woman,
its rewards. People who can confess to a mistake
1911 (Gallery Dr. Schenk, Zurich,
will learn from it and not make it again. Collectors will endeavour to increase
private collection, Switzerland)
their expertise and in future take the advice of specialists, art dealers or art
historians of proven competence. They will be intent on accepting advice and
recommendations and on familiarizing themselves with questions of style and
taste. As its sole owner, doing justice to an important work of art is a challenge,
because the object must be cared for beyond his own lifetime. Those who collect
consciously, rather than simply accumulate indiscriminately, reap the rewards
of experience and insight into a wide range of artistic expression: an immediate
experience bringing an exhilarating enrichment to their quality of life. Aesthetic
feeling has a civilising effect and increases sensitivity, which in turn undoubtedly
will trickle into other fields. There is no substitute for the spirituality derived
from art.
Kristina Piwecki
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Albert Anker, Girl with Cat, 1881 (Gallery Dr. Schenk, Zurich, private collection, Switzerland)
Max Liebermann, Garden in Nordwijk-Binnen, 1909 (Paul Cassirer, Berlin, Kunstsalon Franke,
Baden-Baden, private collection, Germany)
Max Liebermann, Linen Chamber in the Amsterdam Jewish Old Women’s Home, 1908 (Paul Cassirer,
Berlin, private collection, Germany; Kunstsalon Franke, Munich, private collection Germany)
Lovis Corinth, Lake Luzern in the Morning, 1924
(Kunstsalon Franke, Munich, Luzern Museum of Art)
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Three Girls with Boat in the Surf, 1912
(Kirchner’s Estate, private collection, Kunstsalon Franke, Baden-Baden)
Franz Marc, Small Sketch of Stones, 1909
(Maria Marc’s Estate, Kunstsalon Franke-Schenk, Munich, private collection, Germany)
Carl Hofer, Still Life with Lute, 1920 /22 (Kunstsalon Franke, Baden-Baden)
We thank
all those who place their trust in us. Art is a global
language transcending time, refining and impressing our spirits and our lives. It is
our desire and our privilege to enrich your collection with works of art testifying to
the greatness of Western culture. Their quality and beauty will be your daily delight.
Dr. Rolf Schenk
Catherine Franke-Schenk
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Art and Artists
A to Z
1
Fritz Bamberger
(1814 Würzburg – 1873 Neuenhain / Taunus)
Albufera
1857. Watercolour on paper; 19.6 x 26 cm (7.72 x 10.24 in)
Signed bottom right in brown paint: Fritz Bamberger, below this in red: 18.
P rovenan ce : Private ownership, South Germany
P
ainted with a light but precise touch in watercolours a broad sweep of landscape is spread out before the viewer under the lofty sky, with a mild light
entering from low on the left. The brightly-lit sky with its loose cloud formations
occupies over half the picture. It overarches a magnificent landscape of low-lying
plains, waters and mountain ranges. Forming the ground tones of colour are the
shades of yellow ochre from the clay soil, extremely pale in the light, and the tender shades of blue of the mountains situated in the mists of the remotest distance,
of the sky itself and of the reflecting waters in the right half of the painting.
Neither mythological, religious nor historical staffage elements clamour for
interpretation. The only thing of importance is the enjoyment of nature itself.
Conversely, the landscape claims supreme significance, as the face of nature,
bearing all transient life on earth within it.
The landscape is articulated into three grounds, so that the viewer sees even
the foreground from a slight distance away; this is the rising land with trees
in the left half of the painting. Bamberger used this elevation to give the ideal
exposure to the heightened emotion of the vast depths which follow. Here he
gave the strongest three-dimensional value to the rocky crags sloping downwards to the right. Figural elements, three wayfarers resting and one with a
rucksack passing by, all projected onto the mound in front of the furthest horizon,
are used by Bamberger to accentuate the relationship between humankind and
nature, making the former appear not insignificant, but distinctly subordinate to
the latter. And here he ultimately deploys the strongest contrasts between light
and dark: an atmospheric back light, with warm brown tones blending into the
tender green treetops against the light of the sky on the one hand, and on the
other a sequence of shadows. The latter begins with harsh shadows underneath
the trees, sinks into the deep green-blue bushes behind the rocks and continues from there into a cool dark shadow over the waters of the plain. Near the
bushes the tiny silhouette of an angler appears and to the right the shadows
lead to the shore.
22
1 Fritz Bamberger,
Lake Albufera near Valencia, 1863
(Schack collection, Munich)
Beyond stretches the expanse of the middle ground – sunlit plains much
foreshortened by perspective, where dry clay soil alternates with green patches
traversed by water which leads to the misty green-blue border at the foot of
the mountains.
Above this border, in the background, the mountains rise, the true climax of the
landscape. There is first a broad, dark mountain with strong contrasting shadows.
It is situated exactly above the shadow of the waters in the foreground. At its foot
a few single buildings and small groups of houses are discernible. On the hillside
a village can be made out, suggested by a few minimal strokes, below the highest
double peak which appears next, in the centre of the picture. A young tree in
the foreground is bending towards the sky-blue double peak; this tree, therefore,
does not just point towards the peaks, it also forms a visual link across vast distances. Behind and to the left of this mountain are more mountain chains, much
foreshortened by perspective.
The brightest area of a loose group of white clouds is piled exactly above the
double peak and the broad mountain situated in front of it. While Bamberger
used a fine brush to include many other foreground details in outline, foliage,
undergrowth and reeds (his signature is hidden here), his work became increasingly sketchy as he moved towards the distance.
Two sources, mutually complementary and typical for the nineteenth century,
determined Bamberger’s art: first, the realism of nature as seen and studied on site
and, second, a view of the world as a composition, heightened to an ideal. Even
in his early years – following his arrival in Munich in 1830 aged 17 after a brief academic training in Berlin and with a court and decorative painter in Kassel – Bamberger joined the crowds of Munich landscape painters in the Alpine foothills
and mountains to study nature, and he copied paintings, especially 17th century
Dutch masters, at the Alte Pinakothek. At the same time, he could not have failed
to notice Carl Rottmann’s (1779 Heidelberg – Munich 1850) successful concept of
landscapes being elevated to history painting, as Rottmann was then still working
24
for King Ludwig I on his Italian cycle of paintings
(completed in 1833) in the arcades of the Hofgarten.
Bamberger stayed for a lengthy period at Frankfurt,
from where he visited the Rhine-Main district and
where he had already established himself as a highly
successful artist to the nobility and upper bourgeoisie.
He concluded that period with his first great visit
to Spain in 1849 – 1850. He was given the opportunity to travel there as a companion to two Frankfurt merchants via England and France. And now he
had discovered the country which above all made his
name as a landscape painter! Bamberger’s decision to
move back to Munich in 1850 also proved especially
fortunate. He encountered a lively market in art, a
Hispanophile monarch and the Greek landscapes by
Carl Rottmann (who died that same year), which decisively influenced Bamberger’s art. Last but not least he
met the scholar and patron Count Schack, »foremost promoter of Spanish culture
(in Germany)« 1 who had finally settled there in 1856 and who was to buy a total of
seven paintings by Bamberger.
In the years 1857 and 1868 Bamberger travelled to Spain again to study. All his
journeys concentrated on Castile, Andalusia and the Valencia region. 2 There also
is our motif, at Lake Albufera south of Valencia. This is a fertile freshwater lagoon
(in Arabic, Albufera means »lagoon«) near the Gulf of Valencia, embedded among
encircling broad plains above which rise the mountains of Valencia.
Bamberger varied the motif in several versions of painting, for which he used
modified studies from nature. A comparison with the Lake Albufera at Valencia
of 1863 3 in the Schack collection (fig. 1) 4 demonstrates in exemplary fashion that
even Bamberger still made a clear distinction in status between an oil painting
and a water-colour. In the oil painting – reminiscent of Rottmann – the categories of rugged and hostile land, the panorama-like and heightened broad sweep
and great depth of view, as well as the positively dramatic and atmospheric effects
of the light are still much more enhanced than in the watercolour. Rottmann also,
in his Greek cycle, 5 used atmospheric effects to give additional significance to the
laws of nature, as demonstrated, for instance, in his Lake Copais of 1839 (fig. 2). 6
Bamberger differs from Rottmann, however, and more closely approaches in content his friend Eduard Schleich the Elder (1812 Haarbach – 1874
Munich) by toning down the inhuman and sublime aspects of a site, even the
weight of its geography and history, to create dazzling mood landscapes. The
brilliance of the colours is now commensurate with a self-sufficient beauty of
atmospheric effect.
However, Bamberger differs from Schleich or even Blechen (1798 Cottbus – 1840
Berlin) in being an early painter of landscapes of mood, working with bright
colours, and even in his choice of motifs, preferably of places remote from civilisation and technology. »Albufera« suggests the Moorish past, but the captivating
beauty of nature now chiefly associates the place with a sense of admiration rather
than a tingle of fear.
25
2 Carl Rottmann,
Lake Kopais, 1839
(Neue Pinakothek, Munich)
1 Rosemary Hoffmann, Spanish
Painting. Spanish Landscape and the
German Imagination, in: Susanne
L. Stratton, Spain, Espagne, Spanien.
Foreign painters discover Spain,
1800 – 1900, New York 1993, p. 51
2 See Anja Gebauer,
Spanien. Reiseland deutscher Maler,
1830 – 1870, doctoral thesis,
Berlin 1998, Petersberg 2000, p. 124
3 Although the motifs of the
painting differ distinctly from our
watercolour in the ruggedness
of the foreground and the view
of the lake as a wide expanse,
nevertheless the mountain range
situated in the distance does seem
comparable with our watercolour.
4 Fritz Bamberger, Lake Albufera
near Valencia, 1863, oil / cnv.,
46.4 x 74 cm / 18.27 x 29.13 in
(Schack collection, Munich)
5 Commissioned by King Ludwig II
and executed in wax and resin or wax
and oils on plasterboard between the
close of the 1830s and Rottmann’s
death in 1850. Originally intended
for the Hofgarten arcades, from
1846 on a room in the Pinakothek,
which was soon to be erected, was
set aside for it, and most of them
have been on view in the building
which replaced it since 2003.
6 Carl Rottmann, Lake Kopais,
1839, wax and resin / plasterboard,
161.7 x 205.7 cm / 63.66 x 80.98 in
(Neue Pinakothek, Munich)
Bamberger was busy with the Albufera theme from his very first visit to Spain,
and more so after the second trip in 1857, which is when our water-colour might
have been created. This period coincides with his awakened interest in unifying
natural space seen on a large scale for atmospheric effect. The variation of higher
and lower eye points is also very much bound up with the Albufera theme, as Plötz
writes: »The views of Lake Albufera give visual expression to Bamberger’s struggle
and quest for a satisfactory solution. Initially the artist chooses a low viewpoint,
attempting – with a glance at Rottmann’s landscapes – to raise the viewer’s standpoint, and briefly returns to the lower eye point and more serene motif at the
beginning of the 1860s.« 7 Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that Plötz is referring to finished oil paintings. The very fact that the location and the motif given
here have not been »literally« transferred to the painting is in itself evidence that
our watercolour was created on site. By way of quotation, the mountains in the
background are seen again, as shown, for instance, in the painting from the Schack
collection. Bamberger orchestrated oil paintings to be more significant in principle than watercolours – with regard to the heightening of the standpoints and
also the repertoire of striking motifs. And here is another suggestion that our
watercolour originated on site: the fact that its lower eye point and few motifs
render it more modest.
Bamberger must certainly have made compositional interventions within the
image seen in reality and created on site. This might be the reason for the birchlike trees, deliberately placed on a lonely knoll; he might have added these trees
in the studio, together with many fine details in brown paint. Nevertheless, this
watercolour allows us to participate in the fresh view of the travelling artist’s
distilling the many facets of reality into a magnificent representation.
agm
References: Anja Gebauer, Spanien. Reiseland deutscher Maler, 1830 – 1870, doctoral thesis, Berlin 1998,
Petersberg 2000 – Rosemary Hoffmann, Spanish Painting. Spanish Landscape and the German Imagination, in:
Suzanne L. Stratton, Spain, Espagne, Spanien. Foreign artists discover Spain, 1800 – 1900, New York 1993 – Jürgen
M. Plötz, Der Landschaftsmaler Fritz Bamberger (1814 – 1873), Schriftenreihe zur Kunstgeschichte, vol. 23,
doctoral thesis University of Würzburg 2007, Hamburg 2009 – Beate Reese, Fritz Bamberger (1814 – 1873).
Spanienbilder, Würzburg 1996 – Herbert W. Rott, Sammlung Schack. Katalog der ausgestellten Gemälde,
published by the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich 2009
7 Jürgen M. Plötz, Der Landschaftsmaler Fritz Bamberger (1814 – 1873),
doctoral thesis, Würzburg 2007,
Petersberg 2009, p. 149. Plötz
on Albufera, especially p. 115 ff.
and p. 147 ff.
26
27
2
Jan Brueghel the Elder
(1568 Brussels – 1625 Antwerp)
Still Life with Garland
of Flowers and Clay Vase
C. 1618. Oil on wood, parqueted; 38.5 x 59.2 cm (15.16 x 23.31 in)
Sign. lower left: BRVEGHEL
P rovenan ce : Belga Kiallita (1927) (sticker on the back); Dr. Karl Szeben, Amsterdam; Pieter de Boer, Amsterdam 1939 / 40; Hendrik Doodeheefver, Amsterdam; Sotheby’s
London 24. 6. 1959, Lot 78; L. Koetser Gallery London (label stuck to the back of the
frame); G. H. Dixon Esq.; Christie’s, London 29. 6. 1973, Lot 82; Richard Green Gallery,
London 1973; Private Collection England since 1979; Galerie Trost, Munich; Sotheby’s
London 2002; Heiner Trost Collection, Gundelfingen 2008 / 10
E x pert R eport : Dr. Klaus Ertz, Lingen, 4 April 2004; Fred G. Meijer, RKD,
The Hague, 9 October 2002; Dr. Sam Segal, Amsterdam, 12 August 2002
E xhibi t ions : London, Leonard Koetser Gallery, 2 – 30 November 1959, no. 18;
London, Brod Gallery, Jan Brueghel The Elder, 21 June – 20 July 1979, cat. no. 35; 1
Manchester, Manchester City Art Gallery, on loan 1991 – 98
C
1 The measurements in the catalogue
are incorrect.They probably
include the frame dimensions.
2 Catalogue raisonné, Klaus
Ertz / Christa Nitze-Ertz, Jan
Brueghel
der Ältere. Die Gemälde, vol. III,
Lingen 2008, no. 459
reated as an artistic manifesto and collectors’ item, this Still Life with Garland
of Flowers and Clay Vase 2 is one of the early jewels of the autonomous floral
still life, for when Jan Brueghel the Elder painted this picture, there was no longstanding tradition of floral still lifes yet.
Jan Brueghel was the second, more talented, son of Pieter Brueghel the Elder
(1525 / 39 Breda – 1569 Brussels) who made his career mainly as a landscape and
floral painter. With Rubens (1577 Siegen – 1640 Antwerp) he was one of the most
famous Flemish painters in 1620. He was so successful already in his lifetime primarily as a floral painter – a genre that he actually instigated in Antwerp – that
he was given the byname »Blumen-Brueghel« (literally, Flower-Brueghel). He
was also sometimes called »Sammet-Brueghel« (Velvet-Brueghel). Significantly,
his early artistic training with his grandmother Mayken Verhulst, a miniatures
painter, possibly took him in this direction. After his apprenticeship as a painter
Brueghel went to complete his training in Italy. There is some evidence that he
was in Naples in 1590, then in Rome and Milan. In Italy, Jan Brueghel worked for
Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, with whom he later had a friendly correspondence.
It is likely to have been in Milan that he also became familiar with the first Italian
28
1 Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder,
Madonna in a Garland of Flowers, c. 1616 / 18
(Alte Pinakothek, Munich)
2 Jan Brueghel the Elder,
Bouquet, 1606 (Pinacoteca
Ambrosiana, Milan)
floral still lifes. After his return to Flanders, Jan Brueghel became a master of
the Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp in 1597. From 1607, he also worked in Brussels for Isabella and Albrecht, the governors. After Peter Paul Rubens returned
from Italy in 1608, Jan Brueghel maintained a close friendship with him. Rubens
translated his letters to Federigo Borromeo into Italian and became the guardian
of Brueghel’s children after his early death from cholera. The two artists also produced several pictures together, in which Brueghel painted the floral garlands or
the landscape and animals and Rubens painted the figures (fig. 1). But Brueghel
also cultivated working relationships with other painters, especially Hendrik van
Balen (Antwerp, circa 1575 – 1632). This kind of specialising was rather common in
the Netherlands, as well as financially rewarding. Jan Brueghel managed to own
six houses in Antwerp.
Our picture shows a garland of flowers and a bouquet in an earthenware vase
on a light-coloured table-top against a dark background enhancing the glow of the
blossoms. Jan Brueghel liked arranging his flowers as garlands around a figure or as
a bouquet. The vases portrayed may be simple or sumptuous. They are made either
of glass, Chinese porcelain or, as here, clay. Decorated with a pattern of grotesques
and pipes, the shape of this vase suggests that it is a typical product of the 16th
century. However, wooden containers, wicker baskets and faience or metal bowls
were also sometimes used for the flower arrangements. Jan Brueghel would also
30
often combine the flowers with gold work, jewellery or exotic natural produce. The connection between the vase and the garland in
this picture is unusual. However, this arrangement allowed the very
appealing horizontal format that he frequently used for floral still
lifes. Brueghel’s work also reveals great inventiveness in other respects. Brueghel bases the composition of the floral arrangement in
the vase on a radial pattern. Splendid large white and pink roses are
arranged around a smaller white rose. The outline is broken up by
small roses. However, the lilac-like blueish flowers behind it, which
may be bird cherries (Prunus padus), break away from this compositional construction by leaning left and establishing a stronger connection with the garland. The garland itself is almost touching the
vase. While only a few species of flowers are combined in this vase,
the skilfully twined garland blossoms with garden and wild flowers of the most varied colours and shapes. It is striking that despite
the highly mimetic precision with which each individual bloom is
depicted, these flowers are not from the same season of the year.
The earliest spring flowers such as narcissi appear alongside roses
and other summer flowers (cf. fig. 6). Brueghel could not therefore simply have
portrayed such a garland, but must have composed it from individual studies from
nature or from printed models in the studio. For flowers that were still rare at that
time, special treasures that were objects of speculation in the Netherlands even to
the point of financial ruin, he sometimes had to travel as far as Brussels to study
them in the governors’ gardens. 3
As a confident draughtsman, Jan Brueghel developed a style characterised by
extremely delicate brush-strokes, thin glazes with many layers of colour, great subtlety and softly graduated radiant colours. His attention to detail in portraying flowers would have met some of the requirements of scientific record. At the same
time, however, he arranged the flowers so aesthetically that their colours and shapes
become a visual feast and a pleasure to behold. Furthermore, the flowers in the garland are being visited by some small insects that can also only be discovered on
close inspection. Brueghel painted his first large floral still life, now in Milan at
the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, for Cardinal Federico Borromeo (1564 – 1631) (fig. 2).
In 1606, there is relevant correspondence in which the artist informs the cardinal
about his picture, produced without a commission. He describes it as successful
because of the naturalness, beauty and the rarity of its flowers. He also reports in
one of the letters that he made a special journey to Brussels for some of the rare flowers to be portrayed. He adds that these particular pictures are especially beautiful
in winter. And that is also confirmed by Federigo Borromeo in his own writings, as
the painted flowers do not wither like those in nature. But what Brueghel prided
himself on most was the artistry that makes his flowers appear completely natural. 4
What was the purpose of these pictures? What meaning can be derived from
the painting?
Jan Brueghel’s pictures were predominantly small- to medium-sized and their
subject matter shows that they were certainly intended as cabinet- and collectors’ items. They were a coveted novelty well beyond his native town of Antwerp.
As the richest trading city in Europe, this city on the Scheldt River was then
31
3 Peter Paul Rubens,
Pausias and Glycera, c. 1612–15
(The John Mable Ringling Museum
of Art, Sarasota)
3 My interpretation of the picture is
principally based on Barbara Welzel’s
essay Wettstreit zwischen Kunst und
Natur. Die Blumenstilleben von Jan
Brueghel d. Ä. als Triumph der Bilder,
in: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte,
vol. 65, 2002, pp. 325–342
4 For more detail on this, see
Barbara Welzel, Kunstvolle
Inszenierung von Natürlichkeit.
Anmerkungen zu den Blumenstilleben
Jan Brueghels d. Ä., in: Künste und
Natur in Diskursen der Frühen
Neuzeit, ed. Hartmut Laufhütte,
Wiesbaden 2000, pp. 549–560
4 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Still Life with Garland of Flowers
and Golden Tazza, 1618 (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts
de Belgique, Brussels)
5 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Bouquet of Flowers with
Garland, 1619 / 20 (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin)
5 More details in Welzel, see note 4
probably the most important artistic centre north of the Alps and exported pictures
on a grand scale all over Europe. The clients were nobles and the prosperous
and humanistically educated middle classes. Also, under the governorship of the
Infanta Isabella and Archduke Albrecht, despite the War of Independence and
especially after the ceasefire of 1609, Flanders blossomed culturally on an enormous scale. With rising prosperity, the need for ostentatious luxury increased.
Paintings increasingly became a desired decoration for private living rooms. Themes that previously featured mainly in religious pictures with corresponding religious symbolism or as interior decorations developed into pictorial genres in their
own right. The vase of flowers connected with a portrayal of the Annunciation to
Mary or as decoration for the cover of a portrait emerged as an autonomous picture
for art collectors. These paintings were entirely consciously understood as artworks
and often had intellectual reflections as their starting point. But they also generated great pleasure for the viewer and represented a sophisticated lifestyle. For a clientele that collected not only pictures but also valuable flowers and plants in their
gardens there was also a major attraction in comparing art and nature, human
ingenuity and nature’s creativity.5 The relationship between art and nature was one
of the most important aspects of the artistic debate at that time. The imitation of
nature was considered to be the key requirement. Whether it ought to be nature
as such or a conscious selection of what was especially beautiful was the only
point of issue. Brueghel explicitly emphasises in his letters that his flowers were
32
painted from nature and possessed their natural size and colours. This of course
is not to be understood to mean that he produced oil paintings in the open air
like the Impressionists. And these natural-looking flowers, whose scent Federigo
Borromeo even believed he could smell, do not wither. Furthermore, the viewer
of these pictures can delight in an abundance of flowers that appears in nature
neither at the same time nor generally in the same region. So the painted flowers
in the pictures triumph in their freshness and colourfulness over the transience
and limitations of nature. The understanding of time in these pictures nevertheless
also incorporates a praise of creation because in the contemplation of nature – the
actual and the similarly painted deception – we can also sense something that
Federigo Borromeo particularly emphasised in his writings, the creator’s presence.
However, in scholarly circles of collectors and artists, the engagement with the
antique heritage also played a role. Thus a traditional floral symbolism with religious connotations hardly played any further part in the conception of this picture.
A key to understanding is provided rather by the garland and the small insects. 6
Pliny describes a floral painter of antiquity named Pausias. 7 None of his pictures
have survived, of course, but we learn that Pausias was in love with the garlandmaker Glycera. And so the two competed with each other in the twining and
painting of flower garlands. Karel van Mander also listed Pausias as a model in
his Schilderboek of 1604 because of the colourfulness observed from natural flowers. 8 Rubens, however, produced Pausias und Glycera as a large history painting
(fig. 3). The flowers are thought to have been added by Osias Beert (Antwerp, circa
1580 – 1623). Jan Brueghel certainly also knew the story of Pausias. Another wellknown tradition describes the skilful imitation of nature by Zeuxis, the painter
of antiquity at whose picture of grapes real birds were pecking. 9 The adoption of
antique traditions as a stimulus for new pictorial inventions and the rivalry with
famous ancient artists can be repeatedly observed from the Renaissance on, particularly in the still-life genre. With his illusionistic garland of flowers, Jan Brueghel
could therefore have imagined himself as the new Pausias. And the painted insects,
which the viewer might wish to shoo away, establish Breughel as similar to
Zeuxis in his skilfulness.
The picture bears Brueghel’s signature at the bottom left but is not dated. Its
softer brushwork, free arrangement and similarity to the dated pictures Still Life
with Garland of Flowers and Golden Tazza in Brussels (fig. 4) and a picture that
has in fact been untraceable since 1935, Still Life with Basket of Flowers and Glass
of 1617, 10 make the 1618 dating suggested in the literature convincing. Also related in theme are the paintings Bouquet with Garland of Flowers at the Berlin State
Museums, 11 with the rather later dating of 1619 / 20 (fig. 5), and Floral Still Life
with Tazza, Garland of Flowers and Bouquet in a Wan-Li-Porcelain Vase. 12
It was at the peak of his creativity and fame around 1620 that Brueghel
bequeathed us this picture, which demonstrates his special ability as a painter
of both bouquets and floral garlands combining garland and bouquet as signature
features and underlines his claim to be a new Pausias.
hk
6 There are further explanations with
reference to Barbara Welzel: »Euer
Ehren mögen mir glauben,daß ich
noch niemals ein derartiges Gemälde
gemacht habe« – Die Blumenbilder
von Jan Brueghel d. Ä., in:
Meisterwerke der Malerei. Von Rogier
van der Weyden bis Andy Warhol,
ed. Reinhard Brandt,
Leipzig 2001, pp. 69–87
7 Pliny, Natural History, Book XXXV,
trans. H. Rackham, London Folio
Society, 2012, Chap. XXXIX, § 125
8 Karel van Mander, Den grondt
der edel vry schilderconst,
ed. Hessel Miedema, vol. 1, Utrecht
1973, Chap. 11, § 2, pp. 246–249
9Pliny, Natural History,
Book XXXV. trans. H. Rackham,
London, Folio Society, 2012,
Chap. XXXVI, §65
10 Cat. rais. Ertz, no. 457
33
6 Scheme of the names of
flowers and insects portrayed
(source: Sam Segal, Expert Report 2002)
References: Connoisseur, November 1959, no. 581, ill. p. 144 – Marie-Louise Hairs, Les peintres flamands de fleurs
au XVIIe siècle, Brussels 1965 – Klaus Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568 – 1625), Cologne 1979 (as Jan Brueghel
the Younger, with incorrect measurements) – Jan Brueghel the Elder. A Loan Exhibition of Paintings, exh. cat.
Brod Gallery, London 1979 – Klaus Ertz, Jan Brueghel the Younger (1601 – 1678) – die Gemälde mit kritischem
Oeuvrekatalog, Freren 1984 (as Jan Brueghel the Younger, with incorrect measurements) – Marie-Louise Hairs,
Les peintres flamands de fleurs au XVIIe siècle, 2 vols., Brussels 1985 – Weltkunst 2, 2005, ill. p. 42 – MarieLouise Hairs, Les peintres flamands de fleurs au XVIIe siècle, Tournai 1998 – Klaus Ertz, Christa Nitze-Ertz,
Jan Brueghel der Ältere. Die Gemälde, Lingen 2008 – 10
34
Legends to fig. 6:
Bouquet of Flowers
1Apothekers-Rose (Essig-Rose)
Rosa gallica
2Traubenkirsche
Officinalis Prunus padus
3Wein-Rose
Rosa rubiginosa
4Jonquille
Narcissus jonquilla
5Weiße Rose
Rosa x alba
Garland of Flowers
6Levkoje
Matthiola incana grandiflora rosea
7Weißer Senf
Sinapis alba
8Stiefmütterchen
Viola tricolor
9Ochsenzunge
Anchusa officinalis
10Wein-Rose
Rosa rubiginosa (wie Nr. 3)
11Zypressenkraut
Santolina chamaecyparissus
12Hahnenfuß
Ranunculus acris
13Teufelsauge
Adonis flammea
14Weiße Narzisse
Narcissus poeticus
15Boretsch
Borago officinalis
16Garten-Nelke
Dianthus caryophyllys plenus
17Raues Veilchen
Viola hirta
18Trauben-Steinbrech
Saxifraga aizoon
19Vergissmeinnicht
Myosotis scorpioides
8aStiefmütterchen
Viola tricolor
20Mehl-Schlüsselblume
Primula farinosa
21Schleifenblume
Iberis umbellata
22Feuerdom
Pyracantha coccinea
23Weiße Gartennelke
Dianthus caryophyllus plenus albus
24Rosenblütiger Steinbrech
Saxifraga rosacea
13aTeufelsauge
Adonis flammea
26Essig-Rose
Rosa gallica
27Hornkraut
Cerastium glomeratum
28Erdbeere
Fragaria vesca
19bVergissmeinnicht
8cStiefmütterchen
Viola tricolor
29Weiße Rose
Rosa x alba subplena
30Pfeil-Kresse
Lepidium draba
31Maiglöckchen
Convallaria majalis
32Sanddom
Berberis vulgaris
33Stern-Windröslein
Anemone hortensis plena
34Nelkenwurz-Steinbrech
Saxifraga geum
16aGarten-Nelke
Dianthus caryophyllys plenus
35Kronen-Windröslein
Anemone coronaria pseudoplena alba
36Apothekers-Rose
Rosa gallica (wie Nr. 1)
19cVergissmeinnicht
37Blasser Pfeifenstrauch
Philadelphus coronarius
38Blaustem
Scilla bifolia
39Rosmarin
Rosmarinus officinalis
40Lila Veilchen
Viola odorata lilacina
41Ringelblume
Calendula officinalis
42Alpenveilchen
Cyclamen hederifolium
43Gauchheil
Anagallis arvensis
44Brueghelkresse
Tropaeolum »brueghelianum«
45Schwarzer Nachtschatten
Solanum nigrum
46Pfennigkraut
Thlaspi arvense
47Schotten-Steinbrech
Saxifraga umbrosa
48Brennende Liebe
Lychnis chalcedonica
39aRosmarin
Rosmarinus officinalis
12aHahnenfuß
Ranunculus acris
49Haariges Schaumkraut
Cardamine hirsuta
50Weiße Levkoje
Matthiola incana alba
51Roter Spärkling
Spergularia rubra
52Wald-Vergissmeinnicht
Myosotis silvatica
53Garten-Nelke
Dianthus caryophyllus simplex
54Jungfer im Grünen
Nigella damascena semiplena
55 Gelber Jasmin
Jasminum nudiflorum
56Großer Jasmin
Jasminum grandiflorum
57 Immergrün
Vinca minor
58 März-Veilchen
Viola odorata
44aBrueghelkresse
Tropaeolum «brueghelianum«
56aGroßer Jasmin
Jasminum grandiflorum
11aZypressenkraut
Santolina chamaecyparissus
21aSchleifenblume
Iberis umbellata
15bBoretsch
Borago officin
Insects
aWespe (auf 10)
Parvavespula vulgaris
bMutille (auf 20)
Metocoa ichneumonoides
cHalbmondschwebefliege (auf 33)
Scaeva pyrastri
dRote Waldameise 2x (auf 36)
Formica rufa
eStubenfliege (auf 56a)
Fannia canicularis
3
Heinrich Bürkel
(1802 Pirmasens – 1869 Munich)
View across Ariccia
to Monte Circeo
C. 1853. Oil on canvas: 71 x 36 cm (27.95 x 14.17 in)
P rovenan ce : Private collection, Germany
E x pert R eport : Professor Helmut Börsch-Supan, 6. Feb. 1993
W
1 Photograph with view of Monte
Circeo from the north
1 Luigi von Buerkel, Heinrich Bürkel.
Ein Malerleben der Biedermeierzeit,
Munich 1940, p. 44
2 Meyers Konversationslexikon, 1875.
For comparison, see also the painting
Blick auf den Monte Circeo by Joseph
August Knip (1777 Tilburg – 1847
Berlicum) in the Wallraf-RichartzMuseum in Cologne.
hen the Munich painter Heinrich Bürkel stayed in Rome during his many
visits to Italy, he undertook countless excursions. He visited historic places
and captured his impressions of the beauties of nature with pencil and brush. Thus
»many large oil sketches« came into being, »pen-and-ink drawings and watercolours of landscapes of Rome, the Campagna, the Sabine and Volscian Hills, Tivoli,
Olevano, the Abruzzi, Frascati, Albano, the crater lakes, Velletri and the Pontine
Marshes, the spoils of endless walks through malaria-infested places.« 1
Ariccia lies twenty kilometres south-east of Rome and is the oldest town in
Latium. From here one could enjoy the famous View across Ariccia to Monte Circeo
(Monte Circello) – an attraction which Friedrich Bürkel, like many of his colleagues
before and after him, captured in this painting of the same name. For the Romans,
the little village on the ancient Appian Way was a traditional summer resort in the
Alban Hills. It is situated above the Vallericcia crater between Lake Albano and Lake
Nemi. From here Circe’s mountain appears to be a vision on the horizon, which in
Heinrich Bürkel’s oil sketch has the effect, »viewed from a distance like an island« 2
(fig. 1). The painter shows the fabled Homeric mountain together with the equally
famous Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta, the church sited rather to the left in the
middle ground of the picture. The baroque edifice with its cupola and two towers
are viewed from the north. The church is a late work by the architect Gian Lorenzo
Bernini dating from 1663 – 1665. Pope Alexander VII Chigi commissioned it and had
it built next to the Palazzo Chigi. In the 17th century the Pope had the town of Ariccia redesigned to a modern concept, Bernini and Carlo Fontana being among the
many architects involved. Even then the town was a much-visited international rendezvous for artists and writers. In the 18th and 19th centuries especially, Ariccia featured prominently in the Grand Tour of the European nobility and still is as great a
tourist attraction as Tivoli. Visitors to Rome usually visited the little town when they
were travelling along the ancient Appian Way from Rome along the Pontine Marshes towards Terracina, a picturesque seaside fishing village south of Monte Circeo.
36
2 Franz Ludwig Catel, View of Ariccia,
c. 1821 /25 (Neue Pinakothek Munich)
3 Friedrich Burghard Müller,
View across Terracina to Monte Circeo,
before 1842 (Landesmuseum Mainz)
3 See also the painting of the same
title from 1836, by Carl Morgenstern,
at the Städelsches Kunstinstitut,
Frankfurt.
4 Hans-Peter Bühler, Albrecht Krückl,
Heinrich Bürkel. Mit Werkverzeichnis
und Gemälde, Munich 1989, p. 149
Among the visitors from Munich who stayed here was Franz Ludwig Catel (1778
Berlin – 1856 Rom) (fig. 2). Whereas Heinrich Bürkel shows the view from the
north across Ariccia to Monte Circeo, Friedrich Burghard Müller’s (1811 Kassel – 1859
Munich) and Johann Georg Primavesi’s (1774 Heidelberg – 1853 Kassel) paintings,
shown next, display the view to Monte Circeo from the south, above Terracina
(fig. 3 /4).3 In Terracina the artists reached the Tyrrhenian Sea and stopped there
after their arduous journey through the Monti Lepini, also called the Volscian Hills,
the peaks of which project into the picture, on the left of this painting, above the
slopes of the Alban Hills.
In Bürkel’s painting our gaze glides southwards across the silvery glints of the
smooth sea in the distance. The wide sweep of the coastline leads to Monte Circeo
and in the right of the picture further on to the island group of Isola Ponza with
Isola Zannone and Palmarola, whose silhouettes fade away in the milky light of
the rose-yellow lofty vault of a German Romantic sky, to the horizon of the sea.
The construction of the composition is masterly: the picture is divided horizontally
into two almost equal halves spanning earth and sky. Simultaneously, the painter
unfolds from left to right, the classic diagonal composition from dark to bright. It
is subdivided into shadowed and sunlit zones, which are composed, wavelike, of
green land areas and two consecutive blue zones of sea to the right. The oil-sketch
View across Ariccia to Monte Circeo shows »the other Bürkel«, as Bürkel specialist
Hans-Peter Bühler dubs him. 4 This Bürkel is no longer a Biedermeier painter but
a pre-Impressionist, who uses loose brushstrokes to create oil-sketches as light as
watercolours. He catches the fleeting impression of nature in thin transparent layers on the canvas, applies light and shade with a few well-directed dabs, and uses
smoothly-flowing colour transitions in charming pastel shades to reveal all the
magic of the atmosphere. As in a Japanese pen-and-ink drawing, he displays the
landmarks of Mediterranean Italy, the pines, in their typical silhouettes against the
sky. He carefully links areas to form a generous and spacious prospect. The intensity of the impression no longer requires assiduous attention to detail. The grand
38
design, the artistic shorthand treatment
of all essential elements, condenses the
magic of the southern light and landscape into an Arcadian dream.
Only after 1900 Bürkel’s son Ludwig
von Bürkel, and Ludwig’s son Luigi von
Buerkel allowed public access to Bürkel’s
privately-owned oil studies and drawings.
Richard Muther, who was one of the first
to see this »other Bürkel«, appeared quite
fascinated by the beauty of the paintings
which combined the essence of experience in atmospheric impressions.5
Comparisons with other pictures from
Heinrich Bürkel’s oeuvre suggest that
the View across Ariccia to Monte Circeo
is one of the master’s late works. It
probably dates from his fourth trip to
Italy in 1853. In 1851 his friend Carl Spitzweg (1808 Unterpfaffenhofen – 1885
Munich), together with Eduard Schleich the Elder (1812 Schloss Haarbach / Vilsbiburg – 1874 Munich), had already brought Eugène Delacroix’ (Paris, 1798 – 1863)
and the Barbizon painters’ handling of colour and light from Paris to Munich.
Hans-Peter Bühler’s remark 6 that Bürkel anticipated plein air painting but remained to his death true to painting in transparent layers in the Biedermeier style
might concern his commercial works. For his personal creations, which were not
intended for the public, he liberalized painting, as did his Munich colleagues
Spitzweg and Schleich the Elder. In View across Ariccia to Monte Circeo the rosered coloration of the tender background of Bürkel’s morning sky is still Romantic
in conception: the colour »melts« 7 evenly across the entire surface of the painting.
But the painter interrupts and accentuates this light-suffused sky with directlyapplied impasto brushstrokes, which stand as cloud formations in the light celestial sphere. Below these, bright and dark short brush-dashes break up the various
landscape details and weave their scenic elements, such as trees, people, houses
and animals, into an atmospheric entity of almost Impressionist style. Through
this the painter achieves a »new synthesis of colouristic and depth-perspective
effect.« 8 Only a few pictures in Heinrich Bürkel’s oeuvre have this »meltingness«,
this »Frenchness«, as Professor Börsch-Supan calls it, of the painting View across
Ariccia to Monte Circeo.
Whereas the oil sketches on paper – examples to be considered are the View of
Olevano and the Volscian Mountains c. 1830 – 1832 (WV 443) 9 in the Heydt-Museum,
Wuppertal, and the Italian Mountain Landscape (WV 440) in the Bürkel-Galerie in
the Museum der Stadt Pirmasens, or even the Italian Mountain Landscape (WV
439) – thematised landscape impressions as early as the 1830s, the paintings on
canvas from that period still have much more precise detail and are elaborated
truer to the image. It was not until the 1850s that the oil sketches on canvas show
a lightness comparable to the works on paper. For instance, the Landscape in the
Pontine Marshes with the Ruins of Ninfa and View of Sezze painted near Terracina
39
4 Johann Georg Primavesi,
View to Terracina, 1837
(Landesmuseum Mainz)
5 Luigi von Buerkel, loc. cit., pp. 92, 94
loc. cit., p. 185
7 A term which Adalbert Stifter
coined for Bürkel’s painting style.
loc. cit., p. 185
9 For the numbers with illustrations
see index of works (WV) in:
Hans-Peter Bühler, Albrecht Krückl,
loc. cit., pp. 221 – 320
from about 1850 / 55 (WV 450), the Italian Mountain Landscape with View of Subbiaco (WV 446) or Travelling Peasants before the Fontana di Porta Furba from circa
1865 / 68 (WV 492) are characteristic of Heinrich Bürkel’s late style. In these paintings the figures have lost their earlier pictorial dominance and are embedded in
the landscape prospect as small staffage figures.
The overwhelming majority of these late works is unsigned and was not intended for sale, but formed a repository of memories from which the artist could
create. They continue to be a new discovery. In their entire manner they are close
to the sketch-like painting of Georg Dillis (1759 Gmain / Dorfen – 1841 Munich).
Our lightly delineated representation with its sense of atmosphere, reminiscent of French work, is a rarity. It preserves the spontaneous handwriting and the
personal idea of art of the modern painter Heinrich Bürkel, who, along with Carl
Spitzweg and Eduard Schleich the Elder produced seminal creations in landscape
painting in a way that was all his own.
bb
References: Luigi von Buerkel, Heinrich Bürkel. Ein Malerleben der Biedermeierzeit, Munich 1940 – HansPeter Bühler, Albrecht Krückl, Heinrich Bürkel. Mit Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde, Munich 1989 – Matthias
Strugalla, Albrecht Krückl, Hans-Peter Bühler, Gerhard Klesmann, Mensch und Tier – bemerkenswert natürlich:
Zeichnungen und Aquarelle von Heinrich Bürkel, exh. cat., Pirmasens 1999 – Heidi C. Ebertshäuser, Gerhard
Klesmann, Heinrich Bürkel. Zeichnungen und Aquarelle, exh. cat., Pirmasens 1996 – Ingeborg Besch (ed.),
Heinrich Bürkel – zwischen München und Rom: Bilderbuch des Biedermeier, exh. cat. Pirmasens, Saarbrücken
2002 – Hans-Jürgen Imiela, Brigitte Reifenkugel, Der Maler Heinrich Bürkel, exh. Pirmasens, Landau / Pfalz 1982
40
41
4
Maria Caspar-Filser
(1878 Riedlingen – 1968 Brannenburg)
May Storm. Landscape with view
of Hohentwiel near Singen
Before 1913. Oil on canvas; 62 x 86.2 cm (24.41 x 33.94 in). Signed bottom right: MCF
E xhibi t ions : 1913 Mannheim, Deutscher Künstlerbund
T
1 Matthäus Merian the Elder,
The Fortress Hochen Twiel, 1641.
Coloured copper engraving
he painting May Storm is one of the Upper Swabian painter Maria CasparFilser’s atmospheric landscapes. Influenced by the French innovator Paul
Cézanne (Aix-en-Provence, 1839 – 1906), she painted this early work in an expressive style that was also cultivated at the time by Lovis Corinth (1858 Tapiau – 1925
Zandvoort) and the young Max Beckmann (1884 Leipzig – 1950 New York).
The prominent hill Hohentwiel is a highly personal theme for the artist. Born in
the Swabian town of Riedlingen, Maria Filser had known this volcanic cone from
childhood. As a landmark of the Hegau and Singen’s iconic hill it has had special
significance for the region to this day. The former volcano made the surrounding
land fertile for viticulture and it had been a favoured settlement site since the Neolithic Age. The ruins of a medieval fortress that Napoleon razed are still visible on its
high plateau (fig. 1). Although Maria Caspar-Filser created a landscape rather than
a history painting, the Hohentwiel’s particular history is already evident from its
conical shape: like a rocky fortress it towers above the surrounding area and is visible
from far and wide, which has always inspired painters’ imaginations.
In Maria Caspar-Filser’s painting the hill situated near Singen takes prime
place at the right edge of the picture. In broad, thickly applied brushstrokes, the
painter assembles the subject from the red, white and grey colour tones of her
subtle but nonetheless sparse palette into a sophisticated colour play. Her colours
are not randomly chosen. They conform to the grey volcanic rock that takes on
a reddish hue in the sunlight. Still bare from winter, the cone – at least 600 m
high – reaches a considerable altitude from the low-angle view. In terms of colour,
it merges with the Hohenstoffeln uplands in the distance.
The wide-ranging mountain chains lie beneath the grey sky of a rainy day.
With a carpet-like effect the painter compresses the brushstrokes into a rainheavy cloud cover. Rhythmically placed lines cross the deserted landscape like
the streaks of May rain-showers.
42
2 Paul Cézanne, Mont SainteVictoire with Large Pine, 1890.
Oil / cnv. (Musée d’Orsay, Paris)
1 See Ehrenfried Kluckert, Von der
Kunst, den Alltag zu verwandeln.
1. Die Verwandlung der Natur, in:
Felicitas E. M. Köster, Ehrenfried
Kluckert (ed.), Maria Caspar-Filser.
1878 – 1968, exh. cat. Landesgirokasse
gallery Stuttgart, 1986, p. 74. – 
Kipplan’s review Stilleben,
Landschaft und Figurenbild auf
der Künstlerbundausstellung in
Mannheim 1913 also mentions Paul
Cézanne’s influence on Maria
Caspar-Filser, in: Die christliche
Kunst, vol. 9, 1912 / 13, pp. 303 – 307.
2 Cf. Exhibition catalogue,
Berlin Secession 1903, No. 37
3 Paul Cézanne, House and Dovecot
at Bellevue, c. 1890 – 1892. Oil / cnv.
(Folkwang museum, Essen) Along
with this painting Karl Ernst
Osthaus also acquired in 1906 from
Cézanne’s long-standing art dealer
Ambroise Vollard Bibémus Quarry,
produced in 1895. The painting is now
at the Neue Pinakothek in Munich.
4 See Ehrenfried Kluckert, Maria
Caspar-Filser. Abstraktion
und Subjektivismus, exh. cat.
Albstadt, 1978, pp. 13 – 17
5 Cf. Exhibition catalogue
Munich annual exhibition
1907 at the Glaspalast
6 Cf. Exhibition catalogue Spring
exhibition of the Munich
Secession 1909, nos. 22 and 23
The overcast sky contrasts with the fresh, lush yellow-green of the spring meadows in the lower half of the picture. A path peters out into the wet grass in the
middle ground of the picture. Softly sketched tree outlines bear the earliest tender
greenery on their bare branches.
Moving away from classical perspective, Maria Caspar-Filser creates spatial
expanse by constructing the landscape view from three horizontally layered picture zones: the foreground is a meadow bisected by a dell with some trees, rising
again with a path on the other side. The horizon is formed by the dark zone of the
hills outlined majestically against the sky. As in Vincent van Gogh’s compositions,
the sky counterbalances it with material density achieved by painterly means. This
horizontally layered composition has been a method of portraying space since pioneered by Impressionism. It allows a closed, atmospheric landscape impression to
be formed without perspective lines.
This painting contains neither houses nor people: the nature-orientated artist
loves observing nature itself at work. Her portrayal of Hohentwiel captures the
structure of the landscape as a colour composition and expresses its mood by independent painterly means, without losing herself in landscape details during the
painting process. Brushwork and colour application remain clearly visible.
Between 1910 and 1920, Maria Caspar-Filser produced a whole series of paintings in which Paul Cézanne’s hand endures perceptibly. 1 Like her French role
model she deploys the language of colour. By working »parallel to nature« (Paul
Cézanne), she constructs her volumes by painterly means from colour planes in
lighter and darker shades that she composes into spatial phenomena like buildingblocks. The landscape detail is thereby dissolved in cross-hatchings. The zones of
the picture are proportioned and interrelated by the colours.
Maria Caspar-Filser’s Hohentwiel is reminiscent of Paul Cézanne’s subject
Mont Sainte-Victoire near Aix-en-Provence (fig. 2). However, in accordance with
the geographical realities, the French Late Impressionist’s delicate Provençal lightness is transformed into massive Nordic gravity in the German painter’s work.
A little later, in December 1913, Maria Caspar-Filser travelled to Florence
with her husband Karl Caspar, who had received the Villa Romana prize of the
Deutscher Künstlerbund. In the southern sun she managed to develop Cézanne’s
painting technique in full: here she demonstrates not only her knowledge of his
light-suffused palette and the detailed subtlety of his colour construction but
also her mastery of them. This probably finds its best expression in her last picture, painted in Italy in July 1914, a view of Monte Morello (figs. 3 and 4).
Maria Caspar-Filser first travelled to Paris in 1905. Due to a number of unfortunate circumstances she did not see Paul Cézanne’s work then, although she
already knew and valued it highly. In Germany, Paul Cézanne’s landscapes were
first exhibited in 1903 at the Berlin Secession. 2 As early as 1906 Karl Ernst Osthaus acquired two paintings by Paul Cézanne for the Folkwang museum in
Hagen. 3 According to her own statement, Maria Caspar-Filser did not encounter
the French innovator’s pictures in person until 1907 at the Munich Glaspalast. 4
The exhibition catalogue 5 does not list any work by Paul Cézanne, however, so
Maria Caspar-Filser may have been mistaken about the year. In 1909, two landscapes by Paul Cézanne were shown for the first time at the Munich Secession. 6
In 1913 works by both artists could be seen at the Munich Secession exhibitions. 7
44
3 Paul Cézanne, The Bellevue Plain, also known as The Red Earth,
1890 – 1892. Oil / cnv. (Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia)
4 Maria Caspar-Filser, Florentine Landscape with Monte
Morello (View of Florence from the Villa Romana), 1914.
Oil / cnv. (private ownership)
The emerging painter Maria Caspar-Filser had first studied from 1896 to 1903
at the Stuttgart Academy under Friedrich von Keller and Gustav Igler. Early on
she turned to landscape painting and studied at the Munich Academy under the
Dachau landscape painter Ludwig von Herterich (1856 Ansbach – 1932 Dachau).
Starting from the 19 th-century landscape painters – including in particular the
Barbizon painters Camille Corot and Jean-François Millet – she was concerned
with an open-air painting that was distinctly her own (fig. 5). To Maria CasparFilser the French Impressionists’ observation of the object in light and portrayal of
light atmospheres were too closely dictated by external impression.
Whether an interior, a portrait or a still life, her work is founded on the
primacy of subjective experience. In this respect, her conception of landscape
moves beyond the objectifying painting of French Impressionism. Between 1900
and 1910 she therefore also familiarised herself with the Munich art nouveau
movement and its painting, which continues to show its effects in works such as
Snow Melt of 1909.
Two years earlier in 1907, the artist had already painted a landscape Spring in the
Swabian Uplands (fig. 6), which closely resembles our 1913 painting May Storm in
both colour and subject matter. Its narrow portrait format, the diagonally arranged composition, the tree forms with their moving trunks and spots of light on
the meadow still demonstrate Maria Caspar-Filser’s affinity with art nouveau
and Impressionism.
However, the artist was searching for compositional possibilities that would do
justice to the essence of landscape and equally express the »inner realm of reality« 8
of her own emotions. Cézanne’s language of colour, dissolving objects into colour
patterns, enabled her to convey to the viewer the imminent reality of the »May
Storm« – the light conditions of the grey sky and the wet weather. However, this
also enabled the painter to express her inner experience of this rain-swept spring
day: melancholy and awakening of spring. With this aspiration she attained her
powerful and expressive style, still owing to late Impressionism.
45
7 Cf. Exhibition catalogue Winter
exhibition of the Munich Secession
1913: Maria Caspar-Filser, Spring
Storm in Rome (lithograph), Paul
Cézanne 2nd painting on the
theme »Bathers«. See also Bettina
Best, Secession und Secessionen,
Munich 2000, exhibition list:
Maria Caspar-Filser exhibited
at the Munich Secession in 1906
and 1910–1913. Paul Cézanne’s
works were shown at the Munich
Secession in 1909, 1913 and 1914.
8 See Ehrenfried Kluckert, Von der
Kunst, den Alltag zu verwandeln.
1. Die Verwandlung der Natur, in:
exh. cat., Stuttgart 1986, p. 73
5 Maria Caspar-Filser, Swabian
Landscape – Laufen on the River Eyach,
1910. Oil / cnv. (private ownership)
9 Max Beckmann had moved to
Berlin in 1905 where he joined
the Berlin Secession from 1906
to1913. In 1906 he received the
Villa Romana prize, which came
with a study trip to Florence.
10 See Ehrenfried Kluckert,
Maria Caspar-Filser. Abstraktion
und Subjektivismus, in: exh.
cat. Albstadt, 1978, p. 16,
translated quotation
11 Exhibition catalogue Munich
Secession. International
art exhibition, 1911, p. 23,
no. 31, Spring exhibition
1912, p. 13, nos. 70 and 72
In 1913, abstraction and representationality were the two major conflicting
movements in painting. Maria Caspar-Filser chose the »third way« together with
some of her famous artist colleagues. These included the Expressionists Max
Beckmann 9 and Lovis Corinth (figs. 7 and 8). It was also Corinth who in 1916 as
head of the Berlin Secession arranged for Maria Caspar-Filser to be admitted to
the artists’ association there. In the face of the abstraction emerging in France and
in Germany – with Wassily Kandinsky in Munich or Adolf Hölzel and Christian
Landenberger in Stuttgart – the champion of individual style and the concept of
individualism adhered to a representationalism orientated to the real world that
makes the composition a mirror of the artist’s feelings, impressions and moods
towards the subject.
Without really engaging in French Impressionism, the painter after 1910 carved out a separate path at the beginning of the 20 th century together with the
German expressionists: »Whereas Mondrian or Kandinsky still referred directly
to Monet in their early works, Maria Caspar-Filser was already beginning to take
more interest in the consequence or quintessence of the Impressionist style: she
was closer to Cézanne, Gauguin and van Gogh, the great individualists, than to
Monet and Pissarro«. 10 Unlike the artist members of Die Brücke (founded in Dresden in 1905), active at the same time, she was at the time neither interested in
urban life nor in the French savages of the artists’ group the Fauves, whose influence only transpired into her work in the 1920s and ‘30s.
Filser’s love of her homeland found expression in her recurrent working holidays in the Upper Swabian region of her childhood. As well as landscape pictures,
she produced still lifes, nude portraits in the open air and scenes in her colouristic style. However, Maria Caspar-Filser is not a homeland painter. Although
she remained very closely bound to her own immediate realm of experience in
all her work, she achieved a visual language that is in no sense conventional,
naive or regionally limited.
The artist was fascinated by stormy atmospheres and spring landscapes, which
she composed many times in her work: in 1911 and 1912 she presented various
46
6 Maria Caspar-Filser,
Spring in the Swabian Uplands,
1907. Oil / cnv. (private ownership)
11
spring paintings with hilly landscapes at the Munich Secession. In 1913, the paintings Spring in the Swabian Uplands 12 and Stormy Atmosphere in May 13 were exhibited there, and in 1914 the painting May Storm5 was offered. One of the contemporaneous paintings Stormy Atmosphere in May and May Storm may have been
our painting 15. It is also possible that one of these pictures was acquired for the
Munich Secession’s own collection, which according to Schweers possessed a 1912
painting entitled May Storm since 1914. 16 In the following years, the painter exhibited with the Munich New Secession, founded in 1913. In 1930 the Neue Pinakothek
in Munich bought a painting by the artist entitled Storm in May, which she had
painted in 1929. 17
Like her fellow women painters Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876 Dresden – 1907
Worpswede), Gabriele Münter (1877 Berlin – 1962 Murnau) and Marianne von
Werefkin (1860 Tula / Russia – 1938 Ascona / Switzerland), she moved in prominent circles during an era which achieved major scientific breakthroughs – we
should mention especially Sigmund Freud and the latest discoveries in physics
about the atomic structure of the universe in this context. Maria Caspar-Filser
was a »painter feminist« with a self-assured mind of her own, charisma and great
talent and, like her colleagues, she conducted an artist’s marriage with Karl Caspar.
When she settled with Karl Caspar in Munich in 1909, Munich »shone«, as
Thomas Mann observed, as the most important cultural centre after Berlin and
Paris. It was there that the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (NKVM) was
founded, from which the Blaue Reiter movement of Wassily Kandinsky and
Franz Marc emerged slightly later in 1911. The avant-garde artists Alexej von
Jawlensky, Paul Klee and Alfred Kubin were among the young Caspar-Filsers’
circle of friends. In this lively artistic environment full of ideas and creative
drive, the woman artist energetically sought a pathway between Impressionism and Expressionism into the new artistic era of the 20th century: in 1909
47
7 Max Beckmann,
View of Lankwitz and Marienfelde,
1907. Oil / cnv. (Wallraf-RichartzMuseum, Cologne)
12 Probably identical with Maria
Caspar-Filser’s 1907 painting
Spring in the Swabian Uplands
(see fig. 7)
13 Spring exhibition of the
Munich Secession 1913,
cat. p. 12, No. 53 and 54
14 Spring exhibition of the Munich
Secession 1914, cat. p. 14, No. 72
(on sale for 800 German Marks)
15 The exhibition catalogue gives no
information about the dating, size
or appearance of the picture.
16 Hans F. Schweers, Gemälde in
Museen. Deutschland, Österreich,
Schweiz. Katalog der ausgestellten
und depotgelagerten Werke. Vol. 1
Künstler und ihre Werke A – Ha:
Maria Caspar Filser, Stuttgart 2008
17 Neue Staatsgalerie on Königsplatz,
Inventory no. 9626 (lost due to war)
8 Lovis Corinth, Inn Valley Landscape, 1910.
Oil / cnv. (Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin)
she joined the avant garde in the Deutscher Künstlerbund, in
whose exhibitions she regularly participated until its dissolution in 1936. She was the only female founding member of the
artists’ group Sema in 1911 and the Munich New Secession in 1913.
When the Deutscher Künstlerbund’s annual exhibition
took place in Mannheim in 1913, 18 the painter was represented with our painting May Storm among others at that
show, alongside the entire avant garde.19 A label attached to
the back of the picture attests the event to this day (fig. 9).
At that exhibition she featured with the artists of the Blauer
Reiter, the Munich New Secession, die Brücke and the Berlin
Secession, founded in 1899.
Maria Caspar-Filser belonged to a young elite of artists
convinced that a complete change of art forms was needed
to describe the scientific and industrialised age of the dawning 20 th century.
bb
References: Karl Caspar und Maria Caspar-Filser, exh. cat. Ulm town museum, with a preface by Julius Baum,
Augsburg (Dr. B. Filser) 1929 – Günther Wirth et al., Maria Caspar-Filser – Karl Caspar. Verfolgte Bilder,
Städt. Galerie Albstadt, 1993 – Maria Caspar-Filser 1878 – 1968, exh. cat. Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe, 1959 – 
Maria Caspar-Filser 1878 – 1968, exh. cat. 3, revised by Alfred Hagenlocher, Städt. Galerie Albstadt,
1978 – Günther Wirth, Kunst im deutschen Südwesten von 1945 bis zur Gegenwart, Stuttgart 1982 – Felicitas
E. M. Köster, Ehrenfried Kluckert, ed., Maria Caspar-Filser. 1878 – 1968, exh. cat. Landesgirokasse gallery
Stuttgart, 1986 (this lists all the earlier literature on the artist.) – Maria Caspar-Filser 1878 – 1968, exh. cat.
Kunsthaus Bühler, Stuttgart 2004
9 Label with Maria CasparFilser’s inscriptions for the Deutscher Künstlerbund exhibition in
Mannheim 1913. Attached with a
cord on the back to our painting
May Storm.
18 May 4th through
September 30th, 1913.
19 Cf. Kipplan, Stilleben,
Landschaft und Figurenbild auf
der Künstlerbundausstellung in
Mannheim 1913, in: Die christliche
Kunst, vol. 9, 1912 / 13, pp. 303 – 307
48
49
5
Lovis Corinth
(1858 Tapiau / East Prussia – 1925 Zandvoort)
Floral Still Life
with Lilacs, Calla Lilies and Tulips
1915. Oil on canvas; 62 x 50 cm (24.41 x 19.68 in)
Signed upper left: Lovis Corinth, dated upper right: 1915 1
P rovenan ce : Thannhauser Galleries, Berlin. Graphisches Kabinett, Bremen.
Private collection, Austria
A
1 The painting is listed in the catalog
raisonné by Charlotte BerendCorinth, Die Gemälde von Lovis
Corinth. Catalog raisonné with an
introduction by Konrad Röthel,
Munich 1958, p. 137 (B.-C. 647),
p. 207 (chronological list of paintings,
1915), ill. on p. 640. The work was
exhibited in »Lovis Corinth« at the
Von der Heydt Museum Wuppertal
in 1999 next to two other still-life
paintings with flowers: the 1920
Calla Lily and Lilac with Bronze
and the 1922 Lilac and Tulips)
(cat. no. 34 with color ill., p. 131).
2 Corinth apparently used several
thinner and wider flat-bristle
brushes for this painting. See also
Erhard Stöbe, Bemerkungen zur
Maltechnik von Lovis Corinth, in:
Agnes Husslein-Arco and Stephan
Koja, eds., Lovis Corinth. Ein
Fest der Malerei, Munich, Berlin,
London, New York 2009, p. 121 ff.
stunning bouquet of flowers held in a massive glass jug enchants the viewer
with its vibrant colours. The flowers, arranged in an irregular round, sprout
in all directions. The bouquet is painted in shades of warm red and cool violet,
has bright white or dark brown calyxes among yellow flowers and dense foliage
in every shade of green.
The arrangement radiates energy. This is not only due to the colours, but also
to the short brush strokes of the dynamic »wet-on-wet« painting technique.2 The
almost sensual proximity results from its suspenseful, non-perspectival spatiality:
The heavy, translucently shimmering glass jug is cut off by the lower edge of the
painting in such a way that its base on the table-top is not visible. The vaguely
indicated table is rendered in a slightly distorted perspective, and seems to fold
forward at the top. It blends into the grey-green and, towards the top, greyish yellow-brown background. A black book, with its fore edge in cold white to the right
of the vase and cut off by the right edge of the painting, almost seems to be floating in space and at the same time sets grey, black and white accents as a base line
for the composition. Lovis Corinth’s signature at the upper left of the painting
follows in loosely oscillating letters the top row of bright flowers.
Despite the colourful and seemingly arbitrary nature of the floral arrangement,
with brush strokes expanding to all sides, a compositional structure can be recognized. Similar to Dutch still-life painting of the Baroque, there exists a main axis
in the seemingly entangled flower arrangement: a vertical line to the right of the
centre starting with the calla lily at the top, descending past the bright red tulip,
and continuing to the lower edge of the painting. In the left half of the picture
there are more flowers than in the right, due to a gap in the arrangement there.
It is likely that the bouquet was picked in the month of May. High and low,
delicate and strong bushes, shrubs and bulbous plants are combined. Besides the
lilacs and calla lilies in the top row and the red tulips below, each noted in the title
of the painting, not all flowers can be determined botanically. Some of them are
50
1 Jan Davidsz de Heem,
Bunch of Flowers, c. 1650
(Tiroler Landesmuseum
Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck)
3 Lovis Corinth, Über das Stillleben,
loc. cit., p. 74: »The different types of
glass vases in the still life are also the
objects where the painter can best
showcase his skills. The effect of the
transparent and hard material can
only be rendered by blinking the eye.
Only then do you see certain cold or
golden shimmering lights, depending
on the reflection or content of
the glass, a few dark areas and the
blurred vision through the glass,
and yet it will appear as a tangible
glass vase when drawn correctly.«
4 Peter-Klaus Schuster, Painting
as a Passion: Corinth in Berlin, in:
Peter-Klaus Schuster, Christoph
Vitali and Barbara Butts, eds., Lovis
Corinth, exh. cat., Munich, Berlin,
Saint Louis, London 1996, pp. 54
5 De Heem’s painting in oil on canvas,
63.2 x 50 cm (24.88 x 19.68 in), is
held by the Tiroler Landesmuseum
Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck.
Cf. Claus Grimm, Stillleben,
Stuttgart 2001, no. 86, p. 142
6 For example: Cy Twombly,
Summer Madness, 1990, oil on canvas,
gouache, pencil and crayon on paper,
67.6 x 97.6 cm (26.61 x 38.42 in),
Museum Brandhorst, Munich.
Cf. Museum Brandhorst. Ausgewählte
Werke, ed. by Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich,
Berlin, London, New York
2009, p. 99
already in decay. Flowers in darker earthy
brown shades, among them perhaps tulips,
lilies or irises, show various stages of blossoming and wilting, painted in shades of
red and yellow. The two calla lilies at the
top and the white blossom with five petals
farther down, overlapping the rim of the
jug, form corresponding bright pools of
light. Thick impasto of lead white makes
the two calla calyxes shine, while applied
in dots it accentuates the blue and reddishviolet lilac panicles. But there are many
more white heightenings that not only cause
the sensation of clear, bright light, but also
2 Cy Twombly, Summer Madness, 1990
suggest a certain waxy quality of the blos(Museum Brandhorst, Munich)
soms. The painting seems to float between
the accurate representation of objects and
autonomous painting, between light and
dark, bloom and decay. It shows the highest intensity of colour and flow, but the
utmost delicateness ininof the bo thems – yet it also renders the hardness of the
translucent, rounded glass 3 and of the opaque, angular book.
Peter-Klaus Schuster characterized the act of creation in Corinth’s later
works with great precision: »Corinth sought to capture and to re-create nature
in all its variety, constructing and destroying just as nature herself does, and thus
in all things becoming a part of her. This, with and after Goethe, was Corinth’s
creed [...]. Corinth’s painting is in fact an equivalent of nature’s own creative
power. As Ludwig Justi observed, it is painting as natura naturans, and it thus
embodies two interrelated aspects. Firstly it involves the painterly materialization of everything in nature; as such, it functions as a hymn to creation and to
life. Secondly, it achieves the dematerialization and spiritualization of nature as
captured in painting and its absorption with the autonomy and unreality of the
pure art that Corinth described as his highest goal [...].«4
It therefore does not seem presumptuous to locate our still life with flowers
in the middle of a broadly conceived time line. On the one hand, it may be seen
as a late successor of the Dutch art that Corinth so greatly appreciated, as the
comparison with a work by Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606 Utrecht – 1684 Antwerp) shows. In De Heem’s 1650 painting of a Bunch of Flowers (fig. 1), the artist
renders the different life stages of the blossoms, the warm and cold colour contrasts with compositional finesse and fresh qualities of light and thus represents
the beauty of the bouquet as a symbolization of the entire human lifespan contr.5
The picture is a hymn to nature, to the devout admirer of her fame and beauty,
but also pays homage to the art of painting itself.
At the other end of the time line is Cy Twombly (1928 Lexington / Virginia – 2011 Rome). The American-born painter explicitly mentioned his admiration for Lovis Corinth. As a sensualist he re-created the fullness of life and its
closeness to death, so often seen in Corinth’s work, in his late 20th century paintings of flowers (fig. 2).6
52
Autonomous still-lifes were very rare
among Corinth’s early works, as he was initially more interested in history paintings
and portraits – genres, in which he was
very successful. From 1910 on though, the
artist ever more frequently painted stilllifes, which since then played a significant
role in his oeuvre.
There might be several reasons for this: his
work as a teacher at his School for Women
Painters; the inspiration by his wife Charlotte, who used flowers to stimulate him to
paint when he was depressed; and not least
the stroke he suffered in 1911 that severely
limited his physical mobility. »The energy
and the dynamics of this painting as natura
naturans could almost be said to have their
raison d’être in the consciousness of death.
After Corinth’s stroke in 1911, this conscious3 Lovis Corinth, Still Life with Yellow Tulips, Apples and Grapefruit, 1909
ness is present in his work in a quite elemen(Museum Folkwang, Essen)
7
tal fashion,« as Peter-Klaus Schuster puts it.
Corinth created the present painting,
Floral Still Life with Lilacs, Calla Lilies and Tulips, at the age of 57, when he was
at the height of his artistic career – after he had suffered a stroke, had come to
terms with the shocking news about World War I, and had weathered quarrels
within the art scene. In the same year, in 1915, he was re-elected president of
the Berlin Secession and organized their annual exhibition in a newly acquired
building on the Kurfürstendamm. He himself was represented in the exhibition
with a double-portrait, a biblical scene, and two still-lifes, that he had produced
shortly before and after our painting of flowers, in his studio in the Klopstock
straße in Berlin, before he left with his family for their summer vacation on 7 Peter-Klaus Schuster, loc. cit., p. 55
Lovis Corinth, exh. cat., Munich,
Lake Müritz.8 Looking back at the 1909 Still Life with Yellow Tulips, Apples 8See
Berlin 1996, p. 20 and B.-C. p. 137
9
and p. 207. The following still-life
and Grapefruit (fig. 3) the dark grounding in the style of the old masters is notipaintings were exhibited: Still Life
ceable right away, in spite of the lively flow. The composition is characterized by
with Fruit (B.-C. 644) and
Lilacs in a Glass Vase (B.-C. 648).
a calm and neat arrangement. The objects are rendered in a naturalistic way, the
The reference to the Klopstockstraße
colour nuances and relationships are well tempered. In contrast, our painting
can be found under the painting of
Calla Lilies, Roses and Chrysanthemums
made only six years later, seems to have broken all those rules with its new, non(B.-C. 645).
perspectival, flowing and stirring spatiality, as well as in its expressive colour
9 Still Life with Yellow Tulips, Apples
choice and brushwork, so detached from the objects. It testifies to other existenand Grapefruit, oil on canvas,
45.8 x 55.8 cm (18.03 x 21.65 in), 1909,
tial reefs, but also to different liberties.
Museum Folkwang, Essen, B.-C. 382;
Corinth consistently pursued those painterly liberties, as in his 1918 painting
cf. Bertuleit, loc. cit., p. 31
Red and Yellow Tulips (fig. 4).10 In decay the flowers are still sprouting »as though 10 Lovis Corinth, Red and Yellow Tulips,
1918, oil on canvas, 62 x 82 cm
driven by a vortex of motion into all directions, thereby generating dynamic space
(24.41 x 32.28 in), private ownership,
for themselves […]. In some places the style of painting seems informal, yet
B.-C. 742, cf. Lovis Corinth, exh.
cat., Munich, Berlin 1996, p. 240
accompanied by the dark rhythm of the oblique, hacked-off brush strokes.«11
11 Andrea Bärnreuther, in:
Lovis Corinth, exh. cat., Munich,
Berlin 1996, no. 126, p. 240
53
4 Lovis Corinth, Red and Yellow Tulips, 1918 (private ownership)
Corinth’s flower still-lifes seem almost acts of creation, where through the
means of painting he revitalizes nature. In his idiosyncratic and expressive style,
he created her metaphysical basis with light, darkness and colour.
agm
References: Lovis Corinth, Das Erlernen der Malerei, Berlin 1908 – Charlotte Berend-Corinth, Die Gemälde
von Lovis Corinth, Catalog raisonné with an introduction by Konrad Röthel, Munich 1958 – Peter-Klaus
Schuster, Christoph Vitali and Barbara Butts, eds., Lovis Corinth, exh. cat., Munich, Berlin, Saint Louis,
London 1999 – Lovis Corinth, exh. cat. Von der Heydt Museum Wuppertal, 1999 – Sigrid Bertuleit, Flora.
Blumenstücke und Stillleben von Lovis Corinth, Schweinfurt 2007 – Agnes Husslein-Arco and Stephan Koja,
eds., Lovis Corinth. Ein Fest der Malerei, Munich, Berlin, London, New York 2009
54
6
Johann Jakob Frey
(1813 Basel – 1865 Frascati)
Campagna Landscape
with Goatherd and Goats
View towards Pallazzola with Monte Cavo
1854. Oil on canvas, lined; 33.5 x 44.5 cm (13.19 x 17.52 in)
Signed and dated bottom left: Joh. Frey Roma 1854
P rovenan ce : Private ownership, Switzerland
T
he warm sunlight of a late afternoon pervades Frey’s Campagna Landscape
with Goatherd and Goats. In the half-shadow of the foreground a water-course
stretches obliquely from back left to front right; it carries little water in this dry
season and runs between exposed stones and rocky crags; the shallow water’s edge
is overgrown with isolated clumps of herbage and grasses. Earlier floods have
attacked the steep slopes of the banks, which are covered in places with drooping
plants, and some of the clay soil has been eroded. An uprooted tree, for instance,
has been washed up on the near bank. It lies upside down across a rock in the lower
left corner of the picture; its withered branches, hung with muddy grasses, are aligned towards the river-bed. Past this, from a slightly low viewpoint, the observer’s
gaze moves across the water cascading over a small ledge in its bed towards a group
of massive old oaks in the middle ground. Above the broken clay bank they rise
up off centre on the right in the light of the low sun, on high ground which rises
to the right where more oaks and bushes grow. Against the backdrop of a dense
oak wood the central group of trees, their spreading crowns unfolding before the
blue sky, extend almost to the upper edge of the picture. Out of these trees a path
leads along the sloping bank to the right. On this path walks a goatherd, framed
as if in a gateway between the sturdy trunks of the two front trees. He shoulders a
staff and drives his goats ahead in the bright light. The foremost goats have moved
a little further along the path to become again visible from behind a brilliantly-lit
clay bank broken off by the current. The group of trees has branches which extend
far to the left over and above the sloping bank. They are answered at the left edge
of the picture, above the rootstock of the flood-borne tree on the nearside bank in
front of the dense wood, by high-soaring and more distant oaks spreading their
branches towards the right. Thus, a vista emerges in the middle of the left half of
the picture, within the gap formed by the sloping banks with part of the wood
behind and with the branches of the oaks above, giving the illusion of almost
56
touching each other. In the blue distance, past dense woods and
buildings on spurs of rock, a huge mountain is discerned in the
background. Its broad pyramid shape is further emphasised by a
dense veil of mist across it, shining brightly in the late afternoon
light, and the towering cloud formations above it in the otherwise almost cloudless sky. The traditional title View towards Pallazzola with Monte Cavo of our picture, which Johann Jakob
Frey painted in Rome in 1854, refers to that very mountain in
the vista with the buildings at half height.
The landscape painter Johann Christian Reinhart (1761
Hof – 1847 Rome), then one of the central personalities of the
German artists’ colony in Rome and whom Frey also esteemed
1 Johann Christian Reinhart, Pallazzola, 1792,
highly, created a view of Pallazzola (fig. 1) 1 in 1792 as part of his
engraving from: Mahlerisch radirte Prospecte von Italien
Mahlerisch radirte Prospecte von Italien, reproducing its topogra(Kupferstichkabinett of the Kunsthalle Hamburg)
phy, seen from the south, with great accuracy, as evidenced by
modern photographs (comp. figs. 2 and 3).
The former Franciscan monastery of Pallazzola 2 had been built on the remains
of an ancient Roman villa. The long transverse quadrangle of buildings is situated on
the upper rim of the wooded and steeply sloping crater walls of Lake Albano – on its
eastern side, opposite the papal residence of Castel Gandolfo. Immediately behind
Pallazzola rises the broad volcanic cone of Monte Cavo, at 950 metres one of the
highest elevations of the Alban Hills. In ancient times it was dedicated to the god
Jupiter, and its striking conical form became »a kind of signature for this region«. 3
The region of the Alban Hills at the edge of the Roman Campagna south-east
2 Palazzola with Monte Cavo
of Rome was made accessible by the Appian Way which led south of Lake Albano
through Ariccia, and since ancient times had been the favourite summer resort of
upper-class Romans, who built their villas here in the pleasant mountain climate.
In the 16th century there was a revival of the villeggiatura 4 and since 17th-century
painters such as Adam Elsheimer, Annibale Carracci and especially Claude Lorrain
(1600 Chamagne – 1682 Rome), Nicolas Poussin (1594 Les Andelys – 1665 Rome)
or Poussin’s pupil and son-in-law Gaspard Dughet (Rome, 1613 – 1675) found the
Arcadian scenes of their ideal landscapes in this stretch of country rich in mythological and literary tradition, the region of the Alban Hills attracted not just cultural travellers on their Grand Tour but also countless painters, especially from the
nations on the other side of the Alps.
Since his Munich days Frey had already been in contact with Carl Rottmann
3 View from the southern edge (1797 Handschuhsheim – 1850 Munich). When, at 22, Frey first came to Rome in 1835
of Lake Albano to Palazzola
he took as his exemplar the landscape painting of the German-Romans around Reinwith Monte Cavo
hart, especially that of Reinhart’s pupil Johann Martin von Rohden (1778 Kassel – 1868
Rome). At the end of the 1830s Frey travelled from Naples through South Italy
and Sicily, and finally settled in Rome in 1843 5 after an expedition to Egypt, which
1 The engraving which is kept in
the Kupferstichkabinett of the
he had to break off after a year due to illness. As was common at that time, Frey
Hamburger Kunsthalle measures
again and again visited the environs of Rome together with his painter friends in
25.3 x 36 cm (9.96 x 14.17 in).
Cf. Herbert W. Rott, et al., eds.,
order to prepare landscape studies and sketches on site. In Reinhart’s Pallazzola
Johann Christian Reinhart. Ein
engraving, by the way, two painters can be seen in the shade of the trees on the
deutscher Landschaftsmaler in Rom,
exh. cat. Hamburger Kunsthalle,
right, aligned towards Palazzola and Monte Cavo as they work. The studies and
Neue Pinakothek Munich, Munich
2012, cat. no. 129, p. 375, ill. p. 233
sketches from nature thus produced were later used for studio paintings.
58
4 Johann Jakob Frey,
Wooded Hilly Landscape with Stream,
1834, oil / paper on canvas
If we now compare Frey’s depiction of Pallazzola and Monte Cavo with
Reinhart’s view and modern photographs (fig. 1–3), it becomes clear that Frey
used ravines to divide the buildings of Pallazzola, set on rocky spurs apart from
the wooded zone, and also depicted Monte Cavo as very rugged rather than in its
domed shape. However, it is evident that Frey is nevertheless alluding to Pallazzola and Monte Cavo: closer inspection of where the river-course originates and
of where its water falls at two places over a barrier-like cascade shows a body of
water identifiable as a fine light blue line interrupted by rocks. The surface of this
stretch of water must be quite considerable, because its reflected light casts a blue
sheen from below on the zone of trees behind. Frey thus evokes the impression
of a lake which is surrounded, like Lake Albano, by steep walls of wooded banks.
Towards the viewer the steep bank is interrupted, so that the lake has its outlet
here. In reality, the crater edge of Lake Albano is interrupted nowhere and the
lake has no natural outlet, not even in the south. This means that Frey designed
the fore- and middle ground according to his own ideas, as so often in his pictures,
and that his only reference to a specific topography is the view towards the background, even though very freely interpreted in this case. 6
For painting the river-course Frey might have used plein air sketches, similar to
his youthful oil sketch, albeit very broadly executed, of a Wooded Hilly Landscape with
Stream of 1834 (fig. 4). 7 There might also have been studies for the central group of
trees, the Tree Study (near Massa) of 1838 for example, with comparable oak-like trees
seen from a slightly low viewpoint on a slope breaking off to a path (fig. 5). 8
With regard to the motifs, Frey’s depiction is based on important works from
Reinhart’s heroically ideal landscape painting. The Group of Trees with Cows at the
Trough of 1836, which Ludwig I acquired is foremost to be mentioned (fig. 6). 9
Here one can find motifs which Frey – varying the forms – also used. This principally applies to the central group of trees, which Reinhart has designed as a broad
developed row, each of the individual trees being highly differentiated according
to type, growth and colouring of the leaves. Frey also gave each of the oaks in
the central group its own colouring, the foliage of the right-hand tree being yellowish-, that of the left-hand tree bluish-green, and that of the tree looking out
from behind on the left reddish. Out of Reinhart’s group of trees also a path leads
obliquely to the right; on it a cowherd drives his animals ahead of him. The foremost of the cows has reached the water-course flowing on the left of the picture,
59
5 Johann Jakob Frey, Tree Study
(near Massa), 1838, pencil and Indian
ink (pen and brush) on paper
(Kunstmuseum, St. Gallen)
2 On the history of Pallazzola, modern
Palazzola, see: www.palazzola.it
3 Sybille Greisinger, Die Albaner Berge,
in: Frank Büttner, Herbert W. Rott, eds.,
Kennst du das Land. Italienbilder der
Goethezeit, exh. cat. Neue Pinakothek
Munich, Munich 2005, p. 160
4 On this, see the topographical map
of the Castelli Romani of 1692 with
Lake Albano, Palazzola and Monte
Cavo, in: Sybille Greisinger,
Die Albaner Berge, in: Frank Büttner,
et.al., loc. cit., Munich 2005, ill. 1, p. 158
5 For the biography of Frey, cf.
Thieme / Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon
der Bildenden Künstler von der Antike
bis zur Gegenwart, study ed., Leipzig 1999,
vol. 11 / 12, p. 439 f.; Das Portrait als Bildnis
und als Landschaft. Zum Individuellen in
der Künstlerischen Darstellung, exh. cat.
Galerie Dr. Schenk, Zürich 1988, p. 195 f.;
Rolf Schenk, Schweizer Malerei. 70
Gemälde vom 18. bis 20. Jahrhundert,
exh. cat., Zürich / Zuoz 1991, p. 34;
Mark Fehlmann, Lexikon zur Kunst in
der Schweiz, Schweiz. Institut für
Kunstwissenschaft, Zürich 1998,
in: www.sikart.ch / Frey
6 Worth mentioning here are such pictures
as Italian Mountain Landscape between
Subiaco and Tivoli, after 1845; and View
across Massa Lubrense towards Capri, 1862,
both in: Rolf Schenk, loc. cit., Zürich
1988, cat. no. 35, p. 199 f. and cat. no. 34,
p. 197 f.; or View towards Lake Nemi and
Monte Circeo, c.1850, cf. Schweizer Malerei,
loc. cit., Zürich 1991, cat. no. 18, p. 36
6 Johann Christian Reinhart, Group of Trees with Cows at the Trough,
1836, oil / cnv. (Neue Pinakothek, Munich)
7 The depiction, signed and dated
1834 in oil on paper, later drawn
on to canvas, measures 46 x 60 cm
(18.11 x 23.62 in), its location is
not given, cf. www.sikart.ch
8 The study, created in 1838 south of
Sorrento, was executed in pencil
and Indian ink (pen and brush) on
paper and measures 33.8 x 43.2 cm
(33.8 x 17.01 in). It is in the
Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, cf.
Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Katalog
der Sammlung, St. Gallen 1987, p. 9
9 This painting, 70.5 x 98 cm
(27.76 x 38.58 in) in size and
painted in oil on canvas, is in
the Neue Pinakothek Munich.
Cf. Herbert W. Rott, loc. cit.,
Munich 2012, cat. no. 212, p. 309, ill.
10 The picture in oil on canvas, which
King Ludwig I also acquired and
which is in the Neue Pinakothek
Munich, measures 46 x 59.8 cm
(18.11 x 23.54 in). Cf. Herbert
W. Rott, loc. cit., Munich 2012,
cat. no. 207, p. 302, ill. p. 303
11 The pen drawing in brown
with Indian ink and sepia with
grey and brown wash measures
16.7 x 23.6 cm (6.57 x 9.29 in) and
is in the Kupferstichkabinett of
the Kunsthalle Hamburg. Cf.
Herbert W. Rott, loc. cit., Munich
2012, cat. no. 208, p. 302, ill. p. 304
7 Johann Christian Reinhart, Ideal Landscape with Goatherd
and Goats, 1824, oil / cnv. (Neue Pinakothek, Munich)
towards the viewer, and on its bank, as with Frey, an uprooted tree in the left lower
corner of the picture lies across the rocks towards the water.
There are further points of comparison in Reinhart’s Ideal Landscape with
Goatherd and Goats of 1823 (fig. 7). 10 It is dominated in the centre of the foreground
by a river flowing over a waterfall through rocky terrain; on the right bank there
lies an uprooted dying tree and on the left a goatherd with his goats is moving
downstream along a path. The trees standing on elevations on the left and on the
right in the middle ground, their branches aligned into the picture, frame the view
of mountains rising in the distance beside an ancient farmstead. The comparability with Frey’s depiction becomes even clearer in the laterally-reversed version of
the above picture, Ideal Landscape with Goatherd and Goats, which Reinhart executed later, in 1836, as a pen-and-wash drawing (fig. 8). 11 With a narrower watercourse in the foreground, the uprooted tree now lies on the left, and on the right
the goatherd, shouldering his staff very much as in Frey’s picture, drives his goats
ahead of him on the path on the bank. However, the decisive feature is that in the
view towards the background the framing trees now enclose a dominant mountain
whose significant conical shape is reminiscent of Monte Cavo.
But unlike Reinhart’s ideal landscapes extending wide and deep, well-considered
and imbued with a Poussin-like sense of order, Frey’s Campagna Landscape with
Goatherd and Goats is less idealised and gives the impression of a piece of randomlyencountered nature. Also, here Frey shows no buildings which suggest the ancient
past, or herdsmen in antique garb, but presents the goatherd in contemporary dress,
with a hat and red waistcoat, and even the view of Pallazzola and Monte Cavo is
reduced to the minimum needed for recognition of the historic site.
The impression thus given of a fairly natural landscape is also connected with
the choice of the viewer’s standpoint. Whereas with Reinhart the observer looks
down at the foreground from above and from some distance, with Frey’s lower
viewpoint the observer is much closer to the ground with its stones and plants
and gazes from below up to the rising landscape in the middle ground. Frey also
60
8 Johann Christian Reinhart, Ideal Landscape with Goatherd and
Goats, 1836, pen in brown, Indian ink, sepia, grey and brown wash
(Kupferstichkabinett, Kunsthalle Hamburg)
9 Gaspard Dughet, Landscape with a Shepherd and his Flock,
c. 1670, oil / cnv. (National Gallery, London)
creates a distance from the objects in the middle ground by means of the shadowed, slanted water-course which the viewer first encounters, but he does this in
a much more mellowed way than Carl Rottmann in the generally very deep and
often totally inaccessible foregrounds of his landscapes.
Frey’s treatment of light and colour plays a decisive role in his pictorial
modelling. In contrast to Reinhart’s muted classicistic colouring, which sometimes strives for a unifying fresco-like quality, Frey deploys colours in their local
tones, as pure as possible, glowing with colourful intensity and applied in the
minute attention to fine detail which is typical of him. This two-dimensional
character of the detailed forms points to future developments, whereas he creates
spatial values principally by staggering individual parts and the pictorial planes,
as well as through light and colouring.
Thus, on the one hand in the light entering obliquely from the left Monte
Cavo glows intense pale blue, on the other hand the broken clay ground below the
central group of oaks in strong orange tones. Between these two complementary
poles, which also emphasise the two main moments of the picture, the yellowishto bluish-green of the vegetation occupies the centre, supplemented by its complementary red contained in the brown of the tree-trunks and stones, but in its pure
quality only accentuates the goatherd.
The correlating colours orange and blue also indicate formal relationships within
the composition, the »tree gate« with the path leading obliquely to the right paraphrasing the framed vista with the water-course flowing parallel to the path. This
basic compositional scheme of oblique directional lines and framework forms, points
beyond Reinhart to more dynamic landscape compositions assimilating views of the
Campagna around the Alban Hills such as Gaspard Dughet’s Landscape with a Shepherd and his Flock, from around 1670, in which Dughet possibly depicted the conical
shape of Monte Cavo in the tree-framed vista (fig. 9). 12 This underlying compositional scheme, of which Frey was especially fond, with oblique directional lines
pointing to a specific view in the distance, is the basis of several of his landscapes. 13
61
12Dughet’s Landscape with a Shepherd and
his Flock, about 1670, oil / cnv., 48.3 x 66 cm
(19.02 x 25.98 in), in the National
Gallery London, once bore the title
Landscape in the Roman Campagna
(near Albano?), probably alluding to
its vista of Monte Cavo. Cf. MarieNicole Boisclair, Gaspard Dughet: sa
vie et son œuvre, Paris 1986, p. 276 f.
13 See, for instance: Cowherds by the River
before a Broad Landscape, 1857, oil / cnv.,
90 x 122 cm (35.43 x 48.03 in), 28.3.11 at
Koller Zürich, lot 3206; Tschirtschenti
at Sicily, 1862, oil / cnv., 70 x 101 cm
(27.56 x 39.76 in), 9.11.07 at Dobiaschofsky
Bern, lot 370; or Italian Mountain
Landscape between Subiaco and Tivoli,
after 1845, oil / cnv., 74 x 99 cm
(29.13 x 38.98 in), in: Rolf Schenk, loc.
cit., Zürich 1988, cat. no. 35, p. 199
The recourse to traditional motifs and mode of composition also keeps alive
familiar interpretative patterns in Frey’s Campagna Landscape with Goatherd and
Goats. Thus, the goatherd with his flock may be understood as a pastoral Arcadian
motif, or the dead tree as a memento mori, just as the water-course has always
been a symbol of vanity, indicating transience. And whereas the group of trees and
Monte Cavo, depicted from a low viewpoint, emanates a certain sublimity, Frey
successfully uses the distance given by the water-course to create a glimpse of a
landscape of his own time, in which nature itself is transient. With the erosion by
the water, which has already fissured the slopes of the cloud-covered Monte Cavo
and which not even the mighty oaks in the centre of the picture can withstand, the
roots of the nearest tree already exposed, Frey shows not only a landscape of Arcadian mood in atmospheric light but also the transience of its majesty and beauty.
gf
References: Herbert W. Rott, et al., eds., Johann Christian Reinhart. Ein deutscher Landschaftsmaler in Rom, exh.
cat. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Neue Pinakothek Munich, Munich 2012 – www.palazzola.it – Sybille Greisinger,
Die Albaner Berge, in: Frank Büttner, Herbert W. Rott eds., Kennst du das Land. Italienbilder der Goethezeit, exh.
cat. Neue Pinakothek Munich, Munich 2005 – Thieme / Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler von
der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, study ed., Leipzig 1999, vol. 11 / 12 – Das Portrait als Bildnis und als Landschaft.
Zum Individuellen in der Künstlerischen Darstellung, exh. cat. Galerie Dr. Schenk, Zürich 1988 – Rolf Schenk,
Schweizer Malerei. 70 Gemälde vom 18. bis 20. Jahrhundert, exh. cat., Zürich / Zuoz 1991 – Mark Fehlmann,
Lexikon zur Kunst in der Schweiz, Schweizerisches Institut für Kunstwissenschaft, Zürich 1998, in: www.sikart.
ch / Frey  –  Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Katalog der Sammlung, St. Gallen 1987 – Marie-Nicole Boisclair, Gaspard
Dughet: sa vie et son œuvre, Paris 1986
62
63
7
Wilhelm Gail
(1804 Munich – 1890 Munich)
Ruined Church
with Hunters Resting, near Valencia
1835. Oil on canvas; 60 x 50 cm (23.62 x 19.69 in)
Signed bottom right and dated: Wilh. Gail. 1835
P rovenan ce : Private collection, South Germany
T
he painting Ruined Church with Hunters Resting, near Valencia is a typical product of the emerging passion for travel around the middle of the 19th century.
Dated 1835, it was created two years after Wilhelm Gail’s last trip to Spain. In 1832
and 1833 the painter explored Castile, the Mediterranean coast and the landscapes
of Andalusia for 16 months – alone and without a patron’s commission. He processed his impressions into remarkable vedute. Due to the awareness gained from
his architectural studies, he preferably displayed Moorish and Gothic buildings,
such as the Alhambra, a sanctuary in the mosque at Cordoba, or the ruins of the
monastery of San Juan de los Reyes at Toledo.
Exoticism and folk tradition combine in the painting Ruined Church with Hunters Resting, near Valencia. With their tall hats and bolero-like embroidered jackets
over tight-fitting knee-breeches the bold companions rest in the shade of a ruined church. Just back from the hunt, they still have their weapons in their hands.
Wilhelm Gail shows them in the typical costumes of Valencia. Each brings a different trophy: a dead hare is hanging from the saddle of one mule, from the saddle
of the other a heron, while the third hunter is sitting in the sunshine examining
his catch of birds. The beautifully decorated harnesses of the animals glow red in
the sunlight. Their tassels and halters have the charm of folk tradition. Accompanied by two hunting dogs, the gesticulating hunters are probably debating the
progress of their hunting expedition or the success of their hunt.. While the sun
is already burning down on the coast, coolness is provided by the water splashing merrily from a little fountain in the shade of the ruins. An agave grows on
the shady and damp masonry, its blossoms reaching towards the brilliant blue sky.
Beyond it a pilgrims’ cross set on a high rock soars majestically upwards. An idyll
of small plants sprouts from the fallen masonry of the ruined church of apparently
Cistercian design. Its huge pointed arch triumphantly frames the pilgrims’ cross
and opens, window-like, the vista towards the deep-blue sea, on which a sailing
boat is gliding. In the background the long sandy beaches of the Albufera lagoon
extend southwards to the nearby range of the Gata de Gorgos hills. The narrow
64
1 Fritz Bamberger, Albufera, 1857
(Kunstsalon Franke-Schenk, Munich)
1 On this, see in particular the section
on Wilhelm Gail in: Anja Gebauer,
Spanien – Reiseland deutscher Maler,
Petersberg 2000, pp. 36 – 72
2 Martinus Rørbye, Wayside Cross near Palermo, 1840
(Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen)
sandy coast divides Lake Albufera, just a few kilometres south of Valencia, from
the Mediterranean Sea.
According to Anja Gebauer, Gail’s renderings of his impressions gained from
his travels in Spain mark the beginning of the true discovery of the Iberian peninsula by German artists. 1
Some decades later the Munich painter Fritz Bamberger (1814 Würzburg – 1873
Neuenhain), in his watercolour Albufera, depicted the plain with its shallow freshwater lake, looking from south to north (fig. 1). It is hard to say what might have
moved Wilhelm Gail to take precisely this pilgrims’ resting place as his theme.
From his journeys to Italy, France and Spain between 1825 and 1833 he brought
back his entire spectrum of themes for his later pictures. Perhaps Wilhelm Gail was
thinking of what he had seen near the ruined Cistercian abbey of Santa Maria de
la Valldigna when painting this picture. The monastery, situated between Valencia
and Gandia, is only a few kilometres behind the coast on the pilgrims’ route to
Valencia’s monasteries. Its architecture – like that of so many Christian buildings
of the 14th to the 16th centuries – bears the stamp of the Mudéjar style, reminiscent
of the Orient, and as such it certainly aroused the enthusiasm of the architectural
painter Wilhelm Gail. We know that he composed his pictures – according to
the customs of the time – on his return to his Munich studio as landscape capriccios. Combining real impressions, staffage taken from folk tradition and vistas
of Mediterranean landscapes, they make ideal views full of beauty and Spanish
exoticism. Picturesque pilgrims’ crosses were popular motifs in contemporary 19th
century painting and were not only found in Spain. In Italy also tall monuments
marked the roads and gave their typical imprint to the Mediterranean landscape.
The Norwegian painter Martinus Rørbye (1803 Drammen – 1848 Copenhagen),
for instance, also shows a »wayside cross« together with a blossoming agave by the
sea in a southern scene near Palermo (fig. 2).
Unlike Martinus Rørbye, Wilhelm Gail arranges the view of the landscape as a
vista. In the background of the ruined church, whose shady coolness fills the front
66
space of the picture, the light panorama of
the landscape leads the observer into the distance – a picture within a picture. Just like in
the painting Painter and Monk before an Ideal
Landscape by an unknown painter, around
1830 (fig. 3), there is a contrast between the
concept of cyclical renewal of nature and a
culture lost beyond recall.
The romanticism of ruins in the 1st half
of the 19th century conjured up a past whose
greatness had succumbed to transience and
decay. The inscription on the vault in our painting mentions the royal couple Don Fernando of Aragon and Donna Isabella Queen
of Spain: »y muihrelenkes reyes don Fernando y Donna Isabel rey«. During their reign,
in an unprecedented triumphal Catholic
campaign, the Moors and Jews were expelled
from the Iberian peninsula in 1492. Pope
Alexander VI awarded the royal couple the
title of »reyes católicos« (Catholic kings) in
1494 for their services to the Catholic church.
Perhaps the decaying beauty of the Mujédar
architecture reminded Wilhelm Gail – born
in Catholic Bavaria – not just of Spain but
also of his homeland’s sacred edifices, depopulated and decaying in the wake of their secularisation.
The one-year stay in Spain from 1832 to 1833 was Wilhelm Gail’s last journey. The
resulting paintings present a narrative of a Mediterranean Arcadia for a public dreaming of the atmosphere of distant lands. The attempt to recapture aesthetically what
had been lost in reality determined the painter’s travel pictures as did the constant
sense of separation from Nature, so characteristic of the works by Caspar David Friedrich (1774 Greifswald – 1840 Dresden) or the poems by Joseph von Eichendorff (1788
Schloss Lubowitz – 1857 Neisse). Gail’s melancholic gaze is turned to architecture
for evidence of past greatness and is searching Spain’s beautiful landscape for a life in
harmony with Nature untouched, which he believed he could find on his journeys.
Exotic countries have come to symbolize make-believe lands of true life and profound
existence. As in the Ruined Monastery in the Campagna near Valencia of 1838 Wilhelm Gail projects this as a world which conjures up the glorious days of yore (fig. 4).
The transience of great cultures, their achievements now obsolete, is contrasted by
the timelessness of Nature and the permanence of the peasant way of life, whose
simple beauty, unchanged for centuries, endures in the shade and protection of the
ruins. It is therefore not surprising that Gail’s rural romanticism turned some decades later towards the care and preservation of the native customs of his own country. 2
From the mid-1830s the artist, by then settled in Munich, took the themes
for his pictures from his store of travel memories. In 1837 Wilhelm Gail published the impressions of his travels with diary entries in the Erinnerungen aus
67
3 Unknown artist Painter and
Monk Before an Ideal Landscape,
around 1830 (private ownership)
2 Friedrich Wilhelm Gail,
Grundlegung der Dorfforschung und
der Pflege des dorfeigenen Volkstums,
Original 2nd half of 19th century.
Spanien [Recollections from Spain] and made
his oil paintings and drawings generally accessible in the form of engravings and lithographs to a public avid for culture.3 In the
following fifty years ever-new Italian and Spanish views appeared, extremely popular variants of, the sketches he had brought back with
him. His pictures of Spain caused a great surge
in journeys by artists, art-lovers, scholars and
architects. The Neue Pinakothek in Munich,
the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin and many
museums and princely houses acquired his
light and precisely-drawn vedute and views of
historic buildings.
The great success of his paintings earned
the artist the office of General Plenipotentiary
and Counsel to the Cabinet for the Bavarian
Duke Nikolaus von Leuchtenberg in 1854.
Whether the Doge’s Palace, the Church of San
Lazzaro in Venice (both in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich) or the Cloisters at Viterbo
(Kunsthalle Karlsruhe) – his masterly paintings are even today part of the collective
memory of 19th century travel pictures. bb
4 Wilhelm Gail, Monastery Ruins in the Campagna near Valencia, 1838
(private ownership)
References: Anja Gebauer, Wilhelm Gail (1804 – München – 1890), Galerie Siegfried Billesberger, Moosinning
1998 – Hyacinth Holland, Gail, Wilhelm, in: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB), vol. 49, Leipzig 1904,
pp. 237 – 239. This also includes the comprehensive older literature – Margarete Meggle-Freund, Das romantische
Spanienbild und die Entdeckung Spaniens als Reiseland der Deutschen im 19. Jahrhundert, in: Viva Espana! Von
der Alhambra bis zum Ballermann: deutsche Reisen nach Spanien, exh. cat., Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe
2007, pp. 53 – 58
3 Wilhelm Gail, Erinnerungen aus
Spanien. Nach der Natur und auf
Stein gezeichnete Skizzen aus dem
Leben in den Provinzen Catalonien,
Valencia, Andalusien, Granada und
Castilien, mit Fragmenten maurischer
und altspanischer Architectur und
Veduten; nebst erläuternden Auszügen
aus dem Tagebuche des Wilhelm Gail,
Verlag Literarisch-Artistische
Anstalt (printers), place of
printing not stated, 1836
68
8
Karl Girardet
(1813 Le Locle – 1871 Paris)
The Kinn Bridge
at Stalden in the Visp Valley
Probably c. 1858 / 60. Oil on zinc plate; 27.5 x 21.9 cm (10.83 x 8.62 in)
Inscribed verso: Vallée de Zermatt Stalden Girardet
G
1 For a good iconographic overview
of the Alpine landscape see:
Bettina Hausler, Der Berg. Schrecken
und Faszination, Munich 2008
2 Cf. genealogy in:
Thieme-Becker (1921), vol. 14,
p. 163 and exh. cat. Le Locle, 1948
irardet’s small landscape picture is a charming memento from the Swiss canton of Wallis and at the same time an early testimony of the expansion of
tourism. By the 16th century artists were already being inspired by mountain panoramas – we only need to remember Albrecht Dürer (Nuremberg, 1471 – 1528) on
his journey to Venice or Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1525 / 30 Breda – 1569 Brussels)
on his return from Italy to Antwerp via the St. Gotthard Pass – or read Goethe’s
journal entries during his Swiss travels at the end of the 18th century, which finally
ennobled the alpine world.
While enthusiasm for the Swiss Alps was initially reserved to artists and was
then mainly a quirk of the English aristocracy, travel and recreation in the mountains soon became mass phenomena benefitting Switzerland to this day. During
the 19th century, the Alpine roads and bridges were paved for stage coaches and
gradually the region was also developed by the railway. That was lucrative not only
for hoteliers, who had hotels built in the remotest sites of the alpine world, but
also for painters, who in some cases even specialised in mountain themes (Geneva
School) and thus found a market, such as the Girardets. 1
This fine miniature was painted, as shown by the inscription on the back, by
a member of the Swiss family of artists, the Girardets. Living in Le Locle in
the canton of Neuchâtel they initially were book publishers, but then produced a
series of talented and successful genre and landscape painters and especially copperplate engravers, etchers, lithographers and illustrators. 2 Karl Girardet was the
son of Charles-Samuel (1780 – 1863) and had two younger brothers, Édouard and
Paul, who concentrated more on graphic design. After his training in Paris with
Léon Cogniet (Paris, 1794 – 1880), a romantic history painter, Karl Girardet lived
mainly in France from 1822 on. He produced landscape and genre paintings as well
as book illustrations, such as La Fontaine’s fables. He undertook many journeys
throughout Europe, even to North Africa, which is attested by a series of pictures
with oriental scenes. He regularly supplied works to the Paris Salon and in 1861 he
won a prize with a woodcut.
70
1 Bridge at Stalden in the
Visp Valley
3 See e.g. Karl Girardet, Excursion to
Lake Brienz with View of the Hasli
Mountains, 1850 / 60, oil / cnv., 55
x 93 cm (21.65 x 36.61 in), signed
lower left: KARL GIRARDET,
private ownership Switzerland
4 William Turner, The Devil’s
Bridge at St. Gotthard Pass, 1804,
oil / cnv., Kunsthaus Zurich
2 Karl Girardet, Excursion to Lake Brienz with
View of the Hasli Mountains, 1850 / 60
(private ownership, Switzerland)
Karl Girardet has rightly been suggested as the painter of this picture on stylistic grounds, but above all because of his journeys through the Wallis canton from
1858 to 1860. These travels are well-known to have borne fruit in his illustrations
for travel guides such as Un Tour en Suisse (1866). They were even put to use after
his death in illustrated books such as La Suisse pittoresque (1880). As is noted on
the back, the present picture portrays the Valley of Zermatt, the Kinnbrücke, to
be exact, a bridge built in 1544 still existing today near the small town of Stalden
in the Visp Valley (fig. 1).
The nature of the portrayal also argues in Girardet’s favour. If someone was
seeking motifs in the Visp Valley, why not choose the most imposing of them all,
the Matterhorn? Yet Karl Girardet specifically favoured not the majestic peaks but
rather an architectonic highlight in otherwise unspoilt nature: either a ruin viewed from below, a lovely lake landscape 3 (fig. 2), or a vertiginous bridge such as the
Kinnbrücke, one of the oldest civil engineering achievements of its kind in Switzerland, facilitating the journey into the Matter Valley towards Zermatt.
Admittedly, the use of a zinc plate is rather unusual, but such a painting support
could be readily obtained by an artist who was also greatly occupied with etchings.
Metal plates were already in common use in the North and in the South during the
16th and 17th centuries among miniature painters (Vasari, Elsheimer and others);
they had a perfectly smooth surface, were very stable, thin and thus easily transported.
Bridges have often been portrayed in the history of art. They are portrayed with
particular significance in the age of Romanticism. From impressions of his Swiss
journey through the Schöllenen Gorge below the St. Gotthard Pass William Turner
(London, 1775 – 1851) painted the impressive old Devil’s Bridge 4 in 1804 – very similar
to the Kinnbrücke in appearance (fig. 3) – a highly dramatic picture with steeply forbidding cliffs, the thundering cascades of the River Reuß and low-hanging clouds:
dangerous walking on a bridge without railings. The building of the new Devil’s
Bridge, painted in 1830 by Carl Blechen (1798 Cottbus – 1840 Berlin) (fig. 4), enhances the uncanniness of the place, which legends connected with the devil.
How much more innocuously and picturesquely Girardet presented the equally
splendid Kinnbrücke! The steeply descending side of the bridge surrounded by
vegetation looks impressive rather than dangerous, while the landscape in the
background, where the Matterhorn is hidden in clouds, is almost charming.
On the bridge, shown from a high viewpoint rather than from the side, a painter
72
3 William Turner, The Devil’s Bridge at St. Gotthard Pass, 1804
(Kunsthaus Zurich) (left)
4 Carl Blechen, Building the Devil’s Bridge, c. 1830
(Neue Pinakothek, Munich) (above)
with a large folder under his arm is returning from his search for motifs in the
Matter Valley. He is accompanied by two women riding behind him on donkeys,
while on the bridge two local villagers are resting as the painter heads towards
them – perhaps to enjoy the view from the bridge down to the torrents of the
Vispa River.
A viewing point is being emphasised here and Stalden with its old stone bridge
is being commended as a point of interest for travellers.
fb
References: Patrice Allanfranchini, Karl Girardet (1813 – 1871), in: Biographies neuchâteloises, vol. II, Hauterive
1998, pp. 13 – 18 – Thieme/Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler, study ed., Leipzig 1999, vol. 13/14 – 
Auguste Bachelin, Karl Girardet, Bern 1883 – René Burnand, Les Girardets au Le Locle et dans le monde, Neuchâtel
1957 – Les Girardet. Trois génerations d’artistes neuchâtelois, XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, exh. cat. Musée des beaux-arts,
Le Locle 1948
73
9
Jakob Philipp Hackert
(1737 Prenzlau – 1807 Florence)
View of the Copper Mill
at Vietri sul Mare
1773. Oil on canvas; 63.5 x 87.2 cm (25 x 34.33 in)
Signed on the water trough in front of the building: J. Philippe Hackert, f. 1773
P rovenan ce : American private collection.
Since 1982 private collection Southern Germany 1
T
he landscape painter Jakob Philipp Hackert had received his elementary training in Berlin (1753 – 1762). After a period in Stralsund and on the
island of Rügen (1762 – 1765) he moved to Paris, where he worked with steadily
growing success for the next three years. In the summer of 1768, he then
embarked on a journey to Italy, arriving in Rome in December of that year.
Here he quickly progressed to become the most famous landscape painter not
only in the Eternal City but in the whole of Europe; he associated with monarchs such as Catherine the Great and Joseph II of Austria, sold his works to
aristocratic visitors to Rome from all over the world and was also graciously
received by Pius VI. In 1786 he finally entered the service of the Bourbon King
Ferdinand IV of Naples as the first court painter, where he expected to end his
days in a respected position. However, the events of the Revolution and the
French occupation of Naples forced the artist to flee in 1799. He settled in Florence and in 1804 he acquired a small country estate in Careggi near Florence,
where he died on 27 April 1807.
1 Vom Manierismus bis in die
Goethezeit. Bilder und Zeichnungen,
exh. cat. Galerie Arnoldi-Livie,
Munich, Spring 1982, no. 10
2 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
Werke, vol. 46 (Winckelmann / Philipp
Hackert), Weimar 1891, p. 129
Hackert began to explore the environs of the city immediately after his arrival in Rome in the winter of 1768; he spent most of the year 1769 on walking
tours in the Alban and Tiburtin hills, capturing these regions in drawings. In
the spring of 1770 a journey to Naples followed, where the artist succumbed to
a fever: Goethe reports in his biography of Hackert that he was sent after his
recovery on the doctor’s advice »to Vietri and Lacava for a change of air that is
beneficial to every convalescent«. 2
The small fishing village of Vietri sul Mare lies south of Naples, at an altitude of 80 metres above the Gulf of Salerno, near Amalfi, whereas Cava dei
Tirreni (called »la Cava« by Goethe) is situated slightly further inland amid
a mountainous landscape. The Amalfi coast, now one of Italy’s most popular
travel destinations, was touristically still completely undeveloped in the early
74
2 Jakob Philipp Hackert,
Copper Mill at Vietri, 1770
(Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden)
1 Iron foundry (ferriera) at
Vietri sul Mare
3 Full quote in: Lucio Fino,
La costa d’Amalfi e il golfo di
Salerno, Naples 1995, p. 13
4 Quoted in the catalogue edited
by Norbert Miller and Claudia
Nordhoff: Lehrreiche Nähe. Goethe
und Hackert. Bestandsverzeichnis
der Gemälde und Graphik Jakob
Philipp Hackerts in den Sammlungen
des Goethe-Nationalmuseums
Weimar, with contributions by
Claude Keisch and Gisela Maul,
Munich / Vienna 1997, p. 108
1770s. Up to the earliest decades of the 19th century, the »Grand Tour« of travellers
to Italy ended at Naples, »beyond which lay Africa« – at least according to a report
by Auguste Creuzé de Lesser (1771 – 1839) as late as 1802. 3 This fact due not least
to the lack of passable roads allowing travelling by coach; there were also very few
taverns and coaching inns for changing horses. The mountains rising behind the
coast were inaccessible and served only as hideouts for brigands.
However, none of this could deter Jakob Philipp Hackert, who, in contrast,
was chiefly interested in impassable and undiscovered landscapes, which he
recorded and documented in drawings rather like a surveyor. In his small treatise
on landscape painting written in the mid-1790s the artist observed that a landscape painter needed robust health because he »has to spend the summer months
in deserted areas where nature has not yet been mutilated by human hands, since
near the towns there is culture to be found but no picturesque objects for the
landscape painter«. 4
It is therefore not surprising that during his period of convalescence in
Vietri sul Mare Hackert explored not only the coast but also the mountainous hinterland. There the presence of many small water courses had in the
18th century led to the construction of a large number of water mills, which
were used for producing paper as well as for processing iron. Two of the valleys were named accordingly – »valley of the mills« (valle dei mulini) and »valley of the iron foundries« (valle delle ferriere); some of these mills survive to
this day (see e.g. fig. 1). One of the earliest foreign visitors to the region in 1796
and Hackert’s acquaintance, the Danish poetess and traveller Friederike Brun
(1765 – 1835), described it as follows: »To the right of the high bridge-dam that
connects la Cava to Vietri […] lies the small, deep rocky valley called Val delle
Moline because two streams drive a lot of mills there; in the south, this valley
76
(private ownership)
with the combined streams ends in the port of Vietri. We climbed up, and then
saw the high causeway above us supported by arcades […] below the arcades
two streams from the green valleys converge at a right angle around the deep
anchor of San Liberatore […]. Here around the second stream, which rushes
down more abundantly from the higher wooded mountain ravines, an entire
small town has been established, and the engines of the water-mills send a
muffled echo through the depths«. 5
Several years later, Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781 – 1841) also visited the region
and noted in his journal of 12 September 1824: »Often at the sides [of the gorge]
cliffs emerge that seem to contain various caves overgrown with vegetation […]
into which clear mountain water gushes […]. At the last bend, the valley seems
to be barred with a large multi-storeyed factory building in which paper is made,
but it turns and leads on to some very picturesque iron foundries, which for lack
of time we were not able to reach anymore«. 6
Unlike Schinkel, Hackert also visited the iron foundries situated behind the
valley of mills in 1770, as a watercolour now in Dresden attests (fig. 2). 7 The
middle ground of the picture shows a building with a water-wheel installed on
the right-hand side, a stream flowing to the lower edge of the picture, which
is crossed by a small bridge. Behind the building there are some tall trees, a
mountain rising behind them. As Hackert expressively notes in the signature,
the building is a copper mill. Johann Heinrich Zedler (1706 – 1751) states in his
Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon of 1737 that a »Kupferhammer« (copper
mill) is a »large hammer with a wide face […] so that the copper is struck wide«.
Copper-mill smiths, who produced copper plates or wire, settled in huts »specifically built for this purpose […] as they are specially constructed along rivers
and water-courses«. 8
77
5 Friederike Brun, Tagebuch über
Rom, Zurich 1801, vol. II, p. 238 f.
On the valley of the mills, see
also the exh. cat.: Dieter Richter,
ed., Alla ricerca del sud. Tre secoli di
viaggi ad Amalfi nell’immaginario
europeo, Amalfi 1989, pp. 143 ff.
6 Karl Friedrich Schinkel,
Reisen nach Italien,
Berlin / Weimar 1994, II, p. 120
The Copper Mill at Vietri, Dresden,
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen,
Kupferstichkabinett, pen and
watercolour, 34.2 x 45 cm
(13.46 x 17.72 in), annotated
in: Vietri der Kupferhammer. J.
Philipp Hackert, f. 1770. See also
Nordhoff / Reimer 1994, II, cat. no. 627
8 Johann Heinrich Zedler,
Grosses vollständiges Universal Lexicon
aller Wissenschaften und Künste, Halle
und Leipzig 1737, column 2155 f
[»große[n] Hammer mit einer breiten
Bahne ... damit das Kupfer breit
geschlagen wird«; »besonders hierzu
erbaueten … sonderlich so sie an
Flüssen und Wassern erbauet sind«]
(private ownership)
9 Jakob Philipp Hackert, The Copper
Mill at Vietri (private ownership),
pen and brush in brown over
pencil, heightened with white,
34.5 x 46 cm (13.58 x 18.11 in),
marked: J. Philippe Hackert.
f. 1771. À Vietri dans le Royome de
Naples. See also Nordhoff / Reimer
1994, vol. II, cat. no. 647. As demonstrated by a privately owned, as yet
unpublished drawing, Hackert had
also undertaken a walking tour in
the region of Vietri in 1771 (Path at
Cava dei Tirreni, pen and brush in
brown, 19,3 x 24 cm (7.52 x 9.45 in),
marked: a La Cava pres de Salerne
1771 F. Hackert. f. In 2009 the sheet
was in the Galerie Sabrina Förster,
Düsseldorf ). However, the drawing
dated 1771 is thought to have originated in the Roman studio on the
basis of the Dresden watercolour.
10 Jakob Philipp Hackert, The Copper
Mill at Vietri (private ownership),
oil / canvas, 63.5 x 87.2 cm (25 x 34.33 in),
marked: [Ph.?] Hackert f. 1772 / à
Vietri pres de Salern[e]. See also de
Seta / Nordhoff 2005, cat. no. 12
The mills established at Amalfi and Vietri sul Mare were either built directly on
the banks of the river or in the form of a bridge construction across it. The water
was guided by a small canal to the mill wheel and controlled by a system of sluices
to ensure a constant volume of water. In Hackert’s drawing we can see between
the bushes on the right an angular, closed runnel, out of which the diverted
water is falling on to the mill wheel. Behind it a vertical object, probably a wooden board with a rope attached to it, is likely to have been used to control the
volume of water.
In front of the building entrance, two men are standing chatting, while another
man is walking away with his donkey on a path to the left of the house. A packmule with lowered head is attending to his fodder, which is heaped up in front
of a water trough attached to the wall of the building. The mountain in the background is Monte San Liberatore (alt. 466 m), also mentioned by Friederike Brun,
which rises between Vietri and Cava dei Tirreni.
The motif of the picture clearly met with approval from Roman clients and
so in 1771 Hackert produced a second version, which shows the copper mill from
a rather closer standpoint (fig. 3) 9 ; some minor differences in the shape of the
building – the round tower, for example, was replaced by an angular one with a
sloping roof – show that the artist was not willing to produce an exact copy of
the Dresden watercolour.
In 1772 the painter transferred the motif of the picture to the canvas (fig. 4). 10
The building is portrayed according to the Dresden drawing, which probably
provided the model here; now the round tower appears again behind the annex
on the left of the main building. In the painting a pole also protrudes from the
narrow window and some white pigeons indicate that this is a dovecot. A group
of chatting women and men stands in front of the entrance, and a wayfarer with
a dog is walking past across the bridge in the foreground. To the left on a steep
78
path leading into the depth of the picture another wayfarer is walking away with
his donkey. The pictorial segment is now larger, so on the left in the background
a river bordered by distant mountains may be discerned, as well as tiny buildings
of two villages at the top.
The present picture dated 1773 shows the same segment of landscape as the
painting of the previous year, but Hackert changed the details of both the vegetation and the figures. In front of the building entrance, again there are two men
and five women chatting, but the shape and colour of their clothing has slightly
changed (the pipe-smoking man’s cap is no longer white, for example, but red). In
the foreground on the left, where in the painting dated 1772 only a few grasses and
little foliage are to be seen, three women have sat down to wash their laundry in
the river. The man with a pack-mule walking away on the steep path to the left,
appears here too, but the wayfarer with stick and hat accompanied by his dog is no
longer on the bridge but on the left by the copper mill.
The motif of the picture mainly provided Hackert with the opportunity
to present the diverse South Italian vegetation, which will have also constituted one of the reasons for the veduta’s popularity. In fact the region around
Vietri sul Mare exhibits a unique diversity of plants, as can also be gleaned from
Friederike Brun: »The small huts lie picturesquely in the shade of large fig trees,
on which climbing vines form cool bowers over the courtyards. Large chestnutand oak-trees grow out of the hedges, which divide the small estates in every
direction, and spread beautiful clusters of thick green everywhere. […] Here all
of Europe’s foliage-bearing plants flourish peacefully together! Climbing and
blossoming near me are bushes of white roses, hazelnuts, coluthea, whitethorn,
lilac and honeysuckle; maples, elms, oaks, beeches, birches, chestnuts, aspens,
ashes, poplars and […] rare oranges, pines, laurels and cypresses present the
loveliest confusion of any clime«.11
In the present picture, we see a group of majestic, evergreen holly oaks,
from whose trunks the vine tendrils described by Friederike Brun reach to
the roof of the building. The old, dead tree on the left edge of the picture,
which Hackert undoubtedly chose as a contrast to the lush green of the oaks,
is a chestnut, as revealed by the few oblong fan-shaped leaves still sprouting
from it. In the lower right corner of the picture, large-leaved acanthus plants
are growing, and some other deciduous trees, probably poplars or elms, form
a visual barrier between the copper mill and Monte San Liberatore behind it.
Thus trees and plants provide a luxuriant overview of the abundant and diverse
vegetation at la Cava and Vietri, amplified by the set of buildings, the flowing
water and the figures.
In Hackert’s work there are frequently replicas or second versions of pictorial
motifs that found particular favour with the public; here the picture’s size, amount
of detail and technique exerted a decisive influence on the price. 12 This reveals
Hackert’s marketing wisdom which was of great benefit to the artist in the organisation of his career: pictures and drawings were sold at fixed prices generally publicised in 1778 in the form of a printed leaflet; and although a client would often
have to wait years for his commissioned painting, he thus could be sure that the
quality would correspond to the fee paid. In this sense it is impossible to refer in
79
11 Brun, loc. cit., pp. 214 and 236 f.
12 Further examples of this procedure
in the first half of the 1770s are the
four known variations of The Vesuvius
Eruption in 1774. See Claudia Nordhoff,
Der “Vesuvausbruch” von 1774. Vier
Varianten von Jakob Philipp Hackert,
in: Weltkunst, October 1997, pp. 1975 ff.
For the Vietri region can also be
cited a gouache with a cottage at
Vietri from 1777 (Prague, National
Gallery; see Nordhoff / Reimer II,
cat. no. 109), which was transferred
by Hackert as late as after 1800 into
the etching; the same composition
also appears in an undated
watercolour (private ownership, see
Nordhoff / Reimer II, cat. no. 1239).
Hackert’s work to an outstanding »original« and subsequently produced secondrank »copies«. For one thing, the replicas almost always vary – as in the present
cases – in the details and may therefore be regarded as independent works of art.
Second, the artistic level of the execution is always consistently high, as a comparison of the two oil pictures Copper Mill at Vietri attests.
13 On this subject see Claudia
Nordhoff, »Der große Weg«. Jakob
Philipp Hackert als Zeichner
nach der Natur, in: Pantheon
LVIII, 2000, p. 128 – 137
In our picture, the wayfarer accompanied by a dog, despite being presented
as a small figure in the shade of the tall trees, plays a central role – in fact this
may well be an allusion to the wandering artist himself, who always undertook
his »painting journeys« in the company of a dog. Whereas the group of men
and women chatting at the building’s entrance, as well as the women washing
at the river, are connected to the place, the wayfarer is moving through the
pictorial space and therefore indicates a continuation of the landscape that
extends beyond the edges of the picture. This same function is also occupied
by the second wayfaring man, only recognisable as a small figure, on the steep
path below on the left: he guarantees the accessibility of the regions located
in the depth of the picture, whereas the man with the dog opens up the pictorial space towards the viewer by his direction of movement. In fact, he has
not yet reached the bridge and will undoubtedly take a rest at the copper mill,
but afterwards his path certainly leads across the small river and finally to the
right, out of the painting, towards new destinations and vantage-points. This
implicit opening of the pictorial space accords with Hackert’s artistic conviction that a painting can never present an enclosed landscape but always only
segments traversed by paths and river courses: the painter follows these in
order to pause frequently and record the trees and mountains, the houses and
the people who inhabit them in the picture. 13
As the wayfarer’s path leads out of this pictorial world, consequently the
opposite process can also be imagined – the viewer entering the landscape. The
viewer’s standpoint is in fact located at the near end of the bridge, between the
two grass-covered rocks by the acanthus plants: these details are large and presented as if close enough to grasp, whereas the washerwomen and the group
of chatting country folk are located essentially further in the depth of the picture. By this artistic gambit, Hackert succeeds in placing the viewer almost on
the brink of the scene – only a short step on to the bridge: the boundary between the pictorial space and the viewer’s space becomes fluid, and at least the
full-bosomed washerwoman with white linen who has raised her head from her
work and is looking quizzically towards the end of the bridge certainly seems to
have discovered us already.
The present picture belongs in the landscape-portrait genre, which the painter took to an unsurpassed climax: without ever diverging from visible reality
Hackert manages to capture the beauty of individual trees, plants and waters
thus opening the viewer’s eyes to a small corner of landscape to which he might
otherwise have hardly paid any attention. This was recognised also by Friederike
Brun, who made Hackert’s acquaintance on 25 May 1796 and noted afterwards
in her journal: »He knows all of Italy, Calabria and Sicily as I do my garden;
he sought and found nature everywhere, and beauty to be tenderly embraced.
80
We especially admired three landscapes […] not (as is so often the case with the
more recent landscape painters) layer on layer of reverie, but memories from the
wealth of an imagination imbued with natural scenes, which, ever abiding in the
realm of beautiful reality, never becomes fantastical«. 1 4
The painting can therefore be called Hackert’s masterpiece; it forms an
important component of his work.
cn
References: Claudia Nordhoff, Hans Reimer, Jakob Philipp Hackert 1737 – 1807. Verzeichnis seiner Werke, 2 vols.,
Berlin 1994, vol. II, no. 76 – Thomas Weidner, Jakob Philipp Hackert. Landschaftsmaler im 18. Jahrhundert, Berlin
1998 – Cesare de Seta, Claudia Nordhoff, Hackert, Naples 2005 – Cesare de Seta, ed., Jakob Philipp Hackert, la
linea analitica della pittura di paesaggio in Europa, exh. cat. Palace of Caserta, 2007 – Andreas Stolzenburg, ed.,
Jakob Philipp Hackert, Europas Landschaftsmaler der Goethezeit, exh. cat., Neues Museum Weimar / Kunsthalle
Hamburg, 2008 – Claudia Nordhoff ed., Jakob Philipp Hackert. Briefe (1761 – 1806), Göttingen 2012
14 Brun, loc. cit., pp. 158 f.
81
10
Thomas Theodor Heine
(1867 Leipzig – 1948 Stockholm)
Siegfried
1921. Oil on wood; 70.5 x 57 cm (27.76 x 22.44 in). Monograph top right and dated:
19 TTH 21 (ligature)
P rovenan ce : Family ownership since 1927, Germany
E xhibi t ions : 1921 Munich Secession, Glass Palace, no. 2184, hall no. 61; 1925 New
Secession, no. 52; 1926 Dresden international art exhibition, no. 496; 1927 Munich,
New Secession, no. 445, hall no. 81
T
1 Heine with Pug in Front
of his Diessen House 1929,
photograph by Walter Foitzick
(private ownership) (left)
2 Four Pugs at the Heine
Garden Table at Diessen.
Photograph (right)
1 Thomas Raff,
Thomas Theodor Heine. Der Biss des
Simplicissimus. Das künstlerische
Werk, Leipzig 2000, p. 144
he painting Siegfried by Thomas
Theodor Heine (Leipzig 1867 – 1948
Stockholm) is signed at the top right
with the then highly popular monogram
TTH and is dated 1921. Until recently
it was considered lost 1 because it had been
in the possession of the first owner and
the owner’s heirs since the 1920s.
A pug-dog, still very young and looking rather lost, is sitting on an overstuffed armchair upholstered in red velvet, which in turn stands on a heavily-patterned
carpet, also predominantly red. To make it clear that the little pug is the main focus
here the painter has approached him as with a camera, zooming in so close to the
subject that the piece of furniture remains just definable.
At first glance this harmless subject does not seem to fit properly among the
works by Thomas Theodor Heine, who was in his day a feared satirist and illustrator for the magazine Simplicissimus. However, the painting gives a strong indication
of this artist’s contradictory personality. Although Heine was mordant and caustic
in conversation and as a contributor to Simplicissimus, his private life had altogether
idyllic, Biedermeier-like and bourgeois traits. He preferred concealing this part of
his emotional life with comic irony or ridiculous exaggeration.
His love of pug dogs, which in those days were a generally derided breed, bears this
out. Heine surely painted this large picture mainly for himself and his family, because
Siegfried the pug, like all the pugs in the house, was a true member of the Heine family.
At that time the Heines lived at Diessen on Lake Ammer (Ammersee), in large
park-like grounds. There, purely as a hobby and with no particular ambition, they
bred pugs (figs. 1 and 2).
82
3 Thomas Theodor Heine,
The Simplicissimus Bulldog, 1896
(private ownership)
4 Thomas Theodor Heine
Daughter Johanna with Pug, 1902
(Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich)
2 Reinhard Piper, Vormittag.
Erinnerungen eines Verlegers,
Munich 1947, p. 364
3 Hermann Sinsheimer, Gelebt
im Paradies. Erinnerungen und
Begegnungen. Munich 1953, p. 237 f.
4 Ibid., p. 238.
5 Thomas Raff (ed.), Du nimmst
das alles viel zu tragisch. Briefe von
Th. Th. Heine an Alfred Kubin,
1912 – 1947. Munich 2009, p. 16
(letter dated March 18th 1916)
In 1896 Th. Th. Heine designed the vicious bulldog which is still the
most famous symbol of the periodical Simplicissimus (fig. 3). Nowadays
bulldogs would probably be called »fighting dogs«. Then they served
chiefly as keen guardians of house and home and for this purpose they
were kept on chains. The »Simpl« bulldog, however, has torn itself from
its chain and now symbolizes the belligerence of this universally popular but also highly controversial magazine. Th. Th. Heine never owned
a bulldog but usually had a pug or two. His publisher Reinhard Piper,
in his »Memoirs«, described the time when Heine was still living as a
bachelor in Munich: »Heine lived in a modest studio house, 148, Theresienstrasse, but his workroom was very comfortably fitted out with
Biedermeier furniture. On a black-and-green striped armchair there
sat, surly-faced, the famous pug, the tame model of the vicious Simplicissimus bulldog«.2
Heine’s home at Diessen on Lake Ammer was later described by
Hermann Sinsheimer, editor-in-chief of Simplicissimus from 1924 to
1929: »His English-style country house in Diessen on Lake Ammer
was like a museum of Biedermeier furnishings – one »drawing room«
after another, full of pug dogs in porcelain or other materials, his
favourite pets. Apart from them he was as little fond of animals as of
human beings. From the pug, that extremely cosy animal, he developed
the decidedly unpleasant bulldog with the broken chain – the emblem
of the Simpl.«3
The odd connection between Th. Th. Heine’s aggressive Simplicissimus bulldog and his pleasant Biedermeier pug has often been remarked
upon and analysed. Both breeds of dog have sometimes been related
to Heine’s complex personality. Hermann Sinsheimer, quoted above,
wrote for instance: »Where his pug-like tameness ended and his bulldog-like nihilistic ferocity began was something he kept to himself«.4
The Heine family had an extremely personal relationship with their
pugs. In the portrait of his daughter Johanna as a child even, (fig. 4) the
pug sharing the picture is so dominant that the painting could almost
be called a double portrait. The family pugs received presents at Christmas as well as for Easter and Heine drew notices of their births, marriages and deaths. In 1916 he wrote in a letter to his friend and colleague Alfred
Kubin: »I am not sure whether our pug Dicky has sent you the announcement
of his marriage at Christmas to the bitch Amalasuntha. She is a lovely lady pug
and we were hoping for numerous descendants. But when her time had come
and she exerted all her charms to allure her spouse, he turned his back on her
with a scornful laugh and copulated with the tomcat, a spectacle so unnatural
and revolting that not even its frequent repetition was apt to mitigate our and
Amalasuntha’s outrage. Well, well, the brutalising effect of war«.5
But in the summer of that very same year Heine could announce in a handdrawn notice (fig. 5): »The lucky birth of two bouncy war-pugs is announced by
the delighted: Th. Th. Heine family. Diessen am Ammersee, 26th August 1916«.6
In the same bourgeois tone, a hand-drawn notice of a death announced: »After
long suffering, most patiently borne, our dearly-loved MOPPI was summoned
84
to eternity yesterday afternoon. Munich 16th December 1911. In deepest mourning, the Th. Th. Heine family«. 7 The drawing shows a dead
pug lying on his back, with a winged pug soul soaring upwards from
his mouth; on the right a gravestone below a weeping willow bears the
inscription »Rest in peace«.
In 1925 Th. Th. Heine wrote a lavishly illustrated article for the
fashionable Ullstein magazine Die Dame (fig. 6), with the dramatic
title A Dying Race. An excerpt: »Pugs are dying out! Save the pug! It is
a cultural monument, the product and symbol of a sinking age, which
history might one day see as the climax of human evolution. Like so
many achievements of civilisation the pug originates in the Far East.
It is not certain whether it accompanied the Aryans on their westward
migration, but it is frequently mentioned even in the Mahâbhârata, the
ancient Indian epic. Later they it was bred in China to feed large parts
of the population, and the Jesuits brought it from there to Western
Europe at the end of the 17th century, where they it was first found at
princely courts only. Then the keeping of pugs became a privilege of the
aristocracy, especially of noble Rococo ladies, but consequently passed on
to the middle classes along with many other privileges, finally becoming
a symbol of the bourgeoisie in the Biedermeier period, and as late as
1870 no family would be without one.« Since then, however, according 5 Thomas Theodor Heine,
to Heine, pugs had gone out of fashion and had been replaced – typi- Notice of Birth, 1916
cally for the modern age – by more elegant and sporting dogs.
»And so it has come to pass that the pug in name only is familiar
to the present generation, which is vegetating with no clear idea of its
nature, even confusing it with the proletarian bulldog more often than
not. Together with the pug serenity vanished from the European soul
to be replaced by a deluge of frightful convulsions. Now that the world
finally wants to find peace, the pug must re-emerge and contribute its
talents to the reconstruction of Europe. In my Ark I have saved several
examples. The old pater familias, already blind and ravaged by apoplexy,
is hardly likely to live into the new age. But the aged mother pug, whose
forebears once lay on Madame von Stein’s sofa in Weimar, is still mode6 Thomas Theodor Heine,
rately spry, and the youngest offspring – he calls himself Siegfried – is On the Sofa, around 1924
looking to the future with joy and hope«.8
The article does in fact reproduce the painting of an old pug (The Last of His Race),
but the largest illustration shows our painting Siegfried ! 9
Thomas Theodor Heine certainly presented Siegfried to the public. From 1921
to 1926 he showed the painting at various exhibitions as well as in the major retrospective for his 60th birthday at the Munich Glass Palace in 1927. The picture
6 Th. Th. Heine, Ein sterbendes
was then already privately owned in Frankfurt.
Geschlecht, in: Die Dame,
year 52, 1924 /25, issue 6, p. 7
In 1930 Heine painted another pug puppy, this time as part of an Easter
7
Monika Peschken-Eilsberger:
arrangement (fig. 7). The young pug virtually played the part of the Easter Bunny
Thomas Theodor Heine. Der Herr
on the family’s Biedermeier table in Diessen. Heine was so fond of this picture
der roten Bulldogge. Biographie,
Leipzig 2000, p. 71 (illustrated)
that he took it with him into exile and only gave it away as a present near the
8 Th. Th. Heine, Ein sterbendes
end of his life, in Stockholm.
Geschlecht, in: Die Dame,
year 52, 1924 /25, issue 6, pp. 5 – 8
85
7 Thomas Theodor Heine, Easter, 1930
8 Thomas Theodor Heine, Greeting card, 14th October 1923
In exile in March 1937 Heine wrote to his old friend Alfred Kubin from Brno:
»You probably won’t believe this: I’ve really never been as happy as since my emigration. It’s a wonderful state being liberated from everything, no longer owning
anything, independent of furniture and pugs«.10
Evidently, for Th.Th. Heine the pug had remained a lifelong symbol – just like
the Simplicissimus bulldog with its completely different meaning.
tr
References: Die Kunst, LI, 1925, p. 216 – Th. Th. Heine, Ein sterbendes Geschlecht. In: Die Dame, year 52,
1924 / 25, issue 6, pp 5–8 – Armin Trübenbach, Thomas Theodor Heine. Leben und Werk im Hinblick auf sein
karikaturistisches Schaffen und publizistisches Wollen, Berlin 1956 – Elisabeth von Dücker, Der SimplicissimusKarikaturist Thomas Theodor Heine als Maler. Aspekte seiner Malerei. Mit einem kritischen Katalog der Gemälde,
Frankfurt a. M. 1978 – Thomas Raff, Thomas Theodor Heine. Der Biss des Simplicissimus. Das künstlerische Werk.
Leipzig 2000, p. 144
9 The painting was also reproduced
in the periodical Die Kunst in
1925 next to p. 216.
10 Thomas Raff (ed.), Du nimmst
das alles viel zu tragisch. Briefe von
Th. Th. Heine an Alfred Kubin,
1912 – 1947. Munich 2009, p. 58
(letter dated March 6th, 1937)
86
Postcard by Th. Th. Heine, about 1920
11
Alexej von Jawlensky
(1864 Torschok – 1941 Wiesbaden)
Still Life with Napkin
1906. Oil on cardboard; 38.5 x 48.5 cm (15.16 x 19.09 in)
Signed bottom left: A. Jawlensky and initialled bottom right: A. J.
P rovenan ce : Estate of Alexei Jawlensky; Frankfurter Kunstkabinett Hanna Bekker
vom Rath 1947; Galerie Alex Vömel, Düsseldorf 1958; Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett, 37th
auction 1962, lot 172; since 1962, private collection, Germany
E xhibi t ions : Frankfurter Kunstverein 1967 (16 Sept. – 22 Oct. 1967,
cat. p. 65 / no. 111, fig. on p. 111); Museum Wiesbaden 2014 (21.6. – 19.10.2014)
E
1 Alexei von Jawlensky, Still Life with
Apples, 1905. Oil / canvas (Stiftung für
Fruchtmalerei und Skulptur, Heidelberg)
1 Alexei von Jawlensky’s memoirs,
dictated to Lisa Kümmel in 1937:
first published in German by
Clemens Weiler, Köpfe, Gesichter,
Meditationen, Hanau 1970, p. 109.
English translation 1970 published
in Maria Jawlensky, Lucia PieroniJawlensky, Angelica JawlenskyBianconi, Alexej von Jawlensky.
Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil
Paintings, vol. I, London 1991,
pp. 25 – 33, here p. 30
arly in 1905, Alexei von Jawlensky recorded his impressions of
Brittany in his journal: »My paintings glowed with colour. I was
deeply contented at that time […]. For the first time in my life I had
grasped how to paint not what I saw but what I felt«. 1
Until then the artist living in Munich since 1896 had taken the
French Post-Impressionists as his role models in rapid succession:
including Paul Gauguin (1848 Paris – 1903 Hiva Oa) and, especially, Vincent van Gogh (1853 Zundert – 1890 Auvers-sur-Oise).
Still almost unknown in Germany, these painters were highly
esteemed and loved by Jawlensky, a regular traveller to France. He
acquired a picture by Van Gogh in Paris and emulated his blazing
brush-strokes, as in Still Life with Apples of 1905 (fig. 1).
A few months later Jawlensky studied the working methods
of the Fauve painters. With Marianne von Werefkin (1860 Tula – 
1938 Ascona), he had visited the Fauvists’ exhibition at the Paris
Salon d’Automne, at which he himself also exhibited in 1905 and 1906. Especially impressed by the works of Henri Matisse (1869 Le Cateau-Cambrésis – 1954 Nice) in the latter’s Paris studio in 1906, Jawlensky found his way to
pure and highly luminous painting that broke away from the representationality of portrayed objects (fig. 2). Finally, the »savages« around Matisse completely liberated painting in Paris from that imitative and conventional context.
Forms should emanate light, with everything to be taken beyond the real and
purged of incidental elements. By an imperceptible process, the Impressionists’
Colourism had shifted its focus from rendering external impression to rendering inner values. In a reversal of the previously dominant principle, colour had
now definitively become the expressive medium of emotions induced by the
surrounding world.
88
2 Henri Matisse, Still Life with vase, bottle and fruit, 1906.
Oil / canvas (Hermitage, St. Petersburg).
2See Clemens Weiler,
Alexej von Jawlensky, in:
Kindlers Malerei Lexikon
(1st edition Zurich 1966),
new edition Munich 1985,
vol. 7, p. 28
3 See Catalogue Raisonné vol. I,
nos. 19, 30, 31, 40, 43, 44, 52 – 54,
73 – 77, 80, 81, 117, 120 – 123
3 Alexei von Jawlensky, Still Life with Oranges, c. 1902.
Oil / cardboard (private collection, Zurich)
In Jawlensky’s Still Life with Napkin the sun-ripened yellow and red, but also
green, apples and pears on a fruit dish are modestly placed on the corner of a simple table. Their adornment is according to Jawlensky their »colour raiment«. The
picture takes effect through its highly nuanced blue, a complementary yellow, or
a small amount of red with green, supplemented by white touches as a decorative
values. It is the discovery of the liberated colour that the painter expresses with
the following words: »My friends, the apples that I love for their enchanting red,
yellow, purple and green clothing are for me, on this or that background, no longer apples«. 2 These colours set on to the untreated cardboard with a broad brush
à la prima tell their own story: they enhance and soften each other. Characteristic
black contours often restrain their »savage« colourful power and force them back
into the form. Whether oranges – as in the accompanying still life of 1902 (fig. 3) – 
or apples, the essence of the objects shown is constantly expressed in the unfettered
play of their colours, which Jawlensky observes with fascination.
At the same time as studying Henri Matisse’s creative working method,
Jawlensky also engaged again with his great role model Paul Cézanne (Aix-enProvence, 1839 – 1906) who had died in October that year, 1906, in Aix-en-Provence. Cézanne had inspired many of his apple still lifes from 1900 on. 3
In his Still Life with Napkin he quotes to some extent Cézanne’s theme of
the napkin hanging over the table’s edge (fig. 4). Strongly stylised into flatness, the
white cloth in our painting backlights the fruit dish and elevates the gravity of the
picture-defining royal blue into a luminous colour scheme. Soft turquoise alleviates the monochrome white and, where there is no colour, the cardboard surface
creates the impression of sunlit spots.
However, not only the theme of the apple still life with a napkin is characteristic
of the work of the Provençal »father of modern painting«. Cézanne also extended the colour-modulating principles of Impressionism to a new conception of
90
4 Paul Cézanne, Still Life with Apples in a Bowl,
c. 1879 – 82. Oil / canvas (Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek,
Copenhagen)
object and space. This represented an artistic revolution that inspired painters all
over Europe to new creativity at the time. In Still Life with Napkin, following
Cézanne’s example, Jawlensky conceived the objects construed in painterly terms
as constituents of space: the table edge and the plate rim oppose each other as
basic forms and plumb spatial depth. Instead of Cézanne’s decorative bowl (fig. 4),
a jug sensitively placed between the dish and the napkin mediates between the
plane and the spatial height expanding a diagonal across the table corner. The
rhythmically placed brush strokes, still in Impressionist comma technique, convert the object volumes into the plane impression of a tapestry. Its loose weave of
glazing, thinly applied paint gives the picture a porous, dematerialising lightness,
without reducing the monumentality of what is shown at close range. Is that a
china or an earthen dish? A cotton or a damask cloth? Is the jug made of stoneware and might that even be a lemon lying there? – Above all, every object in this
still life with a napkin is a triumph of painting. Jawlensky brings out the inner
radiance of the colours. The composition is of a consummate painterly balance and
refinement of colour. With the simplest means, the painting conveys an impression of imperturbability that bespeaks the timeless peace and beauty of objects.
It is no longer possible to determine whether our Still Life with Napkin was a tribute to the recently deceased Paul Cézanne. The synthesis that Jawlensky attained in
1906 from Paul Cézanne’s new creative principle and Henri Matisse’s primacy of
colour signify the artistic breakthrough in his work. No longer was Jawlensky concerned with the skilfully detailed representation of external reality, but constantly
with a painterly presentation approaching the intrinsic spiritual substance of what
is seen – an approach that continued to intensify into new creations until the late
meditations in a lifelong working process.
Jawlensky’s colour-intensive expressive power led to the Expressionism of the
Blaue Reiter group that began just before 1910 (fig. 5). Like art nouveau painting
91
5 Alexei von Jawlensky, Still Life
with Flowers, 1910. Oil / cardboard
(private ownership)
6a / b Leaflet for Alexei von Jawlensky’s
commemorative exhibition. List of exhibits:
No. 11 Still Life with Napkin 1906
4 Quoted from Clemens Weiler,
Alexej von Jawlensky, in: Kindlers
Malerei Lexikon, loc. cit., vol. 7, p. 28
5 Franz Marc, The „Savages“ of
Germany in: The Blaue Reiter
Almanac, ed. F. Marc and W.
Kandinsky, Da Capo, 1989, p. 64
6 Gabriele Münter, Meine Sache ist
das Sehen. Hundert Jahre Blauer
Reiter, Bayerischer Rundfunk,
Munich, May 18th 2012
at the beginning of the 20 th century, Jawlensky’s painting is also spiritual painting.
The intuitive power of its forms originates from an inner experience that Jawlensky
describes as follows: »Its tones and its radiant colours on the basis of other more
sombre tones fuse into a harmony pervaded by dissonances. And they strike my
eye like a piece of music that echoes a particular mood in my own soul. To me apples, trees or human faces are only hints at something else awaiting discovery: the
life of colour apprehended by someone passionate, by someone in love«. 4
In connection with the Fauve painters in France, Franz Marc (1880 Munich – 1916
Braquis / Verdun) called the Blaue Reiter artists »The ›savages‹ of Germany« and
remarked on their pictorial creations that emerged from inner vision in the Blaue
Reiter almanac in 1912: »It came to be understood that art was concerned with the
most profound matters, that renewal must not be merely formal but in fact a rebirth
of thinking. Mysticism was awakened in their souls and with it the most ancient
elements of art«. 5
Wassily Kandinsky’s (1866 Moscow – 1944 Neuilly-sur-Seine) life companion,
Gabriele Münter (1877 Berlin – 1962 Murnau), described the Russian friend
Jawlensky’s work in simpler terms: »Like many great painters of the Paris School,
Jawlensky was no theoretician but in every fibre a craftsman and an artist«. 6
When Alexei von Jawlensky returned to Germany in 1922 and settled in Wiesbaden, the prosperous art collector and Frankfurt painter Hanna Bekker vom Rath
(1893 Frankfurt a. M. – 1983 Bad Nauheim) supported the artist, who constantly
suffered from lack of money. Ever since she had first got to know him in 1927, she
visited the rheumatic patient every week and bought his pictures directly from him
in the studio, including still lifes and landscapes from his early period. 7 In 1929 she
founded the association of Jawlensky friends and at Christmas received a gift from
the painter in gratitude. When Jawlensky died in 1941, completely paralysed after
94
6b years of suffering, she also continued to support the family with her purchases from
the artist’s estate. 8
When Hanna Bekker vom Rath opened the famous Frankfurter Kunstkabinett
in 1947, the third sales exhibition that she organised from 16 August to 14 September 1947 was a commemorative exhibition for Alexei von Jawlensky, her friend for
many years. A corresponding leaflet indicates under No. 11 in the list of exhibits:
Still Life with Napkin 1906 (fig. 6). As in 1906 there was only one still life with napkin in the artist’s work, this leaflet is the first written evidence of the picture’s existence. Its provenance is also very likely to be owed to Hanna Bekker vom Rath’s
friendship with Alexei von Jawlensky: it comes straight from the artist’s studio,
where it was kept at least until the 1920s. As one of the most reliable friends and
promoters of his work, the passionate art connoisseur Hanna Bekker vom Rath
in this case once more attests to the quality and excellence of the creations by her
great Russian painter friend.
bb
References: Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky, Angelica Jawlensky-Bianconi, Alexej von Jawlensky.
Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, vol. I: 1890 – 1914, London 1991 – Clemens Weiler, Alexej Jawlensky,
Cologne 1959 – Ewald Rathke, Alexej von Jawlensky, exh. cat. Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main
1967 – Irina Devjat’jarova, Alexej von Jawlensky auf Ausstellungen in Russland 1905 – 1915. Material from catalogues,
newspapers, correspondences and memoirs, in: Bild und Wissenschaft. Forschungsbeiträge zu Leben und Werk von A.
Jawlensky, ed. Alexej von Jawlensky-Archiv AG, vol. 3, Locarno 2009, pp. 235 – 251 with fig. 7
7 See Volker Rattemeyer, Schwerpunkte.
30 new acquisitions from Hanna Bekker
vom Rath’s collection, Wiesbaden Museum,
19 Mar. – 18 Sept. 1988, p. 14 f. and p. 19;
Susanne Liesegang, Privatbesitz
Hofheim. Sammlung Hanna Bekker
vom Rath, exhibition in collaboration
with the Frankfurter Kunstkabinett
Hanna Bekker vom Rath GmbH and
Herbert Meyer-Ellinger, Jahrhunderthalle
Hoechst,14 Oct. – 21 Nov. 1984 and
Bayer AG Erholungshaus, Leverkusen
10 Mar. – 14 Apr. 1985, p. 11 f.; Volker
Rattemeyer, Alexej von Jawlensky in
Wiesbaden, in: Christoph Otterbeck,
ed., Expressionismus im Rhein-MainGebiet. Künstler – Händler – Sammler,
exh. cat. Museum Giersch, Frankfurt
am Main, Petersberg 2011, p. 51 f.
8 Unfortunately no lists with precise
detailed information about Hanna
Bekker vom Rath’s purchases
have been preserved.
95
12
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
(1880 Aschaffenburg – 1938 Frauenkirch / Davos)
Cows at the Drinking Trough
C. 1920. Pen and ink drawing on paper; 16 x 21.7 cm (6.3 x 8.54 in)
Signed on the back and marked: E. Kirchner
Provenance: Galerie Kornfeld, Bern 1986, auction 193, cat. no. 28, with illustration 585,
North German private collection, private collection, Austria
E xhibi t ion : Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Zeichnungen, Pastelle, Aquarelle, Leipzig / Wuppertal 1992 / 93, cat. no. 17, with illustration
I
1 Ewald Rathke, Die Maler
der Brücke, in: Bestandskatalog
Sammlung Hermann Gerlinger,
ed. H. Spielmann, C. Rathke,
K. Schneider, H. Gerlinger,
Halle / Saale 2005, p. 356
2 Will Grohmann,
Kirchner-Zeichnungen, Dresden
(Ernst Arnold) 1925, Fig. 27.
Appeared in Arnolds graphische
Bücher, second series, vol. 6.
Complete book composition by
Kirchner. One hundred colour
and black-and-white plates after
Kirchner’s drawings from 1899 to
1924 and 18 textual illustrations,
including 15 original woodcuts.
3 Gerd Presler, Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner, Die Skizzenbücher
»Ekstase des ersten Sehens«.
Monographie und Werkverzeichnis,
Weingarten 1996, p. 66
4 Sketchbook no. 75, 21.9 x 17.5 cm
(8.62 x 6.89 in), 63 pages with
drawings, 16 blank pages,
Kirchner Museum, Davos
5 Gerd Presler, loc. cit., p. 66
6 id., p. 269
7 id., p. 66 f.
n the early nineteen twenties, the Berlin art critic Will Grohmann visited Ernst
Ludwig Kirchner in Switzerland in his newly acquired house on the Wildboden
near Davos. Not long afterwards in early 1924, Grohmann suggested to the painter
»publishing a book about his drawings. Kirchner agreed, but reserved for himself
substantial collaboration rights. He selected the illustrations, wrote an introductory text together with Will Grohmann and produced etchings and woodcuts for
the book.« 1 The drawings that Ernst Ludwig Kirchner chose for this publication
included the sheet Cows at the Drinking Trough (fig. 1). 2
As the publisher of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s sketchbooks discovered, 3 the
sheet portraying three cows in a meadow is identical with our pen and ink drawing. It almost certainly originates from Kirchner’s sketchbook no. 75, 4 where it
corresponds »in theme and technique« 5 to sheet no. 55, which also portrays a cow
at a drinking trough (fig. 2). 6
Gerd Presler conjectures that our drawing by Kirchner actually was torn from
the sketchbook, given that the pages between sheets no. 55 and no. 58 were removed. 7 It can also easily be discerned from the drawing Cows at the Drinking Trough
that it has been truncated at the edges. Measuring 16 x 21.7 cm (6.3 x 8.54 in), it differs in size from the sketchbook (17.5 x 21.9 cm / 6.89 x 8.62 in) by 2 mm (0,08 in)
on the right-hand side and above and below by circa 7 mm (0.28 in) respectively. If
we suppose that due to its landscape format Kirchner painted the drawing upright
into the sketchbook, then our sheet must have been trimmed along the fold of
the sketchbook and the rounded corners truncated at the outer edges. Stylistically,
the drawing is connected with the following sheet no. 59 depicting also an alpine
theme with a broadly similar execution (fig. 3).
The cows’ eyes, ears and muzzles in our drawing Cows at the Drinking Trough
are reminiscent of compositional elements of a drawing in sketchbook no. 93 from
1923, which was produced somewhat later (fig. 4).
96
1 Will Grohmann, KirchnerZeichnungen, Dresden, Ernst Arnold,
1925, fig. 27
8 Gerd Presler, loc. cit., p. 66
9 For these terms see: Wolfgang
Henze, Maler der Großstadt – Maler
der Bergwelt, in: Rudy Chiappini
(ed.), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner,
exh. cat. Lugano, Milan, 2000,
p. 111 – 141, here: p. 130
10 Briefe an den Sammler und Mäzen
Carl Hagemann 1906 – 1940. Kirchner,
Schmidt-Rottluff, Nolde, Nay. Edited
and annotated by Hans Delfs,
Mario-Andreas von Lüttichau and
Roland Scotti. Ostfildern-Ruit 2004,
No. 147, p. 103 (25.5.1918)
11 Andreas Gabelmann,
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.
Sein Leben in Selbstzeugnissen,
Ostfildern-Ruit 2010, p. 65
2 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Sketchbook no.75, sheet no. 55, c. 1920 / 21
(Kirchner Museum, Davos)
In one of the later sketchbooks – no. 98, dating from 1925 – Gerd Presler additionally discovered the word »cows« as a handwritten note by Kirchner below the
pencil sketch no. 100, which was also published in Will Grohmann’s book on Kirchner (fig. 5). As Presler indicates, the painter wrote it as an aide-memoire on the sheet
already selected to remind himself that he still had to give thought to a sketchbook
drawing with this theme to illustrate Will Grohmann’s book. 8
Whereas in Berlin, where he had lived from 1911, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner had
been a »city painter«, he developed into »painter of mountains« after he settled in
Switzerland. 9 There the grazing cows became a central theme for him. From the
first encounter in 1917 until his suicide they formed part of his immediate surroundings in the Davos mountains. As they stood in the meadows in the summer
months, the painter observed them in randomly jotted, quickly rendered sketches,
amplified by depictions of the simple and hard everyday working lives of the farmers for whom Kirchner felt sympathy.
One of the earliest sheets is Cows and Farmers at the Stable (fig. 6). It was produced in summer 1917 on the Stafelalp and is intensely permeated by nervous agitation.
His drawing style reflects the mental strain that followed the 1916 war volunteer’s
mental and physical breakdown. In a letter to his friend Carl Hagemann in 1918,
Kirchner explains his immense creative drive as working off pain: »If suffering could
be completely transformed into creative work, there would be incredible new possibilities; I want to try this as far as possible«. 10
Andreas Gabelmann writes that in Switzerland the solitary and despairing
artist »perceived an allegory of consolation and hope in the close, intimate shared
existence of the farmers and their herds in the primeval nature of the mountains
that he constantly portrayed«. 11
Over the two decades that followed in Frauenkirch near Davos, Kirchner found
himself entirely thrown back on his own resources. Surrounded by mountain
98
3 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Sketchbook no.75, sheet no. 59,
c. 1920 / 21 (Kirchner Museum, Davos)
4 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Sketchbook no. 93, sheet no. 47,
1923 (Kirchner Museum, Davos)
5 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Sketchbook no.98, sheet no.100, c. 1920.
Below the drawing the word »Kühe« (cows) appears in vertical lettering in E. L. Kirchner’s handwriting
(Kirchner Museum, Davos)
6 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner,
Cows and Farmers at the Stable, 1917,
brush / pen / pencil (private ownership)
7 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Cows, 1918,
crayon / cardboard (private ownership)
8 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Cows on the Alp, 1918 / 1919.
Indian ink / pencil / paper (Kirchner Museum, Davos)
100
farmers and cattle herds, living alone in his cabin at an altitude of nearly 2000 metres, the cows became the artist’s constant companions. In drawings, as well as woodcuts, etchings
and paintings, he shows grazing alpine cattle in a wide variety
of techniques and situations (figs. 7 to 10).
The drawing Cows Descending was made in the year before
his suicide in 1938 (fig. 10). Its expression and composition have
a remarkable clarity and calm. This calming tendency had
begun in the 1920s and is also revealed in our drawing Cows at
the Drinking Trough, which dates from the same period.
From 1920 on Kirchner gradually recovered from his severe
depressions and began to overcome the addiction to drugs.
Always a highly personal mirror of his mental state, his handwriting became firmer, although the impetuous spontaneity of
observation was still expressed in a harsh, angular, breathless
style. His hastily made shadings, allusions and lacunae attest
to Kirchner’s acute spiritual and physical tension in his quest
for an appropriate expression of what is seen, in which he enables the viewer to participate directly. In those early years of
the 1920s the previous intuitively jotted sketches give way to a
more analytical construction of his drawings. As in our sheet,
the focus shifts from observation to composition. Contour and
stroke width are more clearly and contrastingly established,
giving the drawing a »chiselled« impression.
From the beginning the common feature of all the cow drawings between 1917 and 1938, despite all their stylistic differences,
is a predilection for the triad. Whether portraying them from
behind, the front or the side, Kirchner studies the cows’ postures
and movements. With pencil, crayon or reed pen, he places
them between the meadows and mountain peaks in such a way
that they capture and perpetuate the character of the landscape. As in his work before 1916, his drawings resemble commentaries: they are compositional sketches that record the
essential features of a view or a theme. This gives the representations such an overpowering density that they emerge
as the quintessence of the artist’s empathy with the viewed
object, as well as the consummate expression of his personality.
The expressionist and erstwhile founder of the artists’ association Die Brücke in Dresden in 1905 described the significance of this new beginning in Davos in 1922 as follows: »The
barren but intimate nature of the high mountains has exercised a strong influence on the painter. It has deepened his
love of objects and at the same time purged his conception
of anything non-essential. Nothing unnecessary appears in the
9 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Cows on the Alp, 1922,
colour pencils / paper (Kirchner Museum, Davos)
10 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Cows Descending, 1937,
crayon / paper (private ownership)
pictures, but how tenderly every detail is elaborated! The creative thought emerges
strong and bare in the finished work. Kirchner is now delving so far into completely new problems that he cannot be measured by the old yardsticks if justice
is to be done to his work. Those who want to classify him according to his German
pictures will be disappointed; they will continue to be surprised by him«. 12
bb
References: Will Grohmann, Kirchner Zeichnungen, Dresden 1925 – Gerd Presler, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Die
Skizzenbücher »Ekstase des ersten Sehens«, Karlsruhe / Davos 1996 – Karl-Heinz Mehnert (ed.), Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner, 1880 – 1938: Zeichnungen, Aquarelle, Pastelle, Druckgraphik aus den Beständen der Graphischen Sammlung
der Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, exh. cat. Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig, Von der Heydt-Museum
Wuppertal, Leipzig 1992 – Magdalena M. Moeller, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Zeichnungen und Aquarelle, Munich
1993 – Andrea Wandschneider (ed.), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Spontan und doch vollendet; Zeichnungen, Aquarelle,
Druckgraphik aus dem Saarlandmuseum Saarbrücken, Paderborn 2008 – Anita Beloubek-Hammer (ed.),
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner »Ekstase des ersten Sehens« und gestaltete Form, Kolloquium anlässlich der Ausstellung
»Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Erstes Sehen. Das Werk im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett«, Berlin 2004 / 2007 – G. H.
Holländer, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Drawings, New York 2005 – Michael Eissenhauer (ed.), »In Momenten
größten Rausches«. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Zeichnungen, Druckgraphik. Bestand der Graphischen Sammlung der
Staatlichen Museen Kassel, cat. Staatliche Museen Kassel, vol. 27, Wolfratshausen 2002 – Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
zum 120. Geburtstag: Gemälde, Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, darunter eine Reihe von Werken, welche Kirchner für
die Reproduktion in den beiden Bänden von Will Grohmann über sein Werk 1925 und 1926 auswählte, cat. Galerie
Henze & Ketterer, vol. 59, Wichtrach 2000 – Karin Becker, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Bestandskatalog der
Zeichnungen, Aquarelle, Pastelle, Holzschnitte, Radierungen, Lithographien und illustrierten Bücher, Graphische
Sammlung Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 1980 / 1992
12 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (written
under the pseudonym Louis de
Marsalle), Schweizer Arbeiten von E.
L. Kirchner, Frankfurt am Main 1922,
preface. Quoted from: Magdalena M.
Moeller, Von Dresden nach Davos. Ernst
Ludwig Kirchner, Zeichnungen, BrückeMuseum Berlin, Munich 2004, p. 227
101
13
Albert Lebourg
(1849 Montfort-sur-Risle – 1928 Rouen)
Pont-du-Château 
River Landscape at Sunset
C. 1918. Oil on wood; 19.5 x 24 cm (7.68 x 9.45 in)
Signed lower left: ALebourg; estate stamp on the back
P rovenan ce : French private ownership; private ownership Southern Germany
T
1 Cf. Albert Lebourg.
Un impressioniste au fil de l’eau,
exh. cat. Musée Fournaise,
Chatou 2002, p. 4
2 Cf. id., op. cit., p. 20
he painting River Landscape at Sunset carries the viewer into the period of
Lebourg’s last stay in Pont-du-Château in 1918. Located in the Auvergne, central France, this small town is principally famous for its eponymous bridge dating
from the 18th century over the Allier, a tributary of the Loire. Lebourg loved this
region because the summer light there reminded him of his time in Algiers. 1
Highly esteemed in his lifetime and ranked among the best impressionist landscape painters, Albert Lebourg stayed in Pont-du-Château several times between
1884 and 1888, in 1905, and again in 1918. On his last stay he had no painting equipment with him. The painter had fled the bombs on Paris in March 1918 at the end
of the First World War. He first had to obtain the necessary materials but did
not get everything he wanted. Consequently he could only produce drawings and
small-sized pictures that time.
After his childhood in Montfort-sur-Risle in Normandy and his education in
Rouen, where he initially studied architecture, Lebourg worked as a drawing teacher
in Algiers.Through his participation in an exhibition in Rouen in 1872, which also presented works by Camille Corot (Paris, 1796 – 1875), Claude Monet (1840 Paris – 1926
Giverny), Félix Ziem (1821 Beaune – 1911 Paris), Camille Pissarro (1830 Charlotte
Amalie – 1903 Paris) and Alfred Sisley (1839 Paris – 1899 Moret-sur-Loing),
Lebourg became acquainted with an art collector who invited him to Algiers.
There he underwent a lasting influence from the painter Jean Seignemartin
(1848 Lyon – 1875 Algiers). Lebourg now abandoned the previously customary
dark ground and experimented with tone-on-tone paint application, using a
dominant main colour and additional related tones. In 1877 Lebourg returned to
France. He lived mainly in Paris, its surroundings, and in Rouen. When he again
participated in an exhibition at the Salon Municipal in Rouen in 1878, his pictures
caught the art dealer Alphonse Portier’s eye. He subsequently enabled Lebourg to
take part in the Impressionists’ exhibition of 1879. In 1880, Lebourg exhibited with
the impressionists again. He was strongly influenced by their works, but still had
little personal contact with the group. 2 He was probably better acquainted only
102
1 Albert Lebourg, La neige en Auvergne, 1886
(Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen)
3 Cf. Laurent Salomé, Marie-Claude
Condert, Les impressionistes.
Musée des Beaux-Arts de
Rouen, ed., Paris 2002, p. 86
2 Albert Lebourg, Bords de la Seine à Bougival, 1885
(private collection)
with Alfred Sisley and Armand Guillaumin (1841 Paris – 1927 Orly). Lebourg
was in fact somewhat younger than most of the Impressionists and he always
preferred working alone. Furthermore, he himself reported that it took him a
long time to understand the Impressionists’ intentions. 3 Nevertheless, he studied their works intensively. Above all, Monet, Pissarro and Sisley, but also the
older painter Eugène Boudin (1824 Honfleur – 1898 Deauville) and the Hague
School were sources of stimulation for his pictures. In terms of paint application,
Lebourg’s works of that period are still to some extent even richer in contrast,
less detailed and less form-dissolving, and thus more traditional that those of
the well-known impressionists.
From that time onwards, Lebourg was able to establish himself as a successful
painter. He was represented in many exhibitions, for example in Brussels in 1887 at
the exhibition of the artists’ group »Les Vingt«. Later followed regular participations in the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and exhibitions in individual galleries. In 1896 came his first of several solo exhibitions that followed in
Paris. Especially after his wife’s death in 1894, Lebourg travelled a great deal and
often stayed for months in various regions of France, in Holland and Switzerland
in order to paint there. Journeys to Belgium and England familiarised him with
the art movements there. But Lebourg always also visited the important museums
of old masters. Using many of these stimuli, he advanced to become a successful
painter who is undeservedly little known outside France today. In 1903 his works
were even on show in Hanoi, Vietnam. However, in 1920 he suffered a brain
haemorrhage in Rouen that left him paralysed on one side and only allowed him
to continue painting in a limited way. In 1921 he married for the second time. In
1923 through his acquaintance Léonce Bénédite, a curator at the Musée du Luxembourg, a biography was published with a list of over 2000 works. Lebourg died
in Rouen in 1928.
After his return to France, Lebourg became famous mainly as a painter of
snow scenes, winter pictures (fig. 1) and river landscapes – in particular of the
Seine – whereas in his early works in Algiers he had naturally dealt mainly with
oriental themes. His initially grey-dominated palette quickly lightened under the
influence of the impressionists. Predominantly blue or pink general tones now
104
increasingly replaced his orientation towards grey. However, despite his Impressionist painting style Lebourg hesitated to abandon
painting in the studio for open-air painting. He often, in fact, started pictures in the open air in front of the subject, but then went
on to complete them in the studio. Likewise he also painted from
memory. Yet from 1885 on open-air painting dominated. His stroke
increasingly became looser and the effect of the pictures ever more
sketchy (fig. 2). Lebourg liked to use larger formats, probably
mainly to be able to attract attention in the salon. Moreover, largesized landscapes quite generally accorded with public taste in the
latter half of the century.
The decorative, and for Lebourg strikingly small picture of the
3 Albert Lebourg, Pont-du-Chateau, 1918
river landscape with the sunset reflected in the Allier is grounded with pink and, next to the yellow of the sun, determined by
orange-pink and blue-green tones that dominate the banks with their vegetation
and the sky. The sun still stands only slightly above the horizon and is reflected, as
are the bushes and trees, in the calm water of the river. The pictorial space seems
open and unbounded. The painting style here is so dissolved into spontaneous
brushstrokes that objects are only sketchily indicated. They are abbreviations. The
stroke has taken on a life entirely of its own. The act of painting can still almost
be sensed. The wooden base has remained partly visible at the edges; the gounding
shines through. It is all about the direct effect of the colour and the dynamic line.
Here Lebourg composes with colour values, with light and with dynamic forms,
no longer with objects. Therefore there are also no contour lines. Yet with him this
does not amount to such a conscious destruction of form as was characteristic of
early modernism. The association remains. But also for Lebourg a picture of this
kind is no longer primarily about the imitation of nature.
In this painting style, Lebourg approaches tendencies that also characterise
Claude Monet’s late work. A surface vibrant with colour draws its effect mainly
from the autonomous quality of the colours and the direction of the brush strokes,
no longer from an illusionist section of nature. From here it was only a relatively
short step towards abstraction, away from Late Impressionism with its adherence
to representationalism. The painters of the post-1900 period mainly searched for
the means (colour and form) appropriate to their medium of expression and no
longer saw the goal of painting in the portrayal of a given subject that had so long
determined the understanding of art. It is not about anything empirical but about
the experience of colour. This was supposed to generate a much more direct relationship between the viewer and the picture. This may still turn the perception of
what is portrayed into a fusion with an experience of nature. Lebourg’s works were
all imbued with his love of nature. However, completely alien to Lebourg was the
rationalist concept of geometrical abstraction in its striving to overwhelm nature,
which began to revolutionise art in the second decade of the 20th century.
It might be objected that Lebourg’s picture with its modest dimensions and
in its fleeting painting style after all really only constituted a sketch. Yet even
this strict division between a completed work and the »mere« sketch (study)
had dissolved during the 19th century in a longer-term process that could be
traced right back to John Constable (1776 East Bergholt – 1837 London) or
105
Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (1793 Wien – 1865 Hinterbrühl / Mödling), but was mainly due to Impressionism. 4
Lebourg’s stylistic development and chronology of
works are widely unexplained, as many pictures are in
private collections and poorly documented. Lebourg
certainly signed most of his pictures, but seldom dated
them. The monographs by Léonce Bénédite and François Lespinasse certainly compile a chronology, mainly
according to the themes portrayed, but a modern catalogue raisonné is only now in preparation. 5 However, the
extremely loose painting style with the autonomous
stroke clearly corresponds to the artist’s late work and
the tendencies of other painters at that time such as
Claude Monet or Pierre Bonnard (1867 Paris – 1947 Le
Cannet / Cannes). In his earlier works, Lebourg mostly
4 Albert Lebourg, Les bords de la Marne, undated
pursued an essentially more compact representation of
objects, a greater illusion of space and a more unified
application of paint. Similarly, in the signatures of the
late works the individual letters of his name look looser
and more isolated than before. A comparative example
in Lebourg’s works is provided by a picture such as
Pont-du-Château (fig. 3), whose signature of which is
extremely similar. By its theme, small size and painting
style, the picture is definitely dated to 1918 in connection
with Lebourg’s last stay in Pont-du-Château. Great stylistic similarity is shown in late pictures such as Les bords
de la Marne (fig. 4) and La Seine à Marly (fig. 5).
The late Impressionist Lebourg, who is ranked among
the School of Rouen painters, was no avant-garde artist,
although he was said to have painted the same theme
5 Albert Lebourg, La Seine à Marly, undated
in different light conditions even before Monet – albeit
never in such extensive series as became customary
for Monet. However, Lebourg quickly adopted innovations of the period and
worked them into coherent landscape pictures that are replete with intense experience of nature and colour as well as experimental applications of paint.
hk
4 Karin Sagner-Düchting, ed.,
Claude Monet und die Moderne,
exh. cat. Hypo-Kulturstiftung,
Munich 2001, p. 25
References: Léonce Bénédite, A. Bergand, Albert Lebourg, Paris 1923 – Jean-Albert Cartier, Albert Lebourg
1849 – 1928. Dokumentation, Les Cahiers d’art – Documents, no. 10, 1955 – François Lespinasse, Albert Lebourg
1849 – 1928, Rouen 1983 – Laurent Salomé, Marie-Claude Condert, Les impressionistes, Musée des Beaux-Arts
de Rouen, ed., Paris 2002 – Albert Lebourg. Un impressioniste au fil de l’eau, exh. cat. Musée Fournaise, Chatou
2002 – Mathilde Legendre, François Lespinasse, Albert Lebourg. Itinéraire d’un Impressioniste normand, exh.
cat. Musée Canel, Pont-Audemer 2009
5 The catalogue raisonné is being
compiled by Rodolphe Walter,
Wildenstein Institute, Paris.
106
6 Albert Lebourg, Les bords de la Marne (Privatsammlung)
[eventuell Abb. in Lespinasse 1983, S. 212]
14
Franz Seraph von Lenbach
(1836 Schrobenhausen – 1904 Munich)
Countess Elisabeth von
Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn
Oil study
After 1870. Oil on wood; 31 x 20.5 cm (12.2 x 8 inch)
P rovenan ce : Acquired by the Lenbachhaus in 1929 from private ownership.
Ceded to private ownership in 1953 by Arthur Rümann, then Director of the
Lenbachhaus. 2006 private ownership, Switzerland
T
he oil study shows Count Gustav von Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn’s
daughter, Countess Elisabeth von Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn (4.12.1845–
20.5.1883), from Munich, aged around 25. In this painting at the beginning
of the 1870s, Franz von Lenbach created one of the sought-after society
portraits that brought him fame at that time. In an attractive oval shape,
this elegant likeness shows the Countess von Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn as
a half-portrait. With a masterly soft brush, the painter presents the young
woman’s proud bearing full of spiritual dynamism and emotionality.
The head turned to the side creates spontaneity and gives her a lively
expression. The magnificence of her red-golden curly hair accentuates the
rose-red tender complexion of her soft youthful face, which is reproduced
almost in front view. Elisabeth von Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn radiates
youthful freshness but also mature womanliness. Her small full mouth
reveals sensuality. The round chin suggests an energetic, determined
personality. The eyes, mouth and chin are ideally proportioned to the
fine, narrow nose. The moistly gleaming eyes look attentively and mildly
but also slightly mockingly out of the picture. They are reminiscent
of the distinguished portraits by Peter Paul Rubens (1577 Siegen – 1640
Antwerpen) that Franz von Lenbach had studied and also copied during
1 Peter Paul Rubens, The three Graces, ca. 1635
his stays in Italy and Spain, such as The three Graces in Prado (fig. 1).1 The
(Prado, Madrid)
beautifully curved eyebrows give the countess a bold and noble appearance. The radiant, slightly rounded forehead supports her auburn locks piled high
up according to the fashion of the time, which are further emphasised at the top
with a dark ribbon. Everything in the young woman’s expression emanates nobi1 See Sonja Mehl, Franz von
Lenbach in der Städtischen
lity, solemnity and prominence. The study captures her essential character traits
Galerie München, Munich 1980,
cat. no. 117 – 128, pp. 89 – 92
and integrates her in the role befitting her rank without getting lost in detail.
108
Elisabeth von Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn’s deep neckline is becomingly concealed on the left and right by a
bright scarf tied above her breasts in a flower-like knot.
A long string of gleaming pearls subtly adorns the delicate neck right down to her bosom. An opulent pendant
on her left ear further enhances Elisabeth von SaynWittgenstein-Sayn’s aristocratic descent and beauty and
accentuates the turn of her head. In a sketchily quick
and light manner the deft painter created in this study a
vivacious picture of the future bride of Prince Otto von
Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg (1842 – 911), whom she
married not long afterwards in 1875.
Using this preliminary study Franz von Lenbach
created a half-length portrait in oil on canvas in 1872, the
first version of which was restored from German Federal
Republic ownership to the rightful heirs of the former
Jewish owners in 2004, and a replica that is in private
ownership in Southern Germany. 2 In that period the
painter reached the first climax of his career with the
commission for a portrait of the Austrian Emperor
Franz Joseph (1872 / 73). Hardly any other 19th-century
painter painted the portraits of so many high-ranking
rulers of his day as Franz von Lenbach. These included
the two German emperors Wilhelm I and Wilhelm
II, the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph, Pope Leo XIII
and Reich Chancellor Bismarck, whose official portraitist Lenbach was, as well as many prominent figures
from commercial, artistic and society circles of the late
19th century. His oil studies often remained unsigned
because of their personal nature, including the portrait
of his Viennese art dealer Georg Plach (fig. 2), which
he produced in Hans Makart’s (1840 Salzburg – 1884
2 Franz von Lenbach, The Viennese Art Dealer
Vienna) Viennese studio.3
Georg Plach, 1873 (private ownership)
The Munich »painter-prince« was famous for his
new type of society portrait in Germany’s founding
period.4 Everything in his portraits is aimed at pose, staging and appreciation
of the person and is oriented towards savoir faire, advantage and historical role.
Nevertheless, the subjects appear spontaneous and radiate an almost personal
engagement. Regardless of whether his subject is a scholar, a fellow artist, a busi2 See Sonja Mehl,
nessman or an aristocrat, Lenbach attributes dignity to every personality and
loc. cit., cat. no. 450, p. 215
gives it significance. Lenbach revolutionised the status portrait by combining
3 On Hans Makart see also our
explanations in the jubilee catalogue
old-masterly bearing greatly valued by the public with social opulence and a
vol. 1, cat. no. 19, p. 136 ff.
psychological apprehension of the subject’s character. As a young painter, he had
4 Rosel Gollek, Winfried Ranke (eds.),
particularly studied the portraits by Titian and Velázquez (fig. 3), which led him
Franz von Lenbach 1836 – 1904, exh.
cat. Lenbachhaus, Munich, 1987
to this new almost »magical form of portraiture«.5
5 Cf. Winfried Ranke, Franz von
Franz von Lenbach was one of the first to adopt the modern medium of phoLenbach. Der Münchner Malerfürst,
Cologne 1986, p. 153
tography and he used photographs produced in his own studio as a basis for the
110
3 Diego Velázquez, Portrait of
a Lady with a Fan, ca. 1640 – 1642
(Wallace Collection, London)
working process. Then he would alter the photograph by painting until it captured
the person’s essential features.6 Contemporaries inspired by his portraits therefore
also called Lenbach a »painter of souls« and compared the »psychologist with the
brush« with his childhood friend and fellow artist, the Viennese »painter-prince«
Hans von Makart.
Elisabeth von Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn only lived to the age of 38. The painter
Franz von Lenbach made the prematurely deceased woman memorable for posterity. Her picture tells us of a bygone era and reminds us of a destiny that is almost
unknown today.
bb
References: Sonja Mehl, Franz von Lenbach in der Städtischen Galerie München, Munich 1980 – Rosel Gollek,
Winfried Ranke (eds.), Franz von Lenbach 1836 – 1904, exh. cat. Lenbachhaus, Munich 1987 – Winfried Ranke,
Franz von Lenbach. Der Münchner Malerfürst, Cologne 1986 – J. A. Schmoll a.k.a. Eisenwerth, Lenbach,
Stuck und die Rolle der photographischen Bildnisstudie. Photographie und Malerei. Zur doppelten Moral der
normativen Ästhetik des 19. Jahrhunderts, in: Photographische Bildnisstudien zu Gemälden von Lenbach und
Stuck, exh. cat. Museum Folkwang, Essen 1969
6 Cf. J. A. Schmoll alias Eisenwerth,
Lenbach, Stuck und die Rolle der
photographischen Bildnisstudie. Photographie
und Malerei. Zur doppelten Moral der
normativen Ästhetik des 19.Jahrhunderts, in:
Photographische Bildnisstudien zu Gemälden
von Lenbach und Stuck, exh. cat. Museum
Folkwang, Essen 1969, unpaginated
111
15
Max Liebermann
(1847 Berlin – 1935 Berlin)
Rose Garden in Wannsee
August 1928. Pastel on brownish vellum, 20.5 x 29.5 cm (8.07 x 11.61 in)
Signed bottom left: M. Liebermann
P rovenan ce : Private ownership, South Germany
C atalog ue R ai s o nn ée : The pastel is being included in the catalogue raisonnée of
Max Liebermann’s drawings and pastels which Dr. Margreet Nouwen, Berlin, is preparing.
I
1 Leopold von Kalckreuth,
Alfred Lichtwark (detail), 1912
(Kunsthalle Hamburg) (left)
2 Max Liebermann, Albert Brodersen,
1920 (private ownership) (right)
1 On this, see: Stefanie K. Werner,
»Mein Garten lechzt nach
Ihnen«. Alfred Lichtwark – Max
Liebermann. Briefe und
Photos, in: Im Garten von Max
Liebermann, exh. cat.. Hamburger
Kunsthalle / Nationalgalerie
Berlin 2004, pp. 165 – 184
2 Rainald Eckert, Max Liebermann,
der Wannsee-Garten und die
Gartenkunst, in: Im Garten von Max
Liebermann, exh. cat.. Hamburg
Berlin, Berlin 2004, pp. 50 – 60
n 1909 at the age of 62 Max Liebermann acquired a
summer residence in the Alsen villa colony by the
Wannsee. In a large garden right next to the lake he
had himself a palatial villa built which satisfied the
representational needs of the city’s upper middle class.
Liebermann had the garden designed by Albert Brodersen
(1857 Gut Ascheberg – 1930 Berlin), later the director of
Berlin’s city parks (fig. 2), and for this he consulted his
friend Alfred Lichtwark (Hamburg, 1852 – 1914) (fig. 1). 1
Lichtwark was the director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle. He greatly influenced the creation of the Hamburg
city park and designed gardens for his painter friend
Leopold Karl Walter Count von Kalckreuth (1855 Düsseldorf – 1928 Hittfeld)
as well as for Liebermann.
Liebermann’s Wannsee garden was an artist’s garden and a »reform« garden. 2
Above all, however, it conformed to the ideas of the Italian Renaissance garden,
which Alfred Lichtwark 3 had made the authority for contemporary horticulture.
Lichtwark, an art historian, defined a garden as a space to be used as a recreation room, an »open-air living room«, whose spaces should be articulated with
the matter-of-factness of Italian villa gardens. 4 It is not known whether here he
relied on the theories of the humanist Leon Battista Alberti (1404 Genoa – 1472
Rome) and his ten books on architecture De re aedificatoria (1443 – 1453) but this
can be assumed. 5 This Italian Renaissance philosopher drew upon the ancient
Roman concepts of Pliny the Younger (62 Como – c. 113 Turkey). Like Max
Liebermann, he favoured a villa with a garden on the outskirts of the city. According to Alberti 6 a design befitting one’s social standing is surrounded by a larger
pleasure-garden open to visitors. This corresponds to Liebermann’s large garden
112
3 Plan of the Wannsee garden
4 Working in the rose garden.
Photograph 1911
3 Correspondence with
Max Liebermann. See Stefanie
K. Werner, loc. cit., exh. cat.,
Hamburger Kunsthalle / Nationalgalerie Berlin 2004, p. 173 f.
4 Bert Beitmann, Gartenkunst,
I. no. 51. Die Reformansätze
in Deutschland, section 6
5 Despite the highly-detailed
analyses of horticulture and of the
models for the Liebermann garden,
unfortunately the catalogue for the
Hamburg / Berlin exhibition, Im
Garten von Max Liebermann, Berlin
2004, does not, astonishingly enough,
address this very topic of the classical
concept of the Renaissance garden.
6 Leon Battista Alberti treats the
subject of garden design in various
places in De re aedificatoria.
7 Angelika Wesenberg, Die Idee vom
Garten und von der Gartennatur.
Das wieder entdeckte Wandbild der
Loggia, in: Im Garten von Max
Liebermann, exh. cat. Hamburger
Berlin 2004, pp. 39 – 49
lawn, which stretches down to the Wannsee; the garden layout should also include
a giardino segreto on the side. This corresponds to Liebermann’s hedge gardens. And it
should also have a kitchen garden, which in
Liebermann’s case is a front garden stretching
to the landward side of the Wannsee villa (fig. 3).
The three gardens, according to Alberti,
should be subdivided into geometrical flowerbeds and demarcated by ornamental box or
quincunx plantations. At least one of the gardens should also possess shady pergolas and
cooling water.
The Wannsee villa fulfils all the criteria which Alberti had set down. It is situated by the water, like the summer residences of the late Roman aristocracy. According to Alberti, even the house should contain elements of the garden in the form
of still-lifes on the walls, and the garden scenes on the loggias fulfil the requirements of the Renaissance philosopher. Angelika Wesenberg was able to demonstrate that when Liebermann was decorating the loggia with paintings in 1911 he
took as his model the Pompeian murals in the garden room of the Villa di Livia in
Pozzuoli, dating from the 1st century A.D. 7
Hedge gardens have a central role in the total concept of the garden. 8 In line
with Alfred Lichtwark’s thinking, 9 three room-like »green chambers« were created, situated one behind the other between neatly-clipped hornbeam hedges; the
hedge walls of the »chambers« were intended to make people wonder what was
hidden behind them, as in the giardini segreti. The square of lime-trees, the oval
garden and the rose garden succeed one another, bound into a dominating axial
system, the central axis of which leads down to the path on the shore. The individual flower beds are clearly structured all’ italiana by strongly geometrical basic
forms, such as squares, rectangles, ovals and circles. 10 The rose garden, the subject
of our pastel, and the square of lime trees also have pergolas with charming vistas,
to form a natural architecture.
The entire garden complex was completed in 1910, and from that time it inspired Max Liebermann to produce important works in quick succession from 1914
onwards. The Liebermann family moved into the house in July 1910 and spent the
summer months at the Wannsee every year until shortly before Max Liebermann’s
death in 1935. The garden is the subject of around 250 oil paintings, drawings and
pastels. They observe the changing seasons and undulating flowerbeds but also
show garden labourers and people wandering along the paths in contemplation or
resting on the garden benches.
The painter produced the first two garden pictures, of the kitchen garden, in
1910, sketching impasto alla prima with broad swift brushstrokes. 11 Larger series
followed in 1915 / 16 and 1920 / 21. These showed the kitchen garden with the
gardener’s shed, 12 the large lawn with the flower terrace 13 and birch avenue 14 and
the hedge gardens. 15
The rose garden initially consisted of low rosebushes, as a 1911 photograph
shows (fig. 4). Liebermann produced the first known view of the rose garden with
114
6 Max Liebermann, The Rose Garden by the Wannsee,
1928. Pastel (Franke-Schenk gallery, catalogue raisonnée of the drawings and pastels by Dr. Margreet
Nouwen, in preparation)
5 Max Liebermann, The Rose Garden in Wannsee, 1920. Oil / cnv.
(private ownership USA, catalogue raisonnée 1920 / 29)
the rose pavilion in 1920 (fig. 5). The painter’s standpoint and the
angle of the view already correspond to the subsequent images from
1928. The six rose arches stand in the middle of the square, beside
them Liebermann portrays his daughter and granddaughter. Assembled from simple iron poles formed into a circle, the rose arches are
crossed and surrounded by sandy paths, whose diagonal and circular
forms dramatically articulate the image. A study for the painting, an
oil sketch, has been preserved (Eberle, cat. rais., no. 1920 / 28). This
method of working supports the assumption that our pastel with the
view of the rose garden is not a preliminary study for the two oil
paintings of the same theme but was executed by Liebermann as an
autonomous creation.
Eight years later, in 1928, the date of our pastel, the red flowering
rose bushes had almost completely overgrown the iron arches on one
side. Their luxuriant and splendid blooms inspired Max Liebermann
to produce three new versions of this motif in quick succession, in pastels 16 and in oils 17 (figs. 6 – 8). These works are indebted to the 1920
composition but are viewed from rather closer, at a steeper angle, and
are identical to one another in every detail.
Each of the flowering rose arches appears to be bound into a
framework of cunningly laid-out compositional axes. Hedges and
paths extend the spatial structure dominated by diagonals and based
on the classic rules of the golden section. This structure begins at
the left edge of the picture, just where the path leading through the
rose garden disappears into the dense green. Liebermann uses the
perspective over-extension of the axes, typical of his work, to create
great spatial intensity, which typifies his garden pictures and has a
7 Max Liebermann, The Rose Garden by the Wannsee,
1928. Oil / cnv. (location unknown, cat. rais. 1928 / 18)
8 Max Liebermann, The Rose Garden by the Wannsee, 1928.
Oil / cnv. (private ownership, Cologne, cat. rais. 1928 / 19)
115
9 Edouard Manet, The Bench, 1881
(private ownership) (right)
10 Claude Monet, Flowering Arches.
Giverny, 1913 (Phoenix Art Museum)
(below)
8 Correspondence with Max
Liebermann. See Stefanie K. Werner,
loc. cit., exh. cat. Hamburger
Berlin 2004, p. 173 f.
9Ibid.
10 Heinrich Klotz, De re aedificatoria,
Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 32nd
vol., H. 2 (Berlin 1969), pp. 93 – 103
11 Eberle, cat. rais., no. 1910 / 9
and 1910 / 10, p.793
12 Eberle, cat. rais., no. 1910 / 9 – 10,
1920 / 17 – 22, 1921 / 19 – 24, 1922 / 21
13 Eberle, cat. rais.,
no. 1920 / 23 – 26, 1921 / 25 – 30
no. 1921 / 31 Birch Avenue
15 Eberle, cat. rais., no. 1925 / 18,
The Round Flowerbed in the
Hedge Garden with a Woman
Watering the Flowers, 1925
16 The pastel is being included
in the catalogue raisonnée of
Max Liebermann’s drawings
and pastels which Dr. Margreet
Nouwen, Berlin, is preparing.
no. 1928 / 18 and 1928 / 19
18 On this see Jens Eric Howoldt,
»Von allen Ländern lächelt jenes
Eckchen der Erde mich an ...«, in:
Im Garten von Max Liebermann,
exh. cat. Hamburg / Berlin,
Berlin 2004, p. 16
monumental effect. 18 Working on strictly geometrical principles, the painter contrasts
the semicircle of the rose arch with the semicircle of the vista, where, as if through
an opened window, the sailing boats on the Wannsee can be seen gliding past, in
tender tones of blue and white. Liebermann wrote in a letter in 1928, the same year in
which he painted the pictures, that the viewer would feel something of the joy he
had experienced himself when painting. »This picture at any rate is one of the freshest I painted recently.« 19 The whole picture breathes the light self-forgetfulness
and magic of a sunny summer day.
The fact that Liebermann recorded his view of the rose garden in pastels as
well as in two oil paintings in the same year, 1928, betrays not only his passion for
this motif of the rose garden but also the significance which he accorded to this
technique in his oeuvre. Pastel crayons enabled the artist to bring out atmospheric
values particularly well. »Pastels constitute the transition from drawing to painting. […] With this technique dry coloured crayon marks are applied to a painting
surface and smudged for blending them.« 20
Liebermann used crayons in wide variation, chalky and broad, sharp-pointed,
applied in forceful, delicate or blurring strokes, alongside or on top of each other,
in order to convey the impression of a painting. The sfumato of the glorious blossom and the trees depicted with rapid rhythmic and sketchy strokes express the
gentle breeze in the summer heat and the perfume of the luxuriant rose bushes.
Here again Liebermann proves himself to be a painter whose pictures unite, in
characteristic fashion, the classic compositional rules of harmony and measure with
the atmospheric concept of the Impressionists.
The stylistic closeness of Max Liebermann’s works to the paintings of Edouard
Manet (Paris, 1832 – 1883) is of utmost importance. His garden pictures are the »mandatory model« 21 for the Berlin artist. Liebermann had become acquainted with the
strict compositional manner and the upper middle class subjects of the French master during his many trips to Paris. The direct stimulus for the compositional design
116
11 Max Liebermann, The Round Flowerbed in the Hedge Garden
with a Woman Watering the Flowers, 1925 (private ownership
Switzerland, cat. rais. 1925 / 18)
12 Max Liebermann, Garden of the Stevenstift in Leyden, 1890
(Graphisches Kabinett Wolfgang Werner, cat. rais. 1890 / 2)
13 Max Liebermann, Villa in Hilversum, 1901
(Nationalgalerie Berlin, cat. rais. 1901 / 1)
14 Max Liebermann, Garden in Noordwijk-Binnen, 1909
(private ownership 1909 / 20)
15 Max Liebermann, View of the
Arnold Garden in Wannsee, 1911
(location unknown, cat. rais. 1911 / 8)
19 Letter dated Dec. 2nd 1928 to
Mr Gutbier, owner of the Arnold
art gallery in Dresden, private
ownership, Cologne. Quoted from
Eberle, cat. rais., no. 1928 / 19
20 Hajo Düchting,
Grundlagen der künstlerischen
Gestaltung. Wahrnehmung,
Farben- und Formenlehre,
Techniken, Cologne 2003, p. 115
21 Holly Richardson,
»un jardin de peintre«, in:
Im Garten von Max Liebermann,
exh. cat. Hamburg / Berlin,
Berlin 2004, p. 37
22 Richardson, loc. cit., p. 34
of the rose garden pastel may be considered to be Manet’s painting The Bench of
1881 (fig. 9). It was painted in the artist’s garden at Rueil near Versailles. The pictures by the two artists are linked, not just by the Impressionistic mode of painting,
the espalier roses and the pergolas, but above all by the layout and the close view
of the aspect reproduced in a strictly geometrical pattern. In 1903 Liebermann
presented Manet’s Bench at the Berlin Secession, of which he was then president.
One of the indications of how much the painting meant to him is that he had it
printed in the Secession’s exhibition catalogue. 22
Many artists around the turn of the century were also inspired by Claude
Monet (1840 Paris – 1926 Giverny) and his garden at Giverny. In 1890, just a few
years before Max Liebermann, the French Impressionist had acquired a plot of
land in that village about 50 kilometres from Paris, and on it he gradually laid out
a magnificent garden with a water-lily pond, which served him as a model for
numerous garden pictures, including his world-famous »nymphéas«.
Although Claude Monet’s unfettered colourism was of a different character
from Max Liebermann’s more restrained, yet gauzy style, he and the French master
had in common an aestheticism of nature which replaced the mood painting of
the Barbizon School in the 2nd half of the 19th century. In their plein air painting the »divine beauty« of nature became the model for »divinely beautiful« art,
the new ideal of optimistic reaching for paradise. It is founded on the withdrawal into the private idyll which especially characterises Liebermann’s late work.
In Claude Monet’s picture Flowering Arches of 1913 (fig. 10) this transfiguration of
nature finds an almost hymn-like expression. The painting shows the high latticework overgrown with rambling roses which Monet had set up in order to hide the
railway embankment cutting through his garden at Giverny.
118
Liebermann first conceived his ideal of man living in harmony with nature
in his rural subjects, his critical opposition to the industrial age. In the 1890s the
world of agricultural labour gave way to the leisure pursuits of the upper classes of
a specialised urban society. Tending the garden and relaxation in natural surroundings characterise the painter’s images from that time (fig. 11).
However, the representation of the garden motif began with the rural scenes which
he had produced during his summers in Holland in the 1880s and 1890s. At that time,
he still added to his garden images elaborate genre scenes, and he chose as his themes
public institutions such as the Stevenstift for the old and needy in Leyden (fig. 12).
Shortly before the turn of the century Liebermann gradually shifted towards
depicting the gardens of the upper classes. Thus, shortly after 1900 he painted the
garden of the Dutch villa at Hilversum in the manner of Edouard Manet – with
the house as a vista (fig. 13). In the period when he was considering a summer residence of his own three views of a garden in Noordwijk in Holland followed in
1908 / 1909 (fig. 14). In 1911 the view of the neighbouring Arnold garden at Wannsee
was produced (fig. 15). The theme is the garden only, without the house.
According to Alfred Lichtwark, »the garden exists not for the plants but for
the people«. Nowhere but in gardens the relationship of man to nature, to his own
sensuality, to his environment and to himself is so clear. With his garden pictures,
Max Liebermann is one of the painters whose intentions – like the literati, especially Goethe in the »Wahlverwandtschaften« – goes far beyond lovely garden
scenery. In the pictures by the German Impressionist the understanding of nature
and the intellectual conflicts of the time are given as great a voice as the artist’s
social attitude and cultural aspirations.
bb
References: Matthias Eberle, Max Liebermann: Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde und Ölstudien, 2 vols., Munich 1995
(catalogue raisonnée) – Sigrid Achenbach, Max Liebermann als Zeichner, in: Angelika Wesenberg, ed., Max
Liebermann. Jahrhundertwende, exh. cat., Nationalgalerie Berlin 1997 – Günter Busch, Max Liebermann: Maler,
Zeichner, Graphiker, Frankfurt am Main 1986 – Günter Busch, Die Bedeutung der Pastelle im Werk Liebermanns,
in: »Nichts trügt weniger als der Schein« Max Liebermann, der deutsche Impressionist, exh. cat. Kunsthalle Bremen
1995 – 96, Munich 1995 – Ruth Langenberg, Die Autonomie der Kunst: Zu den Quellen der kunsttheoretischen
Ansichten Liebermanns und Tschudis, in: Angelika Wesenberg, Ruth Langenberg, eds., Im Streit um die
Moderne: Max Liebermann, Der Kaiser, Die Nationalgalerie, Berlin 2001 – Max Liebermann, Zwei Holzschnitte
von Manet (1905), in: Max Liebermann Die Phantasie in der Malerei: Schriften und Reden, Frankfurt am Main
1978 – G. Tobias Natter, Julius H. Schoeps, eds., Max Liebermann und die französischen Impressionisten, exh.
cat. Jüdisches Museum Vienna 1997 – 98, Cologne 1997 – Holly Richardson, Landschaftsmalerei ist die schwerste
Kunst, in: Max Liebermann. Der Realist und die Phantasie, exh. cat. Kunsthalle Hamburg et al., Hamburg 1997
119
16
Max Liebermann
(1847 Berlin – 1935 Berlin)
Street in Scheveningen
1892. Oil on cardboard. Signed and dated lower right: M.Liebermann 92. 34.4 x 49.5 cm
(13,5 x 19,5 in.). Reverse: two labels on the left reading »Kunsthandlung Paul Cassirer,
Berlin Berlin W Victoriastr. M. Liebermann 107 Strasse in Scheveningen« and a pink
label, presumably also Cassirer’s, reading »No. 2041 Liebermann Scheveningen.«
P rovenan ce : Paul Cassirer, Berlin; Philipp Freudenberg, from 1906; Karl von
der Heydt (1858 Elberfeld – 1922 Elberfeld), acquired Berlin, 1911, 1914; sold by
Keller & Reiner, Berlin, after 1933; Thomer Collection, Freiburg i. Br., sold 2001;
private collection, Monaco
E xhibi t ion : 1933: Keller & Reiner, Berlin
T
1 Erich Hancke, Max Liebermann.
Sein Leben und seine Werke.
Berlin, 1914, p. 254
2 Max J. Friedländer,
Max Liebermann
(Berlin, 1924), p. 41.
3 Barbara Gaehtgens, Holland als
Vorbild. In Max Liebermann:
Jahrhundertwende, ed. Angelika
Wesenberg, exh. cat., Nationalgalerie,
Berlin (1997), p. 34.
he oil sketch Street in Scheveningen (1892) dates from the beginning of Max
Liebermann’s Impressionist period and belongs to his major works. In 1914
Erich Hancke, the artist’s first biographer, described it as »one of the finest studies«
he produced in the summer of 1891: »The weather is blustery. A gust of wind, trapped between the rows of houses, sends aprons and skirts billowing. Clouds scud past
above the roofs, and a flag, evoking ships and masts, flutters in the wind.« 1
The depiction provides a kind of snapshot of daily life in Scheveningen. Villagers
are walking busily down the street, have stopped for a chat, or are observing the
goings-on from the wayside. The women wear long, wide skirts, which blow in
the wind, and heavy clogs. Eschewing details, Liebermann focuses on capturing a
fleeting moment. His leading characters are a hunched old woman, a man standing
around idly, or a mother in haste. With a few broad strokes of the brush he sketches
a cross-section of the Scheveningen population: young and old, children and couples,
men with their typical peaked caps, women sporting white bonnets – figures that
the artists saw and admired on his holidays. He depicts a village idyll on a normal
working day in the country without resorting to elaborate visual effects.
Liebermann, a native of Berlin, journeyed to the Netherlands for the first time
when he was twenty-four, visiting Amsterdam and Scheveningen in 1871 after a
stay in Düsseldorf. During subsequent decades he repeatedly summered in Laren,
The Hague, Katwijk, Noordwijk, Zandvoort, and Scheveningen, where he also
honeymooned in 1884. In the Netherlands he found a »good portion of the visual
material that he developed in his works.« 2
Dutch Old Masters, especially Frans Hals and Rembrandt, provided the most
important models for Liebermann’s painting. 3 And in The Hague in 1881 he made
120
121
the acquaintance of another major influence on his art,
Naturalist painter Josef Israels (1827 Groningen – 1911
The Hague). They shared both the loose, alla prima
brushwork typical of plein air painting and a predilection
for Dutch landscapes featuring elements of country life.
Street in Scheveningen belongs to a group of multifigured street scenes that Liebermann painted in countless variations over many years, beginning in 1890. He
approached his subjects from ever new perspectives,
rendering them as vivid »snapshots« of village life. Three
paintings may be cited by way of comparison with the
present work: Street in Zandvoort (fig. 1), which likewise belonged to art dealer Paul Cassirer in Berlin,
Street in a Dutch Village – Zandvoort (fig. 2), both 1890,
and Street Corner in Katwijk, 1891 (fig. 3). 4 Liebermann
specialist Matthias Ebele’s comments on the second of
these paintings apply equally well to Street in Scheveningen: »This study evinces nothing of the sedate delight in
narrative detail of his paintings from the early eighties
[...] all that has been relinquished here in favor of free,
almost violent painting.« 5
Eberle points out that Street in Scheveningen was
probably painted in 1891, although inscribed by the
artist with the year 1892. 6 Liebermann and his family
spent the summer of 1891 in Katwijk and Schevenin1 Max Liebermann, Street in Zandvoort, 1890;
gen. In 1911 Gustav Pauli, director of the Kunsthalle in
oil on cardboard (private collection)
Bremen and a friend of the artist, reproduced Street
in Scheveningen in his book on him. The caption there gives the title as Village
Square, Laren, the date as 1892, and the owner as Karl von der Heydt (1858 – 1922),
a banker and collector from Elbersfelde in the Ruhr district. 7 When a chalk drawing of the same view, identified as Scheveningen, appeared on the art market
in 1990 it could reasonably be assumed that Liebermann produced the oil sketch
in 1891, but did not sign and date it until the following year. 8 The drawing confirms the information on the two labels on the reverse of the painting, which name
Scheveningen as the location. 9
By 1891 – 92 Liebermann had developed fully the kind of composition typical of
4 Eberle 1995, pp. 370, no. 1890 / 17;
his open-air scenes from Dutch country life. In the painting Street in Scheveningen
374, no. 1890 / 19; and 392, no. 1891 / 12
he conveys the atmospheric unity of figures and space, light and movement, by
5 Eberle 1995, p. 374
reducing the forms to essentials. And he excludes identifying features almost enti6 Eberle 1995, p. 395
rely, which often makes it difficult to pinpoint the location of his views from
7 Pauli 1911, fig. p. 94
this period. His focus is on characteristic phenomena. Wind, for example, inte8 The drawing is mentioned in Eberle
rests him as a typical aspect of the Dutch lowlands. Indeed, Street in Scheveningen
1995, p. 395, but not reproduced there
might almost be called a »wind painting.« Though invisible in itself, wind is pre9 Two labels on the left read
»Kunsthandlung Paul Cassirer Berlin
sent throughout the image, rushing round the corner, buffeting the figures, and
Berlin W Victoriastr. M. Liebermann
shaking the flag flying above the roofs.
107 Strasse in Scheveningen«; a
third, pink label, presumably
Paint applied thickly in swift brushstrokes defines the scene. The palette, typialso Cassirer’s, reads »No. 2041
Liebermann Scheveningen.«
cal of the artist, is dominated by a few earthy reds, blacks, and browns. Flashes of
122
2 Max Liebermann,
Street in a Dutch Village – Zandvoort,
1890; oil on card (private collection)
pale blue sky pierce the dense cloud cover. Despite the overcast sky, the painting is
pervasively light in tone. The figures are bathed in a silver-gray light that softens
the outlines and renders the white of the bonnets and aprons luminous.
Painted alla prima in front of the motif, the oil sketch depicts space and the
arrangement of people and houses in the context of a composition conceived in
terms of a simple central perspective construction. The street, occupying the full
width of the picture at the lower edge, leads the viewer’s eye funnel-like into pictorial depth. This type of composition is characteristic of Liebermann’s work as
a whole. The horizontal arrangement of the houses in the middle distance halts
the eye’s passage, creating a kind of public stage in the center of the painting on
which village life is acted out. The figures are embedded in a rhythmic configuration of roofs and walls rendered as simply shaped areas of red, brown, and gray.
No single motif dominates the composition: the emphasis is on overall harmony among a set of individual components. This is one reason why Liebermann’s
painting in general has been seen as an early artistic embodiment of democratic
attitudes in Germany. His art evinces a shift in focus from the motifs depicted
to the composition as a whole. In Street in Scheveningen each motif occupies an
unshakable place within the triad of sky, earth, and village life. The houses and
figures crowded together in the central area form part of a life lived in harmony with nature, which is represented in terms of an ordered pictorial cosmos.
Depictions of everyday life in the street, along with simple scenes in orphanages, homes for old men, and secular schools, must be seen in the context of a
late nineteenth-century movement aimed at promoting concern for local environments and traditions. Invoking the ideal of an intact rural society, this Heimatbewegung recognized the threat posed by modern technology and sought to
combat its alienating and uprooting influence.
123
3 Max Liebermann,
Street Corner in Katwijk, 1891;
oil on card (private collection)
10 Hancke 1914, p. 254
11 The term was popular with members
of the Berlin Secession, which
Liebermann co-founded in 1899.
12 Ferdinand Stuttmann,
Max Liebermann
(Hannover, 1964), p. 10
13 The stripes on the Dutch flag are
horizontal, whereas on the French
flag they are arranged vertically
in the sequence blue, white,
and red (from left to right).
The Dutch flag flutters above the houses of Scheveningen, »evoking ships and
masts.« 10 This symbol of national identity underscores Liebermann’s goal of capturing the essential of a people in his paintings. In place of the folkloristic trappings still popular in the 1870s, he embraced an unsentimental, simple approach
to the depiction of weavers, farmers, net-menders, and other ordinary people
and their work. His »mood paintings« 11 give expression to the picturesque and
poetic qualities of the simple life. One critic has noted: »Things that can be
experienced optically occupy center stage in all periods of [Liebermann’s] work,
and the experience of reality appears as the sole content of his painting.« 12 This
big-city child and son of a banker breathed life and soul into his representations
of rural life in an intensely personal way, recording his experience of it on canvas
with spontaneous immediacy.
The Dutch flag has the same colors as the French – red, white, and blue – and
the two are easily confused. 13 Liebermann will have enjoyed prompting such
confusion because, alongside Dutch painting, he regarded the Barbizon artists,
together with Gustave Courbet (1819 Ornans – 1877 La-Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland) and the Realist school, as his most important models. Around the time he
painted Street in Scheveningen he was becoming increasingly open to the influence of modern French art. In 1893, two years after producing the oil sketch, he
began locating his multi-figure scenes more and more frequently in beer gardens and parks. Leisure pursuits in an urban society based on the division of
labor thus came to replace the working world of rural communities. In Street in
Scheveningen, produced on the threshold of a major turning-point in his artistic
124
development, Liebermann made subtle use of pictorial rhetoric to institute an
artistic dialogue between the two countries that had always exerted the greatest influence on his work. For forty years he summered almost every year in the
Netherlands, and in 1873 he initiated a series of many visits to Paris, a habit halted
only by the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
Liebermann’s images of the poor, combined with the new modes of representation he embraced in the late 1880s, constituted a revolution in German painting. The
plein air oil sketch supplanted the studio painting, since the desired primacy of direct
experience could be reflected adequately only in an image produced spontaneously
outdoors in front of the motif. This precluded the detailed working-up in the studio
demanded by academic practice. Around 1890 Liebermann was therefore a leading
avant-garde artist. He ushered in a kind of painting that the conservative educated
bourgeoisie decried as unfinished, earning him the sobriquet »the apostle of ugliness.« This type of painting reached maturity in Street in Scheveningen.
A painting like this not only undermined visual convention and the foundations of contemporary artistic judgment; it also called into question the achievements of industrial progress. In his »mood painting« the »master of German
Impressionism« ennobled a kind of rural existence that was rapidly disappearing.
Embedded in nature and oblivious to the rest of the world, this rural population
went about its daily business despite the hardness of the life they led. In this and
other Dutch paintings the artist did away entirely with the edifying subject matter
characteristic of much German nineteenth-century art.
bb
References: Matthias Eberle, Max Liebermann: Werksverzeichnis der Gemälde und Ölstudien 1865 – 1899, vol. 1
(Munich, 1995), vol. 1, p. 394, no. 1891 / 14 with fig. – Max Liebermann, in: Kunst für Alle, vol. 19, no. 7 (1904),
p. 168 with fig. (as Studie zu Scheveningen [Study for Scheveningen]) – Gustav Pauli, Max Liebermann: Des
Meisters Gemälde in 304 Abbildungen, Klassiker der Kunst (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1911), fig. p. 94 (title given as
Dorfplatz in Laren [Village Square in Laren], date as 1892, and dimensions erroneously as 67 x 88 cm) – Erich
Hancke, Max Liebermann: Sein Leben und seine Werke (Berlin, 1914), pp. 254 and 535 (incorrect dimensions
taken over from Pauli 1911) – Max Liebermann, exh. cat., Keller & Reiner, Berlin, Sept. 14, 1933, no. 93 with fig.
(erroneously dated 1898)
125
17
Richard Müller
(1874 Tschirnitz – 1954 Dresden)
Teasing
(Dog and Cat)
1946.Oil on wood; 24.5 x 19.5 cm (9.65 x 7.68 in)
Monogram and date bottom left: 1946 R.M.
P rovenan ce : 1999 private collection Switzerland
T
1 According to Matthias Griebel
(ed.), Otto Griebel: Ich war ein Mann
der Strasse. Lebenserinnerungen
eines Dresdner Malers, Frankfurt
am Main 1986, who lived close to
Richard Müller at Oberloschwitz,
it was firmly believed in the
artistic circles of Dresden that
Müller was an illegitimate son of
King Albert of Saxony and had
grown up in Bohemia just beyond
the Saxon border with fosterparents, who had been provided
with a good livelihood. Apart
from his striking likeness to the
monarch, the steep rise of his
career in royal institutions and his
marriage to a singer who moved
in Court circles were attributed
to protection from high above.
2 On this, see: Rolf Günther,
Richard Müller. In: Weltkunst,
1.11.1995; Georg Buss, Richard
Müller. In: Bildende Kunst
year XXVII (1914)
3 Rolf Günther, Richard Müller.
Leben und Werk mit dem Verzeichnis
der Druckgraphik. Dresden 1995,
List of the students from 1900
to 1935, pp. 235 – 252
he life of Richard Müller, born in Tschirnitz near Karlsbad, was mysterious
from the outset. He is said to have been an extramarital son of King Albert
of Saxony, growing up with foster-parents in Bohemia. 1 He was highly gifted and
the Royal House enabled him to acquire a comprehensive training and advanced
his career up to the Directorship of the Dresden Art Academy. First a porcelain
painter in the painting school of the Royal Saxon porcelain manufactory at Meissen, he later attended the Art Academy at Dresden, where his meeting with Max
Klinger proved decisive. On Klinger’s prompting, Müller, like himself, mastered
the art of engraving. Richard Müller remained indebted throughout his life to
Klinger’s psychologising symbolism and biting satire. Like Klinger, Müller was
especially fascinated by the woman /animal theme and he liked to characterise
human behaviour through human /animal metaphors (figs. 1 and 2).
In quick succession he won the Grand Prix de Rome for drawing (1897) and
gold medals at Dresden (1900) and the International Exhibition in Paris. In that
same year, at the age of 26, he was appointed Professor at the Dresden Art Academy. Although Richard Müller reached the position of Rector of the Academy
in 1933 and played an ambivalent role in Nazi cultural politics, his career ended
abruptly with his dismissal in 1935. 2 During his tenure of over 30 years there his
students included Otto Dix and George Grosz. 3 Typically for that time – Heinrich Kley (1863 Karlsruhe – 1945 Munich), for instance, comes to mind – Richard
Müller specialised in portraying animals – elephants, cockatoos, mice and cats.
Our painting Teasing (Dog and Cat) dates from 1946, shortly after the Second
World War. It shows one of the painter’s typical motifs: a brown-and-white spaniel
with long floppy brown ears. Richard Müller owned various spaniels, including
Quick, a black one. He made them protagonists in his pictures, mainly after 1945
when he was a man of independent means, but he had already frequently portrayed them in drawings and etchings as early as the 1920s (figs. 5 – 7).
As the picture’s title states, the dog and the cat are teasing each other. The
spaniel is standing with his paw on an orange ribbon with a large bow – he is
126
3 Heinrich Kley, Dancing Elephant,
1909, drawing (private ownership)
1 Richard Müller, On the Swing, 1922,
engraving (private ownership)
2 Max Klinger, Bear and Elf,
from the cycle of engravings
Intermezzi Opus IV – Plate I, 1881
(private ownership)
4 Richard Müller, The Largest
and the Smallest Mammal, 1920,
contemplating a little »tease«. He gazes out of the picture with
a challenging expression, waving his bushy tail, while the blackand-white cat with its light blue collar grabs at the tiny bell
between his paws. The star pattern made by the red-bordered
floor tiles is transformed into an arena where »dog« and »cat«
act out their affection and aversion in harmless confrontations
and jealous games.
A huge red ball is rolling forward from the left. The painter’s brush has given
it a black dot which makes it look like an eyeball. As in traditional depictions of
eyes, its »pupil« reflects a large window outside the picture. The eyeballs of the
King Charles spaniel bitch suckling her young, which Richard Müller shows in
another drawing, these already seem to anticipate the motif of our ball (fig. 8).
For Richard Müller Spaniels and balls belong together, like king and orb (fig. 9).
In the 1927 painting (fig. 10) the well-behaved Chin dog sits on a red cushion beside
his tennis ball. The King Charles spaniel is a traditional attribute of nobility. As the
lapdog of many queens, it attained highest honours in the paintings by Van Dyck,
Watteau, Stubbs, Frith and Landseer.
The setting of our painting Teasing (Dog and Cat) has an unreal and questioning air. Several viewpoints confuse the design. Dog and cat are depicted from
the side and from the painter’s angle of vision, their master’s, from obliquely
above. The floor is seen tilted upwards and two-dimensionally. The oversized
ball casts a shadow which gives a planetary dimension to its rolling course. The
model for the cat comes from the painter’s arsenal of animal studies gathered
over decades; it appears on an engraved sheet of 1922, chasing a butterfly (fig. 11).
In painting our picture Richard Müller might have been thinking of affectionate teasing between a man and a woman, as in the expression »lovers – teasers«;
this is indicated by the highly allusive collar and ribbons in pale blue and pink,
colours traditionally associated with male and female, and also by the fact that
the painter attributed the female role to the cat, as shown in his painting Fashion
Transformed of 1920 (fig. 12).
Viewing the painting signed in 1946 against the background of the German
defeat in the Second World War, the seemingly harmless setting acquires a mysterious undertone. Who is playing with whom here, who is stronger and superior,
128
5 Richard Müller, My Quick, 1912,
6 Richard Müller, Chin Dog, 1921,
7 Richard Müller, Chin Dog, 1922,
who the victor and who the vanquished? – The illegitimate offshoot of
the Saxon Royal House withdrew
into private life after the disaster of
the Third Reich. As a »Nazi artist«,
Richard Müller fell into oblivion
and the art market consigned him to
obscurity.
However, he had long before won
his firm place in art history. His
painstaking precision – never abandoned – and his detailed realism had
prompted first attempts at the »New
Objectivity« (»Neue Sachlichkeit«).
His surrealist ensembles – still reminiscent of Max Klinger’s scenes – are
located somewhere between wishful 8 Richard Müller, King Charles Spaniel Bitch with Puppies, 1904, pastel (private ownership)
dreams and reality, fidelity to nature
and absurdity, anecdote and nightmare.
Gabriel von Max (1840 Prague – 1915 Munich) or Thomas Theodor Heine
(1867 Leipzig – 1948 Stockholm) (figs. 13 and 14) remained traditional masters,
despite all technical innovation. They created ambiguous and witty pictorial commentaries for the new mass medium of the illustrated periodicals, including the
leading magazines Simplicissimus and Jugend, and created new pictorial content,
whose multi-dimensional realities approach the dream worlds of surrealism. They
loved their animal companions and assigned them the qualities of their human
contemporaries. They conjured up erotic fantasies, commented on their times and
psychologised mankind.
Richard Müller’s idiosyncratic pictorial cosmos of, with its vague, often
piquant and enigmatic witticisms aroused curiosity and inspired many artists.
Among them was Max Ernst (1891 Brühl – 1976 Paris). The pictorial creations of
the pre-World-War I era provided the stimuli which led Max Ernst to develop
129
9 Richard Müller, My Dogs, 1925 (private ownership)
10 Richard Müller, A Well-Behaved Chin Dog,
1927 (private ownership)
his early paper collages with the alienating
art of combining different objects, thus
leading towards surrealism (figs. 15 and 16).
Today Richard Müller’s fantastic paintings are sought-after rarities for collectors and are being reassessed in museum
presentations.
bb
11 Richard Müller, Hunting Cat, 1922,
12 Richard Müller, Fashion Transformed,
1920, pastel (private ownership)
References: Corinna Wodarz, Symbol und Eros. Die Bildwelten Richard Müllers (1874 – 1954) including a catalogue
of the entire work. Göttingen 2002 – Corinna Wodarz, Richard Müller. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB).
Vol. 18, Berlin 1997, pp. 471 – 473 – Rolf Günther, Stefan Günther (ed.) Richard Müller. Leben und Werk mit dem
Verzeichnis der Druckgraphik. Dresdener Kunstauktionshaus Neumeister 1995, containing a list of Richard
Müller’s students, Dresden 1998 – Thomas Levy / Hans-Werner Schmidt (eds.), Die Schöne und das Biest.
Richard Müller und Mel Ramos. Catalogue of the exhibition in the Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig
2013 – Richard Müller (1874 – 1954). Edited by Städtische Kunstsammlung Freital, exhibition catalogue of Haus
der Heimat, Freital 1993 – Unisono. Collagen und Texte von Richard Müller. Edition Fundamental 1997 – Richard
Müller in: Hans Vollmer, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler des XX. Jahrhunderts, vol 3, Leipzig 1956,
p. 349 – Richard Müller in: Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker (et al.), Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler von
der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, vol. 25, Leipzig 1931, p. 246 – Franz Hermann Meissner (ed.) Das Werk von Richard
Müller, Loschwitz – Dresden 1921
130
13 Gabriel von Max, Abelard and Heloise, 1915
(private ownership)
15 Richard Müller, A Query, 1915,
drawing (private ownership)
16 Max Ernst, illustration for Les
malheurs des immortels, 1922, collage
(private ownership)
14 Thomas Theodor Heine,
The Dying Race of Pugs: »Siegfried«, 1921
(Kunstsalon Franke-Schenk, Munich)
18
Emil Nolde
(1867 Nolde – 1956 Seebüll)
Red Poppies
Watercolour / Japanese vellum; 35.5 x 47 cm (13.98 x 18.5 in). Signed lower right: Nolde
P rovenan ce : : Emil Nolde’s studio, 1930; private collection USA
E x pert
I
1 Emil Nolde, Mein Leben. Mit einem
Nachwort von Martin Urban, Cologne
1976 (11th edition, 2000), p. 48
2 Lorenz Dittmann, Farbgestaltung
und Farbtheorie in der abendländischen
Malerei. Eine Einführung,
Darmstadt 1987, p. 362
3 Martin Gosebruch, Nolde.
Watercolours and Drawings, issued
by the Ada and Emil Nolde
Foundation, Seebüll, London,
1972, p. 18 author’s emphasis.
4 Lorenz Dittmann, loc. cit., p. 361
5 Nolde quotation from Lorenz
Dittmann, loc. cit., ibid.
6 Emil Nolde, loc. cit., p. 334:
»From the intimate but rather finical
manner of my earliest watercolours,
I worked my way with infinite pains
through to the freer, broader, more
liquid kind of representation that
requires a particularly thorough
understanding of and feeling for
the different types of paper and the
possibilities of the pigments, but
above all the visual capacity for a
sensory attunement«.
Quoted in Gosebruch, 1972, p. 25
7 As Nolde made use of that
technique at every period, a
chronological ordering of his
watercolours appears close to
impossible. For this reason, as
well as due to the abundance
of the sheets he bequeathed,
no catalogue raisonné of
the watercolours has been
composed to this day.
report :
Prof. Dr. Martin Urban, Nolde Foundation Seebüll, 8. August 1995
n terms of innovation and scope of his work, Emil Nolde may rightly be considered the leading watercolourist of German Expressionism and is to be ranked
with Dürer, Turner or Cézanne.
It was a small watercolour with »a sultry sun rising between clouds« 1 of 1894
that Nolde himself accorded critical importance for his career. He painted
it during his years in St. Gallen, where he was still working as a commercial
drawing teacher when, encouraged by the profitable success of his »mountain
postcards«, he decided to become an independent graphic artist. The watercolour portraying the sun as a glowing red ball already contains in embryo all the
qualities that were to become characteristic of Emil Nolde’s art: »Connection
with nature, spontaneity in painting and regard for the intrinsic life and nature
of colours«,2 as summarised by Lorenz Dittmann. In his seminal 1957 study
of Nolde as a watercolourist and draughtsman, Martin Gosebruch observed:
»It is interesting that this premonitory work […] was realized in the art form
of watercolour. Nolde’s affinity for this medium seems to have been based on
the fact that it enabled him to capture a moment of personal high tension in
its essential lines very swiftly«.3 To which we may add: not in the chiaroscuro
values of drawing, but in a painterly way, in colours.
After a hiatus Nolde returned to that medium in March 1908, in the village of
Cospeda near Jena, where he began to produce watercolours conditioned by nature,
exposing the still soaked papers to crystal-forming frost. This is perhaps the most
eloquent expression of Nolde’s ideal of »passive artistry« 4 – working not with an
intentionally directed capture of the subject but in an instinctual »impulse-driven
wrestling with God and nature«. 5
In the decade from 1910, Nolde developed his watercolour painting techniques 6
that he had freely at his disposal thereafter. 7 He was a pure watercolourist insofar
as he very seldom used covering substances – in fact, he became »the« virtuoso
of wet-on-wet techniques based on soaking the paper prior to painting. Nolde
often soaked his papers so heavily with a colour-saturated wet brush that they are
coloured through and through. From 1910 on he generally used European-made
132
1 Emil Nolde, Large Poppy,
1908, oil / cnv.
(Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren)
2 Poppy in Emil Nolde’s garden
at Seebüll
8 Emil Nolde, loc. cit., p. 22. Quoted
in Gosebruch, loc. cit., p. 8
9 See Manfred Reuther, ed., Emil
Nolde. Mein Garten voller Blumen,
exh. cat. of the Berlin branch of the
Ada und Emil Nolde Foundation,
Seebüll, Cologne 2009, p. 9
Japanese vellums with highly absorbent qualities and an irregular texture. Both
these criteria – Japanese vellum and soaked through to the back – also apply to
our sheet with the Red Poppies. Nolde’s watercolour work had its most successful
phases in the 1920s and also the 1930s, during the period of the painting ban following his proscription by the Nazi regime from 1941, and after the war, especially
in the last few months of his life following an accident in the garden, when he had
grown too weak for oil painting.
In his memoirs, the artist writes about natural juices with which he had already
experimented as a child: »I tried painting with elderberry and beetroot juice, I
loved that purply-red so much […]«.8 Thus he was already making use of nature’s
»collaboration« in those days and he also indicates other sources of his art: the love
of colours and the significance of his rural origins reflected in his chosen surname.
His floral subjects are also rooted in his memory of the garden tended by his
mother on his parents’ farm.
During his stay on the island of Alsen in the Baltic Sea in the summer of 1908,
Nolde’s artistic passion for flowers was ignited and he painted his first garden
pictures, which are conceived from the luxuriant seas of blossom of the closelypacked growing flowers, communicating by the force of their pure colours. In its
radiant red tones, the poppy was almost logically to belong to his favourite themes from the beginning, as shown by the garden picture Large Poppy of 1908,
for example (fig. 1).
As the medium akin to oil painting, Nolde’s watercolour painting began with
floral themes in the 1920s,9 when he left his summer residence in Utenwarf near
134
10
Tondern to settle slightly further south on high ground at »Seebüll«, the estate
he designed himself. And then, probably in connection with the watercolour
painting, Nolde attained his most characteristic and distinctive close view of the
subject, which the viewer encounters here in an almost obtrusively direct way.
This is also the case with our Red Poppies, in which four magnificent poppy
cups are unfurled, growing up on straight stems in a rightward-descending row.
This sequence is given a lively rhythm over a dense group of smaller poppies
underneath the first, more darkly radiant blossom, then two tender yellow poppy
buds, one of which is leaning to the right out of this group towards the second
tall poppy stalk, the other of which is growing up parallel to the third stalk while
pointing back to the left towards the second; finally, the fourth large poppy cup
protruding over a bed of red poppy petals that are heavily overlapped by the
lower edge of the picture.
The flowers do not form part of a flower-bed or a bouquet, nor are they intended
to serve any botanical categorisation. We feel the essence of the flowers expressed
in substantively pure and shadowless, absolutely radiant, diaphanous or gradually
darkening colours. They blossom in front of light space embracing them translucently with earthy green, grey and violet tones into which they seem to send back
the most delicate reflections. The reverberation of a violet flower with a yellow
centre hovers over the fourth poppy.
However, characteristic qualities of the flowers are also wonderfully conveyed
when the poppy cups on their robust slim stalks almost seem to be stirred by a
soft breeze. The third flower in the row in particular opens its cup like a face to
the viewer, the only one to permit a glimpse into its dark centre. But in all the
other poppies as well, from the side view, the violet blue and black colourations
at the base of the petals give a hint of the dark receptacles. In Nolde’s art of
creating a sense of luminous colour – with the idea of an interplay of light and
contre-jour – he ultimately conveys equally the radiant manifestations of what
illuminates and what is illuminated, as a comparison with a photograph may
demonstrate (fig. 2).
Nolde worked very specifically according to his particular medium. His oil
painting has an almost iconic solidity; in his graphic art he explored chiaroscuro
values, sometimes highly experimentally. In the watercolours he seems especially
to be tracking the essence of colour that is gravitating towards the extensive and
amorphous. Particularly our poppies show in an exemplary way his mastery of
the wet-on-wet technique – allowing the colours to flow and bloom between
calculation and overt progression. In alternation with drying phases, thick or
soft tones are applied, blended or even diminished. This gives rise to an indescribably evocative sensation, a feeling of space.
Although undatable, the sheet may yet be stylistically classified with related
watercolours, which include, for example, the Poppy Flowers of the Buchheim
Collection (fig. 3) and the Poppy of the Seebüll Foundation (fig. 4).
As in our watercolour, Nolde made the flowers there blossom on the radiant
brightness of the softly tinted white papers and did not draw in lines, neither with
Indian ink-pen nor black brush. The brushwork is mainly visible on the stalks
and foliage, but no longer on the large poppy cups. In the Seebüll Collection’s
two poppies that open into large heads, some gradual differences can easily be
135
10 A whole series of garden pictures
in oil was produced in 1922 in
Utenwarf; Nolde described
the garden in his memoirs and
called it a »small paradise«.
3 Emil Nolde, Poppy Flowers, undated, watercolour
(Sammlung Buchheim, Bernried)
discerned: on the left, a fringy feathery-looking flower on which brushstrokes are visible, individually
offsetting each other, placed into each other and
merging; on the right, a cloudily blooming flower
soaked in and permeated with colours in colours,
thus resembling our poppies.
That Nolde perceived in his flowers nothing less
than the fateful beauty of life itself is also underlined by his words: »I loved the glowing colors
of the flowers, the purity of these colors. I loved
the flowers for their fate: springing up, blooming,
glowing, making people happy, drooping, wilting,
finally ending up discarded in a ditch«. 11 Although – 
as may also be seen in our Red Poppies – he preferred composing flowers in colours at their zenith
of full beauty, this self-consuming magnificence yet
contains in both its ecstasy and tenderness the very
nucleus of ephemerality.
agm
References: Martin Gosebruch, Nolde. Watercolours and Drawings,
transl. E. M. Küstner and J. A. Underwood, published by Ada and
Emil Nolde Foundation, Seebüll, London 1972 – Martin Urban,
Emil Nolde. Flowers and Animals. Watercolours and Drawings,
transl. Barbara Berg, London 1966 – Emil Nolde, Mein Leben.
Mit einem Nachwort von Martin Urban, Cologne 1976 (11th
edition, 2000) – Lorenz Dittmann, Farbgestaltung und Farbtheorie
in der abendländischen Malerei. Eine Einführung, Darmstadt
1987 – Martina Sprotte, Bunt oder Kunst? Die Farbe im Werk Emil
Noldes, (Diss. Göttingen 1998) Berlin 1999 – Emil Nolde. Mein
Garten voller Blumen, exh. cat. of the Berlin branch of the Stiftung
Seebüll Ada und Emil Nolde, Cologne 2009 – Manfred Reuther,
ed., Die Farbe lebt im Licht. Emil Nolde – Meister des Aquarells,
exh. cat. of the Berlin branch of the Nolde Foundation, Seebüll,
Cologne 2011 – Emil Nolde. Die Pracht der Farben, exh. cat. Frieder
Burda Museum, Baden-Baden 2013
4 Emil Nolde, Poppy, undated, watercolour
(Ada and Emil Nolde Foundation, Seebüll)
11 Emil Nolde, Mein Leben, loc. cit.,
p. 148. Quoted in Urban, 1966, p. 7
136
19
Emil Nolde
(1867 Nolde – 1956 Seebüll)
Portrait of a Woman
in an Orange-Red Dress
C. 1948 / 50. Watercolour on Japanese paper; 48 x 34.5 cm (18.9 x 13.58 in)
Signed bottom left: Nolde
P rovenan ce : Private collection Switzerland
E x pert R eport : Martin Urban, 9. Oct. 1982
A
ll living things – flowers and animals, landscapes and people – were themes
to Emil Nolde. He designed portraits and flowers in very much the same way.
He painted flowers with portraiture-like, near-sighted concentration on the blossom, and this close vision is also typical of his portraits: he reserved scenic context
for »half-length«, »three-quarter length« or full-length figures. Another parallel is
perhaps even more striking: he treats botanical accuracy as subordinate, just as he
regards a facial likeness to the model as relatively unimportant.
As a portraitist, Nolde never worked to commission; his shyness made him
seek out models from among the circle of his family and friends. Otto Beyse,
the son-in-law of Nolde’s patron Gustav Schiefler, relates how he and his wife
became two of Nolde’s select in the winter of 1920: »One evening he approached
me quite solemnly and said: Dr. B. [Otto Beyse], I have a great favour to ask you.
May I draw you both? (That’s what he said, not paint). And he went on: Just sit
down somehow and somewhere and don’t think I’m trying to do your portraits.
Anything may come out of it. Gypsies perhaps, or something else that I really
don’t know myself, yet.
Then he put a piece of cardboard on his knee, put the paper on top of that,
and beside him arranged the little box with various water-jars for his brushes
and the paints as well. Now an absolute frenzy broke out: a brief glance at us,
almost jerky brush movements at lightning speed, round and round, and the
outlines of the faces were already fixed in black paint. Then, just as fast and
apparently without any reflection, the shading in short brush strokes followed,
all with a very wet brush on the highly absorbent Japanese paper, so that corrections weren’t possible. So sheet after sheet, in quick succession, dropped to the
ground to dry. It was the bodily expression of the eidetic person, an eye-dominated man; the visual impressions he had absorbed from us over five weeks had
impressed themselves on his cerebral cortex as if on a photographic plate and
138
1 Emil Nolde, Lady with Hat,
1907, watercolour (collection of
the Nolde-Stiftung Seebüll)
1 Quoted from Anita BeloubekHammer, Emil Nolde: Mensch, Natur,
Mythos; Aquarelle und Graphik aus
dem Berliner Kupferstichkabinett,
Petersberg 2009, p. 44
2 Nolde quoted from BeloubekHammer, loc. cit., p. 47
3 Coloured illustration in: Klaus
Hoffmann, ed., Emil Nolde. Aquarelle
und Zeichnungen. Aus der Sammlung
der Nolde-Stiftung Seebüll, exh. cat.
Kunstverein Wolfsburg 1991, no. 2
4 Jörg Garbrecht, Bewundert, gefürchtet
und begehrt – Emil Nolde malt die
Frauen, in: Manfred Reuther, ed.,
Emil Nolde – bewundert, gefürchtet
und begehrt – Emil Nolde malt
die Frauen, exh. cat. of the Berlin
branch of the Nolde-Stiftung
Seebüll, Cologne 2010, p. 65
were now re-emerging, as if of their own accord, inwardly
processed, pre-considered and already finished and formed. So the painting seemed an almost unimportant conclusion of a mental process. A likeness? Hardly. However:
the essence, even, the innermost recognized, identified and
given shape.« 1
Regarding the dating of Nolde’s watercolour portraits,
as well as the dating of his other watercolours, there is no
definite stylistic »handle« because he always applied his
means with such liberty, but even so there are discernible
tendencies which concern our Portrait of a Woman in an
Orange-Red Dress.
When Nolde portrayed the Beyses in 1920, he had
already passed through a development, which began
in 1892, with producing naturalistic portraits of »Swiss
archetypes with documentary accuracy«. 2 For a period
after about 1907 he concentrated on depicting heads, and
this went hand in hand with a view which chimed in with
the Expressionist utopian vision, of de-individualising
collective experience, which might be enhanced into any
way, such as grotesque, daemonic, divine, or sexual etc..
An early example from 1907 is the Lady with Hat from the
collection of the Nolde Foundation Seebüll (fig. 1) 3 or the
watercolour Young Woman from around 1910 (fig. 2). He did what Edvard Munch
had demanded: »No more painting of interiors, of people reading and women
knitting; there should be living people who breathe and feel, suffer and love [...].
Flesh should take form and colours should live.« 4
Nolde gained special acclaim for his individual watercolour portraits of indigenous people in the South Pacific. He painted these on his voyage there in
1913 / 14, as a treasure repository for future oil paintings. Since the time of that
journey, and especially in the 1920s, Nolde’s watercolours employed the black
lines, which Otto Beyse mentioned, as graphic elements, in addition to and
alternating with the painterly colour design. The Woman’s Head (1916) may be
just such an example which sums up all those developments (fig. 3). 5
From the beginning of the 1930s Nolde’s new view of portraiture emerges
again and again, allowing more space for the person’s individuality (thus complementing the large-scale »grotesques« of the same period). One example is the
Woman’s Portrait in Left Profile, supposedly from the 1930s (fig. 4). 6 Here, what is
alien appears with greater restraint, to be left to the subject, descriptive closeness
and internal remoteness seemingly united. The result is a certain melancholy
emanating from these portraits. This is the concept behind our portrait, which,
according to Martin Urban, shows a relative of the painter’s. Urban dates it to
the second half of the 1940s. 7
Only the high bust, unusually prominent for Nolde, distances the young
woman in the orange-red coat dress; her body is turned towards the viewer but
her head and gaze are turned far away from him. The thick fabric of the dress, her
hair combed back in heavy locks, emphasise her delicate, bright, tender, yet austere
140
2 Emil Nolde, Young Woman, c. 1910 – 12, watercolour
(Schloss Gottorf, Rolf Horn collection)
3 Emil Nolde, Woman’s Head in Half Profile to
the Right, 1916, watercolour (private ownership)
face. Nolde outlined the young woman’s face and figure in drier, light violet lines,
which have the effect of an internal framework for all the light and dark shades.
Gently the brush contours head and dress. In many places the outlines dissolve
in the flowing planes of paint. This is also observable in the approximately
contemporaneous portrait A Women’s Head Turned Right, half profile (fig. 5) in
Gottorf Palace.
There is a warm glow in the orange-red of the dress, in which broad violet
brushstrokes form colourful shadows. From the neckline peeks a piece of fabric
striped diagonally in grey-blue and white. A tender blush enlivens the cheek; the
protruding lower lip of the tightly-closed mouth glows in a stronger red. This
taciturnity is intensified by violet shadows in the corner of the eye and below the
nostril; additionally the gaze from under the wide eyebrow is withdrawn from
the viewer. Broad brown-black brushstrokes, some of which allow the underlying colours to show through, while others lock them in with opaque puddles of
dried paint, lie on the hair, applied in rapid movement. The head is surrounded
by an aura of light yellow; above the nape there is an efflorescence of clear blue.
Thus, the complementary colours of orange and blue, violet and yellow form
the colour harmony of a being at once intense and tender, reserved and with an
inner glow of sensitivity.
141
5 Colour illustration in: BeloubekHammer, loc. cit., p. 65
6 Colour illustration in:
Emil Nolde, exh. cat. Galerie Thomas,
Munich 2012, p. 53 f., a format very
similar to our portrait measuring
46.9 x 34,8 cm (18.46 x 13.7 in)
7 See expert report by
Martin Urban 1982
4 Emil Nolde, Woman’s Portrait in Left Profile,
to 30s, watercolour, (privat ownership)
5 Emil Nolde, Portrait of a Woman’s Head in Half Profile to
the Right, c.1948 / 50, watercolour, (Schloss Gottorf )
A sense of predestination and endurance emanates from the rivulet of colours
which flowed from the hair across the face down to the collar of the coat. Such
a concept of humanity markedly dampened the pathos of the symbolic vision,
while remaining, in the best sense, an exemplary image of the dignity and burden
of being human.
agm
References: Anita Beloubek-Hammer, Emil Nolde: Mensch, Natur, Mythos; Aquarelle und Graphik aus dem
Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, Petersberg 2009 – Klaus Hoffmann, ed., Emil Nolde. Aquarelle und Zeichnungen.
Aus der Sammlung der Nolde-Stiftung Seebüll, exh. cat. Kunstverein Wolfsburg 1991 – Manfred Reuther, ed.,
Emil Nolde – bewundert, gefürchtet und begehrt – Emil Nolde malt die Frauen, exh. cat. of the Berlin branch of
the Nolde-Stiftung Seebüll, Cologne 2010 – Emil Nolde, exh. cat. Galerie Thomas, Munich 2012 – Brigitte
Reinhardt, Tilman Osterwolt, eds., Emil Nolde. BlickKontakte, frühe Portraits, Ostfildern-Ruit 2005 – Martina
Sprotte, Bunt oder Kunst? Die Farbe im Werk Emil Noldes, Berlin 1999
143
20
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
(Limoges 1841 – 1919 Cagnes)
The Garden in Les Collettes
near Cagnes
C. 1910. Oil on canvas; 27 x 46 cm (10.63 x 18.11 in)
Signed bottom right: Renoir
P rovenan ce : Ambroise Vollard, Paris – private ownership, Northern France – 
Me. Mercier & Cie, Lille 1996 – private collection Monaco
»P
1 Auguste Renoir,
Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1908
(Tate Gallery, London)
1 Cf. Julius Meier-Graefe,
Renoir, 1st edition 1929,
Frankfurt am Main 1986, p. 211
2 Cf. Augustin de Butler, Renoir aux
Collettes: l’Atelier du jardin, in: Revue
de l’Art no. 161, 2008, pp. 41 – 48
eloter la toile« – »… caressing the canvas«. 1 Examining the narrow strip of
canvas with its painterly sfumato we immediately understand why the elderly
Renoir demanded this painting technique, in contrast to Vincent van Gogh’s (1853
Groot-Zundert – 1890 Auvers-sur-Oise) rough brushstrokes. With delicate dabs
of paint, airy, cloudy and light, in tender circular movements of the brush, he
paints a picture of his garden on the Côte d’Azur with all its plants, the agaves and
olive trees, the meadows and paths which visitors can still see today. So it comes as
no surprise that this oil sketch – dating from around 1910 and possibly a souvenir – 
came into the possession of Ambroise Vollard, the great art dealer and collector of
Impressionism, who also wrote books worth reading about the artist (fig. 1).
The dictum »peloter la toile« might also have something to do with Renoir’s
severe rheumatism from which he had been suffering since the turn of the century
and his inability to use his fingers for painting. Arthritis had deformed his hands
and legs and he soon became entirely wheelchair-bound. For relief he sought the
warmth of the South. In 1903 the painter discovered the tranquil coastal village
of Cagnes-sur-Mer 2, not far from Nice. From then on he would only occasionally
work in his Paris studio in summer. In 1907 he finally acquired the Domaine des
Collettes, a three-hectare estate above the village with old olive-trees, which his
purchase saved from being uprooted, and a 19th-century farmhouse which he soon
had remodelled for his own purposes and equipped with two studios (fig. 2). Since
1960 the park and villa at Chemin des Collettes have been open to the public and
its Musée Renoir houses many of the master’s works.
At his farm in Cagnes the painter blossomed. From 1908 he lived there with his
family, his sons and models, and he did not lack other company. There he received
many visitors, colleagues, art dealers, collectors and other ardent admirers, such as
Julius Meier-Graefe, the famous writer on art, who visited the master at the time
144
2 Auguste Renoir,
La ferme des Collettes, 1908 / 14
(Metropolitan Museum, New York)
3 Auguste Renoir,
Au Moulin de la Galette, 1876
(Musée d’Orsay, Paris)
3 Julius Meier-Graefe,
Tagebuch 1903 – 1917 und weitere
Dokumente, C. Krahmer, ed.,
Göttingen 2009, p. 144
4 Cf. Erich Rüba,
Erinnerung an Renoir, exh. cat.
Gemeindearchiv / HeinrichBrüne-Archiv, Wessling 2010
this picture came into being. On November 10th 1910 he noted in his diary: »He
sat alone in his large unadorned white dining-room, looking at the mountains. A
tiny little man, withered, totally white, the face rather like Titian’s Pope at Naples.
[…] Good-humoured, but he can also say spiteful things. […] I hadn’t seen him
for over ten years. His hands are horribly crippled, his fingers spiral springs. He
sticks the brush between them and paints every day. […] It felt strange to see this
tiny little man who has presented the world with this art.« 3
This landscape sketch is a captivating work of old age. Despite his handicap,
Renoir could still light artistic fireworks in his final years. An impressionist before
1900, he had proved that his main strengths were group portraits or society pieces such as the Moulin de la Galette (fig. 3), the Déjeuner des Canotiers (1880 / 81)
or Mme Charpentier and Her Children (1878). Yet in his late work he developed a
marked preference for small landscapes. However, he continued to produce paintings of nudes which were idyllic in the best sense – bucolic scenes with naked
women in natural open air surroundings, the so-called »bathers« (»baigneuses«),
which he also made the subject of his drawings. But his preoccupation with sculpture was a particular surprise to his contemporaries. By his death in 1919 he had
produced a considerable oeuvre of large and small sculptures, in which Renoir
sought closeness to the ancient world, as can be seen in the 1914 bronze Venus. He
also accepted portrait commissions. Probably the most important of these took
him to Munich, to Lake Wessling in August 1910. Here – installed in the studio
of the Munich painter Heinrich Brüne (1869 Bonn – 1945 Wessling) – he painted
the wife of the collector Leopold Thurneyssen. 4
Flowers, trees, gardens and parks have always inspired painters, especially, of
course, the Impressionists. Claude Monet (1840 Paris – 1826 Giverny), for instance,
spent his last years almost exclusively working at the monumental decorative
146
5 Auguste Renoir, Olive Tree in Les
Collettes, c. 1910 / 15 (Kunsthalle Bremen)
4 Auguste Renoir, Aloe Pickers, c. 1910
(private ownership)
paintings of his lily-ponds, which he had laid out in the garden of his country villa
in Giverny, north of Paris.
From the time that Renoir lived at Cagnes he devoted himself especially to
landscape painting. Unlike many other impressionists he had never before made
this his main subject, although it was a theme he had repeatedly engaged with. 5
Renoir took inspiration from nature to produce small and quickly-painted oil
sketches; quite often he would paint several on a large canvas which he then cut
apart: pictures of gardens looking out on to the Mediterranean or the Alps or
views of his farmhouse surrounded by nature. Here his olive-groves took pride of
place. Not the least important deciding factor in the purchase of Les Collettes had
been that these trees were entwined with legends: the older trees were said to date
from the Middle Ages and the younger trees were allegedly planted by the artloving King François I in the early 16th century to provide shade to his soldiers.
Those impressive trees were Renoir’s pride. They echo in the memoirs of his son
Jean, the later film director: »The olive trees […] are the loveliest in the world. Their
five hundred years of life storms, droughts, gales, frosts, pruning and wild growth
have given them the strangest shapes. Many of the trunks resemble barbaric deities. […] The very tall trees are of an unusual majesty and an airy weightlessness.
Their silver foliage spreads tender shadows.« 6
Renoir was a painter with esprit, although this is not always immediately apparent. Beyond the blossoming low shrubs and hedges in our picture we can see a
meadow rising gently to the right. It is divided in the middle by a beaten path leading directly into the depth and separating the picture into different halves. On the
left side, altogether lighter in the middle ground and in tones of red and yellow, the
only growth to be specified are two large agaves stretching their tongue-like leaves
from the ground up towards the sun and the sky. The right half, on the other hand,
147
5 Auguste Renoir und die Landschaft
des Impressionismus, exh. cat. Von der
Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal 2007
6 Jean Renoir, Mein Vater Auguste
Renoir, Zürich 1981, p. 392
is darker, shadier and bluer in tone; here two olive trees are discernible, twisting
their trunks towards each other, their crowns united, taking a defensive position
with the ring-like formation of bushes in front of them.
Renoir observed and painted his garden over many years and certainly possessed
precise information about its plants. In his painting he seems to have allocated the
warm and cold colours of his palette to the appropriate vegetation, which not only
makes the two halves of the picture look completely different, but also reveals an
astonishing historic dimension. The botanical terms indicate this: the agave is called
Agave americana and the olive tree Olea europaea. Whereas olive trees are known to
be original and very ancient plants of the Mediterranean region, agaves come from
the New World; they were imported from the American continent and have since
competed with olive trees for living space. Renoir also transferred the theme of this
competition between agaves and olive trees to other pictures, such as the Aloe Pickers
(fig. 4) or the Olive Tree in Les Collettes (fig. 5), both from around 1910.
Even in his peaceful garden the artist detected conflict between the New World
and the Old – more generally speaking, between young and old – or he projected
conflict into it. This might be due to the atmosphere of crisis before the First World
War, which the artist might have even felt when confronted with the many successful innovations in the art market. However, the harmonious balance between the
original growth and the neophyte plants, which Renoir’s painting has managed to
»caress« gently into being, may be regarded as the legacy of a great artist. This gives
an even deeper meaning to Renoir’s remark about »caressing the canvas«.
fb
References: Guy-Patrice Dauberville, Renoir: catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles. Vol. 4,
Paris 2012, no. 2914 – Julius Meier-Graefe, Renoir, 1st edition 1929, Frankfurt / Main 1986 – Augustin de
Butler, Renoir aux Collettes: l’Atelier du jardin, in: Revue de l’Art 161, 2008, pp. 41 – 48 – Julius Meier-Graefe,
Tagebuch 1903 – 1917 und weitere Dokumente, C. Krahmer, ed., Göttingen 2009 – Erich Rüba, Erinnerung an
Renoir, exh. cat. Gemeindearchiv / Heinrich-Brüne-Archiv, Wessling 2010 – Auguste Renoir und die Landschaft
des Impressionismus, exh. cat. Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal 2007 – Jean Renoir, Mein Vater Auguste
Renoir, Zürich 1981
148
21
Christian Rohlfs
(1849 Niendorf / Holstein – 1938 Hagen)
Large Magnolia
1928. Coloured crayon on light paper; 50 x 74 cm (19.69 x 29.13 in) Verso entitled and dated:
Large Magnolia 1928; estate stamp and marked: Ascona Frau Christian Rohlfs 1928
Certificate of authenticity Christian Rohlfs Archive, No. CRA 5 / 11 Osthaus
Museum Hagen of March 2011
P rovenan ce : Private collection Germany
C
hristian Rohlfs’ flower pictures are among his most beautiful and
artistically interesting works. From early on they formed a key
part of his multifaceted repertoire and they particularly characterise
his late work after 1927.
In Hagen, shortly after 1900, the painter had developed an expressive painting style in which he created his principal works. At that time
he was also already beginning to paint idiosyncratic flower compositions
that reappear in his work until our 1928 pastel Large Magnolia.
By 1903 some typical characteristics had already appeared, such as the
ensemble quality of blossom and foliage. This is to be found in his Sunflowers of 1903, for instance, which he painted following Vincent van
Gogh’s example (fig. 1). The painting gives an unusual view of the ripe
seeds of both sunflowers standing on their heads. In this idiosyncratic perspective the viewer perceives the dynamic outline in front of the
indeterminate, patterned background as an autonomous and well-arranged play of forms and colours, with painterly effects that assume a value
equivalent to the motivic portrayal.
Rohlfs painted his first magnolia picture while he was still living in
Hagen, North-Rhine Westphalia, in 1920. At that time he portrayed
the magnolia bud in a pitcher with its large, strong lancet-shaped lea1 Christian Rohlfs, Sunflowers, 1903.
ves in earthy tones (fig. 2). Rohlfs created his second magnolia picture
Oil/cnv. (Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund)
in 1927, when he was staying in Ascona for the first time. The almost
eighty-year-old artist had exchanged Hagen for balmy Tessin on health grounds.
Owing to his patron, the art collector and banker’s son Karl Ernst Osthaus
(1874 Hagen – 1921 Meran), Hagen had been his place of work since the turn
of the century,. He spent most of the year on Lake Maggiore in Ascona in the
years that followed. Anxieties that the change of location would have an unfavourable influence on his work proved unfounded. There he was inspired by the
150
2 Christian Rohlfs,
Magnolia Bud in Pitcher, c. 1920.
Tempera / paper (private collection)
1 Paul Vogt, Christian Rohlfs.
Aquarelle und Zeichnungen,
Recklinghausen 1958, p. 135
Swiss alps and the Northern Italian
lake to a new style in old age. Fascinated by the beauty of the Mediterranean mountains and the southern
vegetation, Rohlfs specially chose
the widespread magnolia as one of
his favourite motifs.
In 1927, just as in 1920, he again
portrayed a magnolia flower with a
pot (fig. 3), now in full bloom. However, the changes due to the southern
landscape are already atmospherically
discernible in his portrayal: in the
mild early spring days on Lake Maggiore, the artist was able to sketch his
subject out in the open. With short,
rhythmic strokes in red-brown and
radiant blue crayon, the painter makes
the bright light shimmer on the heavy Italian laid paper. He then reworked from
memory the impression in his studio in many stages. He reviewed and distilled
the effect into a boldly conceived form. Completely relying on the power of lines,
a well thought composition out in pastel technique emerges from the spontaneous drawing.
One year later, in 1928, Rohlfs was living in Ascona below Monte Verità, where
he had a wonderful view over the lake. That time he painted three magnolia pictures.
These include our Large Magnolia of 1928, which he portrayed using the same
blue-brown palette as in the previous year. Symbolically, these colours represent
the earth and the sky. The Rohlfs specialist Paul Vogt writes that in his Tessin years the painter favoured burnt sienna, dark ultramarine and ivory black. 1
Again the artist created a distinctive, unique entity full of expressive power far
surpassing anything previously formulated and releasing immense emotional
forces. With artistic freedom he dissolves the shapes, simplifying them until
everything non-essential has disappeared.
In close-up monumentality, the blossom is viewed directly from the front, it
opens seductively towards the observer – as if the painter were delineating the
approach of an insect being attracted by the calyx. Rohlfs arranges the forms
radially in ever larger circles around the centre of the blossom. First there is a
garland of six light-coloured and delicate petals. They rest unevenly and slightly
wind-blown in the foliage, which is rendered in a bold perspective. Erratic black
contours give the large leaves a dramatic and gloomy aspect. The polarised chia
roscuro flower composition grows – in the truest sense of the word – into a
bizarre large-scale shape. This unusual mode of portrayal transforms the flower’s
delicate beauty into something demonic. It generates a powerful optical effect
that is further intensified by the spontaneous and gestural application of crayon. Vibrant strokes form a backdrop to the flower – merely recognisable in
outline – a loosely arrayed structure connecting it with the mesh of the background to form a dynamic whole. These are constantly emerging, consolidating,
152
3 Christian Rohlfs, Large Magnolia, 1927.
Coloured crayon / brown paper (private ownership)
For comparison to fig. 3 the Large Magnolia of 1928
(Kunstsalon Franke-Schenk)
penetrating and enhancing each other: the brightness of the blossom against the
dark leaves, with their lush blue against the almost translucent air-space. The
background is interwoven with brown in different concentrations and intensities, giving it rhythmic tension. Nothing remains unambiguous in this large
work on paper: the painter unfolds a miracle of nature before the viewer’s eyes – 
not a stereotypical ideal image or model, but the unique distinctive flower on
which wind, rain and sun have left their traces.
In the same year, in 1928, Christian Rohlfs created two more, very similarly conceived magnolia pictures (figs. 4 and 5). Their expressive formation fundamentally
distinguishes these pictures from Rohlfs’ magnolia pictures of the 1930s and indicates the painter’s preoccupation with German Expressionist dance at that time. Like
his role model Emil Nolde (1867 Nolde – 1956 Seebüll), beginning with the turn of
the century Rohlfs also created a large number of dance pictures.2 They emerged
from his engagement with the life- and social reform advocated by the »back to
nature« movement (fig. 6) and the tribal art of native peoples in Expressionism.
In Ascona, Rohlfs attended the dance events on Monte Verità, where a centre
of the life-reform movement had settled in 1900. There Rudolf von Laban endeavoured to understand the dynamic, energetic quality of the movements in German
Expressionist dance, its improvisation and individual form as the expression of
psychological experience.
Through Rohlfs’ mediation the Russian dancer Tatjana Barbakoff (1899 Aizpute / Lettland – 1944 Auschwitz concentration camp), an acquaintance of his,
danced in Ascona (fig. 7 b). A movement sketch for his Tatjana Cycle in 1931
records the dancer in a pose describing her in angular, expressive movements, as
a Russian babushka (fig. 7 a).
Just like Rudolf von Laban interpreted dance, Christian Rohlfs understood
painting as the expression of psychological experience. In his 1928 magnolia
pictures, he combines Eros and movement in bold postures and broken forms.
Apart from painting and drawing all these flowers in larger-than-life size, Rohlfs
153
2 See in particular
Dancing Faun with Green Veil,
1912, (Wilhelm-Hack-Museum,
Ludwigshafen), Dancing around
the Ball of the Sun, 1916, (Städtische
Kunsthalle, Recklinghausen) or
Mary Wigman Dancing in Elberfeld,
1923, (private ownership) and
Dancing Couple (The Sacharoffs),
1928, (Museum Folkwang, Essen).
4 Christian Rohlfs,
Magnolia, 1928. Water tempera
(private ownership)
3 See the catalogue raisonné
Aquarelle und Zeichnungen by
Paul Vogt, Recklinghausen 1958,
p. 185– 211 (1927 – 1937). Paul Vogt’s
Oeuvre-Katalog der Gemälde,
Recklinghausen 1978, lists only
one Magnolia 1921, no. 654.
4 Christian Rohlfs, Magnolias in a Vase,
1921, tempera on canvas (private
ownership). Paul Vogt, Christian
Rohlfs. Oeuvre-Katalog der Gemälde,
Recklinghausen 1978, no. 655
5 Paul Vogt, Christian Rohlfs.
Oeuvre-Katalog der Gemälde,
Recklinghausen 1978, p. 20
restricts his view to the essential and the emotional experience, to the point of
spiritualising. What is realised in this way changes in the painter’s transposition
into a new, artistically elucidated form. It certainly still relates to the model’s
external reality, but it simultaneously refers through the artist’s individual perspective to what – as it were – emerges in the objects.
Since Christian Rohlfs started spending the summer months on Lake Maggiore,
not a year passed without his creating at least one magnolia picture (fig. 8 – 9).3
However, he was never to portray them again as dramatically as he did in 1928.
All these magnolia pictures are graphic works on paper. According to Christian Rohlfs’ biographer Paul Vogt, this technique enabled him to form an artistic and technical synthesis of all the earlier stages of his development. All the
sheets also present a single bloom, whereas most of the artist’s flower pictures
show bouquets. The tempera picture Magnolias in a Vase of 1921 is the early sole
exception.4 Only as solitaires do the magnolia flowers assume their individual
uniqueness and take on a distinctive character.
Inspired by the particular colours and the light conditions of the south, the
artist enhanced his late pictures into transparency and abstraction and made
them a symbol of the comprehensive harmony of being.5 In his hand, nature
becomes a living cosmos that he reworks with imagination and intellectual
power to form autonomous artistic entities. As in all his pictorial creations,
Christian Rohlfs is not turning towards abstract painting, however misleading
a first impression may be. His abstractions are realisations of an essence. His
154
5 Christian Rohlfs,
Large Magnolia, 1928.
Gouache / paper
(formerly Kunstsalon
Franke-Schenk)
6 The Dancers.
Suzanne Perrotet et al., 1909
in Hellerau. Cover photo of
the magazine Der Rhythmus,
issue 1 (1911)
7a Christian Rohlfs, Tatjana Cycle: Russian Folk Song (Elegy V )
1931. Crayon (Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kultur
geschichte, Münster, Stiftung Vogt)
7b Tatjana Barbakoff in a dancing scene 1928. Photo: Alexander Binder
155
8 Christian Rohlfs, Magnolia grandiflora, 1933.
Watercolour over crayon drawing (private ownership)
9 Christian Rohlfs, Large Magnolia, 1934. Watercolour and
coloured crayons (private ownership)
pictures emerge from experience (fig. 10). They connect the individual object with
the cosmic workings of nature as a whole.
Early in January 1938 the artist died in his studio in Hagen, ten years after
he had chosen Ascona as his summer residence. He enters art history as one of
the most important representatives of German Expressionism, yet remaining
a solitary figure.
bb
References: Paul Vogt, Christian Rohlfs. Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, Recklinghausen 1958 – Paul Vogt, Christian
Rohlfs. Das graphische Werk, Recklinghausen 1960 – Paul Vogt, Christian Rohlfs. Œuvre-Kat. der Gemälde.
Catalogue raisonné revised by Ulrike Köcke, Recklinghausen 1978 – Paul Vogt (ed.), Deutscher Expressionismus
1905 – 1920; enlarged German edition of exh. cat. New York / San Francisco 1980 / 81, Munich 1981 – Walther
Scheidig, Die Geschichte der Weimarer Malerschule 1860 – 1900, Weimar 1971 – Christian Rohlfs, Das druckgraphische
Gesamtwerk; exh. cat. Dortmund 1987 / 88, Essen 1988 – Christian Rohlfs, Aquarelle und Gemälde von 1919 bis 1937
aus der Sammlung der DDR, exh. cat. Nationalgalerie Berlin 1988 – Stephanie Barron, »Entartete Kunst«. Das
Schicksal der Avantgarde im Nazi-Deutschland, Munich 1992 – Reinhold Happel (ed.), Christian Rohlfs, exh. cat.
Braunschweig / Rostock / Moritzburg / Halle 1993 (Bibliogr.)  –  Christian Rohlfs, exh. cat. Munich / Wuppertal
1996 (Bibliogr.) – Renate Paczkowski, Christian Rohlfs, in: Biogr. Lex. Schleswig-Holstein, vol. X, 1994
156
10 Christian Rohlfs in the garden at Casa Margot, Ascona 1930
22
Jacob Salomonsz. van Ruysdael
(1629 / 30 Haarlem – 1681 Haarlem)
Dune Landscape
with Resting Cows and Sheep
C. 1651. Oil on wood; 56 x 86 cm (22.05 x 33.86 in). Unsigned
E x pert R eport : Dr. Walther Bernt, 28 July 1968
P rovenan ce : Private collection, Germany, since 1980
A
fter the northern Netherlands separated from Spanish rule
in the middle of the 17th century, Haarlem’s economic
and cultural life prospered. Painting in particular benefited from the new affluence of the middle class, whose members acquired paintings from art dealers, at auctions and even
at lotteries. Paintings served them as a form of investment,
but also as prestigious decoration for their homes. 1 Attracted by the thriving art market, many painters moved to Haarlem, working on a highly specialized level in various genres.
Above all in Haarlem beginning with Esaias van de Velde
(c. 1590 Amsterdam – 1630 The Hague) and Cornelis Vroom
(Haarlem, c. 1591 / 92 – 1661) the subjects of landscape paintings
changed from renderings of fantastic panoramas and moun1 Salomon van Ruysdael, River Landscape with Ferry,
tain views to a more realistic representation of the dunes, villaearly 1630s (Alte Pinakothek, Munich)
ges, forests and rivers in the surroundings of the city. 2 Leading
landscape painters of the Haarlem School before the middle
of the 17th century were Pieter de Molijn (1595 London – 1661 Haarlem), Jan van
1 Cf. Pieter Biesboer, Die Haarlemer
Kunstszene, in: Martina Sitt
Goyen (1596 Leiden – 1656 The Hague) and Jacob Salomonsz.’s father, Salomon
et al., eds., Jacob van Ruisdael.
van Ruysdael (1600 / 03 Naarden – 1670 Haarlem). One of the latter’s specialties
Die Revolution der Landschaft,
exh. cat. Kunsthalle Hamburg,
were river landscapes, in which he reached particular mastery during the 1630s. He
Frans Hals Museum Haarlem,
helped to develop the so-called »tonal« style, which is characterized by a restrained
Hamburg 2002, p. 13
palette that lends a unifying atmosphere to the representation, with its typical
2 Cf. Pieter Biesboer, Frans Hals
und Haarlems Meister der Goldenen
combination of intimacy and expansiveness (fig. 1). 3
Zeit, exh. cat. Kunsthalle der
Jacob Salomonsz. van Ruysdael, his only son born in 1629 or 1630, was trained
Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich,
Frans Hals Museum Haarlem,
by his father Salomon, at least partly together with his cousin of the same age Jacob
Munich 2008, p. 36
Isaacksz. van Ruisdael 4 (Haarlem, 1628 / 30 – 1682). Jacob Salomonsz. remained
3 Cf. Peter Eikemeier, Salomon van
in his father’s workshop for many years, which was not unusual at the time. Only
Ruysdael, in: mus. cat. Alte Pinakothek
München, Munich 1983, p. 480
in 1664, at the age of approximately 35, he became a member of the Haarlem Guild
158
5
4 Note that Jacob Isaacksz. spelled
the family name differently
5 In the same year (1664) Jacob
Salomonsz. married and in 1666
he moved to Amsterdam to escape
the recession in Haarlem, following
his cousin, who had already lived
there since 1655. After the death
of his wealthy father in 1670, who
like his son was a member of the
Dutch Mennonite community in
Haarlem, he acquired a hosiery shop
in Amsterdam, probably with the
money of his inheritance. He ran
this store from 1673 on, together
with his second wife. In 1681 he
became mentally ill and died only
10 days after he had been taken to
a poorhouse in Haarlem. He was
buried in the St. Anna cemetery
on Nov. 16.
For the biography of Jacob Salomonsz.
van Ruysdael, see: Martina Sitt, et
al., loc. cit., Hamburg 2002, p. 156;
Thieme / Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon
der bildenden Künstler von der Antike
bis zur Gegenwart, study ed., Leipzig
1999, vol. 29 / 30, pp. 193 f.; Wolfgang
Stechow, Salomon van Ruysdael,
Berlin 2 1975, p. 13
6 Cf. Wolfgang Stechow, loc. cit.,
Berlin 21975, pp. 45 f.; Laurens
J. Bol, Holländische Maler des
17. Jahrhunderts nahe den großen
Meistern. Landschaften und Stilleben,
Braunschweig 1969, p. 216
7 Cf. Walther Bernt,
Die niederländischen Maler des
17. Jahrhunderts, loc. cit., Munich
1948, vol. 3, nos. 697 and 698
of Saint Luke as an independent painter. Considering the long time Jacob Salomonsz. spent in his father’s studio, it is understandable that his paintings were
deeply influenced by his father’s work. But his cousin Jacob Isaacksz., who soon
became famous and significantly shaped Dutch landscape painting in the second
half of the 17th century, also had a strong impact on him. 6
Jacob Salomonsz.’s greatest specialty was the representation of undulating,
wooded dune landscapes, preferably populated by shepherds and their herds of
cows and flocks of sheep. 7 He rendered this subject in numerous variations, focusing on different thematic aspects, as the present painting of a Dune Landscape
with Resting Cows and Sheep excellently attests.
Corresponding to the particularly elongated horizontal format the wooded
dune landscape unfolds in the clear light of the late-afternoon sun and expands,
over a sandy path leading into the distance between hills at the side, towards the
low horizon under a slightly cloudy summer sky.
The sun is already so low in the sky that large areas of the landscape are in
the shadow of the hill on the left, which dominates this half of the picture with
its dense bushes and tall oak trees. The area between the dark foreground and
the middle plane covered by shade is accentuated by a narrow sunny strip crossing the sandy path and continuing towards the right margin of the painting. The
herd consisting of four cows and a larger number of sheep is resting by the wayside scattered along this brightly lit band. The shepherd has set down at a slight
remove from his flock on a slope of the hill at the left. In his grey cape, which the
narrow band of sunlight touches only at the shoulder, he is not immediately visible among copse and grass glistening in the light below a pond in the dusky darkness of the slope. He has taken off his hat, laid down his crook and is sitting on the
ground with his back towards the viewer, his face looking to the right rear in lost
profile. Prominent in the middle of the left half of the picture two mighty ancient oak trees, whose trunks intersect and unite to a single crown, grow on a bushy
slope. In the centre, the treetop is as impenetrably dark as the thicket in the lower
area behind it. Towards the outline of the crown thin, partly dead branches with
reddish-brown shimmering backlit leaves, are contrasted with the bright sky and
its wispy clouds. The thicket in the middle ground marking the rear of the mound
follows the terrain down to the right. There, slightly recessed, and exactly in the
middle of the picture, grows a second pair of oaks, their trunks now bifurcated,
but again forming a common crown. On the right a third pair of trees, with only
one treetop is visible. Compared with the second pair, its crown is a bit lighter and
rises above the slightly hilly plain in the background. Most of the animals gather
in the foreground, between the first and the third pair of trees. Two of the cows are
standing: one, nearly white, is facing slantwise towards the left in the direction of
the shepherd, while the second, reddish-brown, standing at a sharp angle to her, is
pointed towards the viewer. They are surrounded by the other animals lying on the
ground, except two standing sheep. They gather at the place where a small pathway
coming diagonally from the lower left and intersects with the main route. Coming
in a curve from the right and covered with wobbly carriage ruts and swampy
puddles, the main path leads into the distance, accompanied by the three pairs
of trees. Behind the third pair, where a person is sitting at the wayside, the path
turns to the left. In the darkness of the foreground on the right, a puddle of water
160
2 Salomon van Ruysdael, Landscape with a Medieval Castle,
1652 (Collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein, Vaduz)
3 Jacob van Ruisdael, Dune Landscape with Oak Trees and
a Body of Water, early 1650s (Kunsthaus Zurich)
reflects the sky, and above it, another small gathering of sheep is snoozing in the sun
at the wayside. From there the ground rises again towards the right margin of the
painting, first as a small sand dune overgrown with grass whose blades glow straw
yellow in the light. Then, in the shaded middle ground, follows an elevation slighter
than on the opposite side of the picture. The group of trees rising out of bushes is
almost the same size as the third pair of oaks to the left, framing the view into the
distance. A red-jacketed second shepherd tending his sheep on a pasture is also
visible in the distance. The extended landscape behind him has brighter bluishgreen hues. The cirrus clouds are denser at the horizon, but loosen up towards the
top, and approximately in the middle of the right half of the picture a large cloud
formation is shaped like the crown of the first pair of trees above which the bright
blue of the sky breaks through.
Jacob Salomonsz. van Ruysdael applies here a well-proven compositional
technique, by Stechow called »diagonal system« 8 that his father had already perfected (fig. 2). 9 In the present painting the landscape is equally defined by several
diagonals. The primary diagonal stretches between the dark area in the foreground, serving as a repoussoir, and the bright strip of light. There is an almost
parallel line running from the slope of the hill behind the first pair of trees,
picked up by another puddle of water in the middle of the path and continuing
in the elevation to the right. The secondary diagonal starting with the little path
that merges with the larger one, both of which leads into the distance or by way
of the central puddle respectively to the contour of the elevation on the right.
This diagonal is paralleled by the sequence of tree pairs staggered into the depth.
The point where the main diagonals cross is also marked by the largest accumulation of animals. The motif of merging or intersecting is picked up in the trunks
of the first pair of trees. These diagonals are mainly stabilized by the straight
line of the horizon continued in the pool on the left, and stressed by vertical
accents like the right trunk in each pair of trees or the two cows standing in
the centre of the herd. It is crucial to note, however, that with the diagonals
161
8 Cf. Wolfgang Stechow,
loc. cit., Berlin 2 1975, p. 19
9 In Salomon van Ruysdael’s 1652
painting Landscape with a Medieval
Castle in the Collections of the
Prince of Liechtenstein, Vaduz,
for example, the »main diagonal
is formed by the country road, the
secondary by the stream that flows
out of a body of water, continues
under the road and bypasses the
tall trees at the left margin of the
painting.« Petra ten-Doesschate
Chu, Im Lichte Hollands. Holländische
Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts aus
den Sammlungen des Fürsten von
Liechtenstein und aus Schweizer Besitz,
exh. cat. Kunstmuseum Basel,
Zurich 1987, p. 228.
The diagonal composition was
first introduced in Haarlem by
Cornelis Vroom, who is known
to have seen engravings of Adam
Elsheimer’s (1578 Frankfurt on
the Main – 1610 Rome) The Small
Tobias (c. 1606, Historisches
Museum, Frankfurt) and Flight
into Egypt (1609, Alte Pinakothek,
Munich). Cf. Pieter Biesboer,
loc. cit., Hamburg 2002, p. 16
4 Nicolaes Berchem, Three Sheep,
c. 1645, etching (private collection)
5 Nicolaes Berchem, Rest, 1644
(Metropolitan Museum, New York)
10 Jacob van Ruisdael’s small painting
Dune Landscape with Oak Trees and
a Body of Water, 25.6 x 34.4 cm
(10.08 x 13.54 in), from the early 1650s
at the Kunsthaus in Zurich shows
that the artist has left the tonal style
behind him. Cf. Seymour Slive, Jacob
van Ruisdael. A complete catalogue of
his paintings, drawings and etchings,
New Haven 2001, no. 622, pp. 436 f.
11 A good example for Jacob van
Ruisdael’s and Nicolaes Berchem’s
joint efforts is the 1652 painting
The Great Oak at the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art
along the horizontal line, an extended »up and down« effect is formed, particularly pronounced by the bowl-shaped sunny strip reaching from the shepherd to the blades of grass on the right. This »sheltered« shape neatly describes
a place of protection and calmness for the resting herd, though it also creates
an exciting tension with the progression into the distance exerted by the path
and the sequence of trees.
The colours of the landscape give a good sense of the unifying capacity of
the »tonal« style, where shades of brown prevail. However, their darkness is in
strong contrast to the brightness of the sky. In the light the vegetation shows more
colourful hues, especially reddish and orange tones or bluish-green toward the
background, applied in stippling technique. Together with the yellow-beige of the
sandy path and the blue of the sky, all of the primary colours are represented, albeit
in broken shades. This tendency toward a richer palette may show the influence of
Jacob Salomonsz.’s cousin, as for example might be seen in Jacob’s Dune Landscape
with Oak Trees and a Body of Water (fig. 3). 10
The motif of Jacob Salomonsz.’s shepherd scene is rooted in the pastoral tradition that originated in Italy. Based on bucolic poetry by Theocritus and above
all Virgil, the pastoral was first rendered in Venetian landscape paintings of the
16th century. It is therefore not surprising that in Haarlem the Italianist painter
Nicolaes Berchem (1620 Haarlem – 1683 Amsterdam) pursued this subject with
particular vigour. It is very likely that he had travelled to Italy in the early 1640s.
An excellent painter of people and animals, he even staffed some of Jacob van
Ruisdael’s landscapes, with whom he was close friends. 11 In the late 1640s Berchem
published a series of etchings with animal sketches (fig. 4), which certainly were
known to Jacob Salomonsz. In Berchem’s landscapes, however, the human figures and animals tend to dominate. The depiction of shepherds resting with their
herds is rendered more narratively, and might rather be associated with the Rest
on the Flight (fig. 5).
In Jacob van Ruisdael’s work, on the other hand, the importance of figures
and animals continually decreases compared to the landscape itself. Looking
at his Grain Field at the Edge of a Forest (fig. 6) 12, most frequently dated 1653 – 55
and very similar in composition to our present painting, it becomes evident
how he allows nature’s majesty speak for itself. From the water lilies floating
on the pond in the foreground to the monumental oaks, the variety of vegetation in its growth and decay comes to symbolize life. The landscape is accorded
sublimity and even pathos by the strong chiaroscuro beneath the dramatically
clouded sky. There the shepherd with his flock in the background has only an
incidental presence.
In contrast, Jacob Salomonsz. van Ruysdael prioritizes the pastoral scene in
his painting Dune Landscape with Resting Cows and Sheep and seems mainly
focused on how human beings and animals interact with the landscape. This
thesis is supported by comparable paintings that differentiate this relationship. In the 1650 painting Herd at the Edge of a Forest at the Hermitage,
St. Petersburg (fig. 7) 13, the shepherd rests with his herd in the shadow of an
old oak tree. They are almost entirely absorbed by the darkness, only one cow
has stepped into the narrow strip of light in the middle of the foreground.
And in the Dune Landscape with a Herd, dated 1651, at the Gemäldegalerie
162
6 Jacob van Ruisdael, Grain Field at the Edge of a Forest, 1653 – 55
(Worcester College, Oxford)
7 Jacob Salomonsz. van Ruysdael, Herd at the Edge of a Forest,
1650 (The Hermitage, St. Petersburg)
Kassel (fig. 8) 14, the herd rests at a crossroads with the main path leading into the
forest on the left. In this area sunlight breaks through the trees and brightly illuminates the path as well as the diagonally upward spiralling trunk of a gnarled old
oak in the centre of the painting. This detail, incidentally, makes the influence of
his cousin particularly palpable. While the shepherd is sitting quietly on a slope
by the wayside on the right, turned towards the viewer, the lightening of the tree
trunk seems to cause unrest among the animals mostly lying on the ground. This is
particularly noticeable in the reaction of the cows, especially in the one on the left,
standing in bright light and vigilantly turned towards the entrance into the woods.
Based on all the similarities, we would like to suggest that our version was painted at about the same time as the painting in Kassel, around 1651. The most significant difference, however, is the calmness that radiates from our dune landscape.
Nothing disrupts the peace. The place of protection within the gently curving
shape of a bowl has already been mentioned. The shepherd’s attitude matches this
idyll. Sitting apart from the herd he is represented as turning away not only from
the viewer but also from his flock, and seems to gaze unconcerned at the landscape. This aspect of our painting also seems to confirm what Bernd Wolfgang
Lindemann writes more generally about the Dutch pastoral of the 17th century:
»[…] It is striking how often staffage figures are represented from the back, or in
lost profile. They never lift the veil of anonymity, don’t interact with the viewer
and remain by themselves preserving intimacy.« He continues: »In the pastorals
it is always bright daylight, at most tending towards dusk. It is summer or spring,
never fall, let alone winter. This corresponds with the traditional characteristics of
the poetic idylls, as does protecting the scene with stands of trees [...].« Thereby
»the shepherds, peacefully living their idyll, should be seen as positive examples
of a way of life guided by stoic philosophy«. 15 Human and animal serenity in our
picture is completely in accordance with the harmonious proportions of the intervals within the composition. Whereas the progression into the background adds
163
12 The painting at Worcester College,
Oxford, measuring 103.8 x 146.2 cm
(40.87 x 57.56 in), is generally dated
1653–55. Only Gaschke suggests that
it was made during the 1660s. Cf.
Seymour Slive, loc. cit., New Haven
2001, no. 394, p. 299; Pieter Biesboer,
in: Martina Sitt, loc. cit., Hamburg 2002,
no. 34, p. 116; Jenny Gaschke, in: Die
Entdeckung der Landschaft. Meisterwerke
der niederländischen Kunst des 16. und
17. Jahrhunderts, exh. cat. Staatsgalerie
Stuttgart, Cologne 2005, no. 34, pp. 105 f.
13 The 1650 painting at the Hermitage,
St. Petersburg, measures 84 x 115 cm
(33.07 x 45.28 in) and is one of the
earliest paintings that Jacob Salomonsz.
van Ruysdael dated. Cf. Seymour Slive, loc.
cit., New Haven 2001, no. dub62b, pp. 634 f.
14 The painting at the Gemäldegalerie in
Kassel that Jacob Salomonsz. van Ruysdael
dated 1651 is, at 55 x 82 cm (21.65 x 32.28
in), about the same size as the work under
consideration if not as wide. Cf. Bernhard
Schnackenburg, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister,
Gesamtkatalog Kassel, Mainz 1996, vol. 1,
p. 267, plate 175; Seymour Slive, loc. cit.,
New Haven 2001, no. dub62, pp. 634 f.
15 Bernd Wolfgang Lindemann,
Dumpfe Stuben, lichte Himmel. Bauern
und Hirten in der niederländischen
Kunst des 17. Jahrhunderts, exh. cat.
Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel 1996, p. 17
8 Jacob Salomonsz. van Ruysdael,
Dune Landscape with a Herd,
1651 (Gemäldegalerie Kassel)
a temporal dimension to the landscape, from the »now« of the foreground to the
»then« in the distance.
With this pastoral scene, Jacob Salomonsz. van Ruysdael created an ideal image
of the Dutch landscape, completely in line with the thinking at the time, »ignoring the newly gained polder land as well as the modern transportation system of
canals in the 1630s«. 16 He rendered a bucolic landscape as it was desired by the city
dweller, a picture so very typical for Dutch landscape painting – full of intimacy
and expansiveness.
gf
16 Miriam Volmert, Garten und
Grenze. Konstruktion holländischer
Identität in Dünenlandschaften
des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, in:
Matthias Krüger, ed., Im Dienst
der Nation, Berlin 2011, p. 328
References: Martina Sitt et al., eds., Jacob van Ruisdael, Die Revolution der Landschaft, exh. cat. Kunsthalle
Hamburg, Frans Hals Museum Haarlem, Hamburg 2002 – Pieter Biesboer, Frans Hals und Haarlems Meister
der Goldenen Zeit, exh. cat. Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich, Frans Hals Museum Haarlem,
Munich 2008 – Peter Eikemeier, Salomon van Ruysdael, in: mus. cat. Alte Pinakothek München, Munich
1983  – Thieme / Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, study ed.,
Leipzig 1999, vol. 29 / 30 – Wolfgang Stechow, Salomon van Ruysdael, Berlin 21975 – Laurens J. Bol, Holländische
Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts nahe den großen Meistern. Landschaften und Stilleben, Braunschweig 1969 – Walther
Bernt, Die niederländischen Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts, Munich 1948 – Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Im Lichte
Hollands. Holländische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts aus den Sammlungen des Fürsten von Liechtenstein und aus
Schweizer Besitz, exh. cat. Kunstmuseum Basel, Zurich 1987 – Seymour Slive, Jacob van Ruisdael. A complete
catalogue of his paintings, drawings and etchings, New Haven 2001 – Jenny Gaschke, in: Die Entdeckung der
Landschaft. Meisterwerke der niederländischen Kunst des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, exh. cat. Staatsgalerie Stuttgart,
Cologne 2005 – Bernhard Schnackenburg, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Gesamtkatalog Kassel, Mainz 1996 – Bernd
Wolfgang Lindemann, Dumpfe Stuben, lichte Himmel. Bauern und Hirten in der niederländischen Kunst des
17. Jahrhunderts, exh. cat. Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel 1996 – Miriam Volmert, Garten und Grenze. Konstruktion
holländischer Identität in Dünenlandschaften des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, in: Matthias Krüger, ed., Im Dienst der
Nation, Berlin 2011
164
23
Peter Conrad Schreiber
(1816 Fürth – 1894 Nuremberg)
View of Cape Misenum and Capri
1872. Gouache on paper; 60 x 47 cm (23.62 x 18.5 in)
Signed and dated lower left: C. Schreiber 1872; marked lower right: Capri
P rovenan ce : Private ownership Germany
F
1 Signature of the picture
1 See also Frank Büttner / Herbert
W. Rott (eds.), Kennst Du das Land.
Italienbilder der Goethezeit, exh. cat.
Neue Pinakothek, Munich 2005.
rom a raised vantage-point among the remains of an old fortress wall, the viewer sees a massive clifftop and an island. Some ruins, bushes, a road and a small
female figure are rendered in loose and broad, blurred brush strokes, predominantly
in pale green, beige and pink tones. The view leads far into the depths and grows
hazy in the blue of the distance and the sea. The picture is characterised by an atmospheric dissolution of forms and a renunciation of precise details – predominantly,
however, by the intense effect of azure blue that covers well over half the picture. The
colour shadings are placed abundantly, yet finely and subtly.
At the lower right edge of the picture an annotation to the signed and dated
work (fig. 1) informs the viewer that »Capri« is portrayed here. The painter’s
standpoint may have been in the region of the village of Monte di Procida on
the western side of the Phlegraic peninsula. From here the viewer sees the imposing cliffs of Cape Misenum, connected to the mainland only by a narrow spit
of land (fig. 2). In the background on the right, the outline of the island of Capri
(fig. 3) appears in the distance. Schreiber is certainly concerned here with the
recognisability of the region – highly essential for a souvenir and a picture of
this kind was considered as such – but even more with a highly effective intensification of what is seen, around an emotionally imbued representation, a dreamlike vision of southern light, sea and sky.
The Bay of Naples was already an obligatory destination for the aristocratic
Grand Tour travellers of the 18th century visiting the sites of European art and
learning. It constituted the southernmost point of their enterprise that often lasted several years. In the 19th century, the circle of these travellers expanded enormously. 1 No longer only aristocrats accompanied by artists in their roles of chroniclers, but also middle-class educational travellers increasingly found their way to
Naples. Accordingly, the need for souvenirs and landscape pictures of the region
increased. Thus a brisk art production developed with themes from around the
Bay of Naples. Especially popular for this was the technique of gouache painting
in covering watercolours bound with rubber or vegetable glue. This allowed not
only swift working but also a highly accurate portrayal of the natural colourfulness of what was depicted. The effect of a gouache is highly immediate and fresh,
166
2 Cape Misenum (above)
3 Capri (below)
4 Peter Conrad Schreiber,
View of Palermo, gouache, undated
(private ownership) (right)
2 See also Il mito e l’immagine. Capri,
Ischia e Procida nella pittura dal ‘600
ai primi del ‘900. Milan 1990 and
Antonella Basilico Pisatura, Capri nella
raffigurzione pittorica dell’Ottocento,
in: Architetture e territorio nell’italia
meridionale tra XVI e XX secolo. Scritti
in onore di Giancarlo Alisio a cura di
Maria Raffaela Pessolano e Alfredo
Buccaro, Naples 2004, pp. 80–84
its matt surface free of the sometimes irritating reflections of an oil painting. The
lesser demanding technique also allowed freedom from the strict rules of classical landscape painting. In general the pictures were not especially large in size for
easier transport. Moreover, during the 19th century no longer only Vesuvius and
the history-steeped places known from the study of ancient literature – especially
Vergil’s Aeneid – such as Cumae, Pozzuoli, Cape Misenum, the Phlegraic Fields
and Monte Posillipo (Vergil’s gravesite) served as favourite motifs. In 1800 the
major artistic concern when choosing a landscape as the object of a picture was
its grandeur, its so-called sublimity. In this sense Vesuvius with its eerily beautiful
eruptions and famous places made significant by historical events had been especially suitable as pictorial objects for late 18th-century painters. During the 19th
century with the advent of Realism, however, the native people’s life of Naples was
also being discovered. At that time Naples was bigger than Rome and a hub of
vibrant activity. But above all, the beauties of nature and the charms of the coastal
landscape with the islands of Capri and Ischia, along with Sorrento and Amalfi,
now provided the bulk of the subject matter. The blue sea, the southern light and
the lush vegetation around Vesuvius were so highly regarded as a paradisiacal visionary landscape that from the mid-19th century on they formed the quintessence
of the German longing for Italy. On Capri, not included in the programme of the
classical Grand Tour, the tourist boom – uninterrupted to this day – started after
the Blue Grotto had discovered by the writer – painter August Kopisch and the
painter Ernst Fries in 1826. 2 Schreiber, too, although he emphasises Cape Misenum so much in his composition, was primarily interested in the charm of the
landscape rather than the historical significance of the place. Schreiber must have
spent a long period in the countryside, on the sites and in the small towns around
the Bay of Naples, as several pictures with corresponding views have survived.
Born in 1816 Schreiber was the son of a reputable master girdler and buttonmaker in Fürth. His talent for drawing was noticed early and after an initial training in Fürth he went as a nineteen-year-old to August Wilhelm Ferdinand
Schirmer in Berlin in 1835. Schirmer was a flower and landscape painter. After
168
5 Peter Conrad Schreiber, Southern Italian Landscape,
gouache, undated (private ownership)
6 Peter Conrad Schreiber, Sea Landscape with View
of Vesuvius, gouache, 1869 (private ownership)
several years in Italy, Schirmer maintained a studio in Berlin where he also trained
students. In 1843, he was appointed professor of landscape painting at the Berlin
Academy. In 1835 Schreiber himself was already able to celebrate his earliest successes as a painter at the Berlin art exhibition that year. Around 1840 he lived for a
lengthy period in Rome and probably also in Naples. However some Sicilian landscapes by his hand are also known (fig. 4). Also he is thought to have journeyed
to Egypt, as pictures by Schreiber with corresponding subjects have survived. In
Rome he may have belonged to the German artists’ colony that was established
in the vicinity of the Spanish Steps. He is at least mentioned by Friedrich Noack
in his publication about the Germans in Rome. 3 It is not known when Schreiber
returned to live in Franconia. There exist some views of Nuremberg from his later
period. He died there in 1894.
Schreiber was a landscape painter and etcher. Apart from literary themes, he
created many views of German, but primarily Italian landscapes around the Alban
mountains, the Bay of Naples and Sicily (figs. 5 and 6). It is possible that not all these
pictures were completed in Italy but were produced somewhat later in Germany
from study sheets. This was common practice among many landscape painters of the
period. Several of Schreiber’s works are preserved in the holdings of the municipality
of Fürth, but pictures by him repeatedly surface in the art trade as well.
Conrad Schreiber is still to be classified in the late Romantic painting tradition, although from the second quarter of the 19th century onwards a more direct
portrayal of nature – termed Realism – without romantic, idyllic or historical
169
3 Friedrich Noack,
Das Deutschtum in Rom seit
dem Ausgang des Mittelalters,
vol. 2, Stuttgart 1927, p. 538
7 Peter Conrad Schreiber,
View of Capri at Sunset,
oil / canvas, undated
(private ownership)
idealisation increasingly prevailed. However, a late Romantic painting striving for
effect corresponded far more closely to the needs of a broad middle-class art-conscious public. Idealising presentations were considered »artistic« and were well
paid. Significant landscapes were expected to emerge, rather than »empty representational painting« as contemporaries looking down on Realism denigratingly
expressed it. Artists were therefore concerned with deliberate composing, idealistic intensification and subjective experience. But they naturally also tried to align
this »artisticness« with the reality of a specific local feature. Realism was, as it were,
colouristically and idealistically enhanced. Certainly the rather unusual portrait
format, contributes to the intensification. It gives the view into the depths and the
distance a more emotional, more subjective quality. Furthermore, in comparison
to the first half of the century, almost all painters preferred a much looser style of
painting and highly atmospheric tonal affiliations (fig. 7). This painting of mood
was not modern in any avantgarde sense but it fulfilled an important need as an
emotional corrective to the scientific analysis of nature that was rapidly advancing
at that time. The mostly urban buyers of these pictures could thus repeatedly dwell
on the memories of their journeys, their feelings and experiences in nature. hk
References: G. K. Nagler, Neues allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon, Leipzig 1835 – 1852, vol. 17, p. 549 f. – Thieme-Becker,
Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler, vol. 30, Leipzig 1936, p. 281 – E. Bénézit, Dictionnaire critique et
documentaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, vol. 7, ed. 1954, p. 644 – Adolf Schwammberger,
Fürth von A – Z, Fürth 1967 – Hans Pflug-Franken, Ein vergessener Fürther Landschaftsmaler; Peter Konrad Schreiber,
der Romantiker des Biedermeier, in: Fürther Heimatblätter, iss. 22, 1972, no. 5, pp. 129 – 130 – Friedrich von Boetticher,
Malerwerke des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Beitrag zur Kunstgeschichte, vol. 2, ed. Hofheim / Taunus 1979, p. 652
170
171
24
Ludwig Sckell
(1833 Schloss Berg / Starnberg – 1912 Pasing near Munich)
Lake Gosau with the Dachstein
C. 1870. Oil on canvas; 15.2 x 25.2 cm (5.98 x 9.92 in)
Signed bottom left: L (?, not fully preserved) Sckell; on the reverse an old sticker:
...Sckell / Gosausee mit Dachstein / ... (illegible in places)
F
rom the 19th century to the present day the spectacular Dachstein massif with
Lake Gosau has been one of the most popular landscape themes in Austria for
painters and photographers. It was discovered around 1830. Earlier, at the end of
the 18th century, first the Viennese salonnière Caroline Pichler and then the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt had travelled to Ischl and the Salzkammergut.
Their descriptions were the first to make its natural beauty known. After the turn
of the century and the »Biedermeier« period walking tours, summer holidays and
bathing excursions became generally popular. Ischl, the central town of the Salzkammergut, was thus able to establish itself as a spa as early as 1823. Archduchess
Sophie Friederike had its saline baths to thank for the long-desired birth of the
future Emperor Franz Joseph. And he himself spent at least part of almost every
summer at Ischl until his old age. Then, along with the Habsburgs and the imperial household, the Viennese nobility, the artists and middle-class holidaymakers
also flocked to the Salzkammergut in the summer.
From Ischl the lakes – so different in character – were visited. Some lakes
were celebrated for their charms, others were admired for the awe-inspiring
rugged mountains surrounding them. Above all, the two Gosau lakes and the
imposing Dachstein massif have always impressed all their visitors. And consequently, of course, a huge demand for souvenir paintings and drawings arose.
But the first painters were not yet working for tourists; they wanted to discover
the beauty of the Salzkammergut for themselves and capture it in pictures as
realistically as possible. Franz Steinfeld (1787 Mariahilf – 1868 Písek / Bohemia)
and Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (1793 Vienna – 1865 Hinterbrühl), the two
founders of realistic landscape painting in Austria, played an important part.
Both produced paintings of Lake Gosau with the Dachstein. In the 1820s and
1830s it became popular among artists to paint complete pictures directly in
front of the subject, rather than just produce preparatory plein air sketches. The
development of oil paints in tubes, of course, did make this very much easier.
However, the public of those days took rather longer to appreciate these spontaneous landscape views.
172
Later, in the second half of the century, landscape themes from
the Salzkammergut became important motifs for souvenirs. The construction of the Westbahn railway (1858 / 60) and the Crown Prince
Rudolf Bahn branch line (1877) from Attnang to Bad Aussee had
greatly swelled visitor numbers and brought about the first climax
of tourism in the Salzkammergut. Although there had been a horsedrawn train from Linz to Gmunden as early as 1836, the journey was
now much faster and more comfortable. The Salzkammergut with its
mixture of gentle and dramatic landscapes had become a favourite
travel destination and a desirable theme for artists. In Linz there
were complaints that Ischl had turned into a »Viennese branch«. Nor
was Munich far distant from the Salzkammergut. From 1893 there
was also a local train connection from Salzburg. And naturally people
1 Christian Mali, Lake Gosau with the Dachstein,
wanted to take home from the summer-holidays their impressions
undated (private ownership)
of the overwhelming beauties of nature. This is why the Dachstein,
above all, has been painted so often, sometimes by very important artists. Among
them are Adalbert Stifter, Jakob Alt, Johann Fischbach, Friedrich Gauermann,
Anton Hansch, Eduard Schleich the Elder (1812 Schloss Haarbach – 1874 Munich)
and Christian Mali (1832 Darthuizen – 1906 Munich) (fig. 1), apart from Waldmüller and Steinfeld.
Our picture shows the lower of the two Lakes Gosau in the Upper Austrian part of the Salzkammergut, from a slightly elevated viewpoint. Behind it,
the mighty Dachstein massif glows in the light of an early summer evening. The
mountain bathed in reddish light to the left in front of the higher Dachstein is a
representation of the »Brettkogel«; the cliff to the right of the picture is probably
the north face of the »Bischofsmütze«. The lake, in dark blue tones mixed with
green, extends from the left edge of the picture to a shimmering silvery strip on
the opposite shore. A man standing in a boat is just pushing away from the shore
with his oar. Towards the right another strip of shore with rocky crags and the
flood-borne rootstock of a tree may be discerned. Here, the fresh green relieves
the dark palette of the lower half of the picture. Similarly, sunlight reflected on the
water by the boat provides a bright colour accent. Above, the dark masses of the
mountains project into the left and right of the painting. Only their upper sections
glow reddish in the evening sun. In the background the Dachstein massif with
its glacier appears in full sunshine, the true centre of the picture. Smooth surface
treatment enhances luminosity and the idyllic, harmonious atmosphere. Although
depicting imposing mountains the picture is completely devoid of heroism and
drama – it radiates the calm and peacefulness of a passing day. This very serenity
allows to experience a wonderful enhancement of the pictures composition. Whereas two descending mountain slopes appear on the left side, the cliffs on the right
are considerably steeper. Even the silhouette of the Dachstein itself presents its
peak culminating towards the right.
The creator of this view, Ludwig Sckell, was a very popular landscape painter
of the day belonging to the Munich School. He hailed from a well-known and
prolific family of gardeners and artists. Sckell was the son of Carl Ludwig Sckell
(Nymphenburg, 1805 – 1884), the Bavarian Court Gardener at the palace of Berg
on Lake Starnberg from 1832 – 39, who later worked at the palaces of Schleissheim
174
2 Ludwig (Louis) Skell, Stag with his pack, 1905
(private ownership) (left)
3 Ludwig Sckell, Mountain landscape with house,
c. 1868 (private ownership) (above)
and Nymphenburg. 1 He was not, as is often erroneously assumed, the son of Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell (1750 Weilburg – 1823 Munich), the creator of the English Garden at Munich, but his great-nephew. The Christian name of Friedrich,
often listed first, and the title of nobility, which only Friedrich Ludwig Sckell was
personally awarded, are the results of mistaken identity. Ludwig Sckell received
his training in Munich from the landscape painter Richard Zimmermann (1820
Zittau – 1875 Munich). From 1861 on Sckell was regarded as a painter established
in Munich but he probably moved to Tölz before 1880. 2 However, by 1906 at the
latest – according to the annals of the Kunstverein – he was living near Munich,
at Pasing in the Villenkolonie II. In his last years a serious eye disorder hampered his artistic activity. 3 Sckell, an honorary member of the Munich Academy,
died at Pasing. He had a son of the same name (1869 – 1950), who became Master
of the Royal Hunt in Bavaria and was a painter like his father. 4 He specialised in
animal paintings of red deer (fig. 2). To distinquish himself from his father he signed »Skell« without a »c« and often called himself »Louis« rather than »Ludwig«.
To add to the general confusion there is yet another painter called Ludwig
Sckell (1842 – 1905), also from the wide-spread Sckell dynasty. Born in Obergünzburg he died in Munich, but much less is known about his life and work
than about our painter’s. 5
Our Ludwig Sckell painted his early pieces with miniaturist exactitude great
realism of detail, typical, in fact, of the pictures of the preceding Biedermeier
period (fig. 3). His preferred themes were Alpine landscapes and the environs of
Munich. Most of his clients came from the urban middle classes; thus they could
enjoy mountain streams, lakes, mills, farmhouses and Alpine lodges in their living
rooms (fig. 4). Small rural staffage figures and animals, usually cows, populate his
harmonious natural views. Sckell’s formats remained modest in the Biedermeier
manner. In his late works he retained the preference he had had from the outset
175
1 Peter Lack, Die Gärtnerund Künstlerfamilie Sckell, in:
Friedrich Ludwig von Skell 1750 – 1823.
Gartenkünstler und Stadtplaner,
Iris Lauterbach, ed.,
Worms 2002, p. 208
2 According to the – at times
patchy – annuals of the Munich
Kunstverein; here, Sckell is listed
among the external members
by 1882 at the latest, with Tölz
given as his residence.
3 Report on the activities and
membership of the Munich Kunstverein during 1912, obituary for
Ludwig Sckell, Munich 1913, p. XXII
4 He is listed as Sckell Junior in the
annals of the Munich Kunstverein
and as resident in Munich.
5 He also created landscapes, and
genre pictures, portraits and
drawings as well; see Thieme
Becker, vol. XXX, 1936, p. 398
4 Ludwig Skell, Bavarian Mountain Landscape near Bad Tölz,
5 Ludwig Sckell, Landscape at the Foothills of the Alps,
for academic and traditional compositional schemes. In
our picture this is evident from the orientation towards
the frame, the symmetrical construction and the streaky
distribution of bright and shaded areas. However, in his
final creative phase panoramic landscapes in a broader
format predominate. These show the influence of Eduard
Schleich the Elder and so loose a brushwork that they
can no longer be categorised as late Biedermeier 6 (fig. 5).
In fact, they are better classified with the trend of the
second half of the century known as poetic and atmospheric realism. Painting purely for effect and the heroicdramatic scenes so beloved by the middle-class art public
were, however, alien to Sckell. In his personal life, according to his obituary, Sckell was a very unassuming and
reserved man. 7
The artist usually signed his pictures with »L. Sckell«
in his typical left-loping script but he hardly ever dated
them. 8 This is why there is still no reliable chronology of
his works, some of which are in the possession of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, the Munich Stadt
museum, the Georg Schäfer collection at Schweinfurth
and the Kunstmuseum at Basel. Sckell’s picture of Lake
Gosau with the Dachstein still bears the stamp of the late
Biedermeier era because of its harmonious and idyllic
character, the smooth treatment of the surface and the
modest format. Thus giving it a probable dating within
Sckell’s earlier productive period, around 1870.
hk
References: Thieme-Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler, vol. 30, Leipzig 1936, p. 398 – Bruckmanns
Lexikon der Münchner Kunst. Münchner Maler im 19. Jahrhundert, vol. 4, Munich 1983 – Peter Lack,
Die Gärtner- und Künstlerfamilie Sckell, in: Friedrich Ludwig von Skell 1750 – 1823. Gartenkünstler und Stadtplaner,
Iris Lauterbach, ed., Worms 2002 – Horst Ludwig, Sckell und Skell und andere Tiermaler, in: Weltkunst 57,
1987, no. 24, pp. 3690 – 3694 – Siegfried Wichmann, Münchner Landschaftsmaler im 19. Jahrhundert. Meister.
Schüler. Themen, Weyarn, undated – Karin Friedlmaier, Ludwig Sckell, in: Kunst in der Vereinsbank. 1500 bis 1950,
Munich 1997, pp. 132 – 134
6 See also Siegfried Wichmann,
Münchner Landschaftsmaler im
19. Jahrhundert. Meister. Schüler.
Themen, Weyarn (undated),
pp. 52, 53, 119, 125, 131, 132, 270
7 Obituary of Ludwig Sckell,
cf. footnote 3
8 Horst Ludwig, Sckell und Skell
und andere Tiermaler, in:
Weltkunst 57, 1987, no. 24, p. 3693
176
25
Carl Spitzweg
(1808 Unterpfaffenhofen – 1885 Munich)
Landscape in the
Amper River Valley
C. 1860 / 70. Oil on mahogany panel; 8.3 x 13.8 cm (3.27 x 5.43 in)
Initialized at the lower left: S (within a rhombus)
I
1 Jubiläumskatalog Kunstsalon
Franke-Schenk, vol. I,
Munich 2013, p. 187
n contrast to Carl Spitzweg’s oil sketch »Thunderstorm« (ca. 1851 / 52) with the
tragicomical rendering of a walker, that attests to the thorough study of Dutch
17th century painting, especially works by Peter Paul Rubens, 1 this delicate and carefully painted landscape is the work of the mature artist, who has already discovered his
pictorial language. During this middle period of his activity, the artist almost always
embedded his figures in the larger context of a scene or a landscape. The anecdotal
nature of Spitzweg’s paintings remains his trademark even today. There are many
examples for this in the well-known Spitzweg collections like the Neue Pinakothek,
the Schack Gallery in Munich or the Museum Schäfer in Schweinfurt.
After 1860, the artist finally achieved fame and success, and also received several
awards, such as the distinguished Order of St. Michael in 1865. In 1870 he was
elected member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Art collectors, too,
became interested in his works, Adolf Friedrich Graf von Schack, for example,
who during the 1860s acquired six of Spitzweg’s works for his gallery in Munich.
Among them is a painting that the well-traveled nobleman and connoisseur of the
Orient especially liked for its authenticity: »Turks in a Coffee House« (1855). It is
probably due to Schack’s efforts that Spitzweg’s works were shown at the World
Exhibition in Paris in 1867. By the time he died in 1885, he was not merely widely
known but had become thoroughly popular.
Increasingly Spitzweg focused on pictorial virtuosity in small and even minute
pictures. With a fine brush, the painter conjured a lush Upper Bavarian landscape on the size of a postcard, with meadows, trees, a village, distant mountains
and a stormy sky. Despite their miniature size, the paintings always seem to feature a humorous anecdote. In the present painting – though only rendered with
tiny brush strokes and dots – the viewer may discern right away a young peasant
woman in the foreground, standing in the shade of a thicket, waiting impatiently.
Her hair is protected by a red headscarf, she wears a white blouse and a blue apron
over her skirt. She also carries a bundle under her arm as she watches out for
something by the wayside – and seems to be turning around at just that moment.
178
At the left in the middle ground a steeple and a few roofs of her home farming village
are indicated, from where she might have secretly sneaked away to meet her sweetheart. Just behind her embedded in the dark shadow under the trees a brown blur is
visible. Could this be her lover, hiding behind the trunk of a tree? Spitzweg has no
intention of presenting a complete story. With a lot of imagination it is possible to
sense a second person there, but the figure is not recognizable with any certainty. It
might well be that this irritation of the viewer was just what the painter intended.
It has been suggested that the painting might represent a landscape in the
Amper River Valley which stretches from Lake Ammer (Ammersee) to Moosburg and encompasses the so-called »Dachauer Land« (Dachau area) 2, but it
might show the countryside along the river Inn just as well. The church in the
background has features typical of so many Upper Bavarian village churches and
it has not been identified so far. Wichmann, however, pointed out the similarities
to a church in a pencil drawing from a sketchbook of around 1850, which the artist
captured on a hike from Rohrdorf (near Rosenheim) to the »Drachenfeld Alp«. 3
It is almost impossible to suggest precise dates for these small paintings. Based
on the signature and the painting style Wichmann assigns a date around 1845 / 50
to this landscape. However, we propose to align it with other works on small
panels, the so-called »Brettl«-Malereien (scrap-wood paintings). Spitzweg is
documented to have produced a large quantity of paintings after 1860 on small
wooden panels, the mahogany lids of empty cigar boxes, for example, thin wood
planks or even pieces of cardboard. A corresponding entry does not appear in his
sales journal until the year 1866. 4 Painting on the lids of cigar boxes attests to the
thriftiness of the heavy smoker. Maybe the notion of giving collectors personal
keepsakes in addition to the paintings inspired that idea.
In this virtuoso miniature painting style Spitzweg created pictorial gems that
were intended to be held in the hand and examined closely, perhaps even with a
magnifying glass. The precision of these refined oil paintings is staggering, especially
when we consider that they seem to be painted directly on the raw support, rather
like a colored drawing. One wonders how it was possible to create the impression of
the peasant woman with only a few brushstrokes. On the one hand, with these miniature size drawing-like paintings Spitzweg is rooted in a long and renowned tradition – compare Adam Elsheimer (1578 Frankfurt on the Main – 1609 Rome) and
his famous »Flight into Egypt« at the Alte Pinakothek or contemporary landscape
painters like Karl Girardet (p. 70). On the oher hand he rejected with such anecdotal miniature landscapes the Impressionist way of painting, that emerged around
1870, with its preference for an accentuated sketchy style with open brush strokes on
medium-size formats and a general aversion to the representation of narratives. fb
2 Siegfried Wichmann,
Unbekannte und neu aufgefundene
Bilder und Zeichnungen.
Nachtrag zur Ausstellung:
Carl Spitzweg – Reisen und Wandern
in Europa und der Glückliche
Winkel, Munich 2002 / 03, p. 8
3 See Wichmann 2003, p. 8 with ill.
4 See in detail Jensen 2002, p. 317
References: Jens Christian Jensen, Carl Spitzweg. Gemälde und Zeichnungen im Museum Georg Schäfer in
Schweinfurt, Munich 2002 – Günther Roennefahrt, Carl Spitzweg. Beschreibendes Verzeichnis seiner Gemälde,
Ölstudien und Aquarelle, Munich 1960 – Siegfried Wichmann, Carl Spitzweg. Verzeichnis der Werke, Munich 2002 – 
Siegfried Wichmann, Unbekannte und neu aufgefundene Bilder und Zeichnungen. Nachtrag zur Ausstellung: Carl
Spitzweg – Reisen und Wandern in Europa und der Glückliche Winkel, Kulturzentrum Seedamm, Pfäffikon / Haus
der Kunst, Munich 2002 / 03
180
26
Hans Thoma
(1839 Bernau / Black Forest – 1924 Karlsruhe)
Bush
1882. Oil on cardboard; 39.5 x 47.8 cm (15.55 x 18.82 in)
Signed lower left and dated: HTh (ligated) 1882
Annotated on the back in the artist’s own hand: »Dieses Bildchen habe ich 1882
direkt vor der Natur gemalt. Karlsruhe Nov. 1908. Dr. Hans Thoma« [I painted this
small picture directly from nature in 1882. Karlsruhe Nov. 1908. Dr. Hans Thoma.]
P rovenan ce : Private ownership, Germany
P
robably an object could hardly be simpler than in this study executed as a
picture: an anonymous bush at the wayside on a flowering meadow in summertime with the sun at its zenith. However, the way in which this incidental
subject is placed into the format and its effects in light and shade are studied,
how detailed observation and deliberate presentation coincide, gives meaning to
what is apparently insignificant.
Already the standpoint is illuminating: the artist has left the stony, loamy
meadow path leading uphill to catch the spherical bush from a lower perspective in the meadow so that it sits in the middle of the picture with its outline
projecting over the brow of the hill in front of the serene sky. The compositional
layout is rigorously structured into concise features: below, a foundation of white
and yellow dappled and striated flowers, above it the thick-leaved bush between
the slopes of the rightward-climbing mountain ridge and the leftward-climbing
path, then at the top the blue sky with two typical, small white cumulus clouds
(flat below, rounded above), visually linked by the round outline of the bush.
Above the »calotte« of the bush, the mere wisp of a third small cloud is discernible at the edge of the picture.
Not only do we feel the scorching warmth of a summer’s day with reflecting
light phenomena – how for example the blue of the sky catches or reflects in various sections – but with the simple shrubbery itself Thoma demonstrates his mastery of nature observation: the bush has volume and depth, it looks darker against
the ground, where half-light and shadow are caught; it even casts a coloured shadow on the meadow. At its location beside the sunny path, two heavily shaded,
dark brown holes (perhaps foxes’ or badgers’ burrows) lead into the ground. However, its crown of foliage projected before the sky is so exposed to the fullest sunlight that the colourfulness of the thickly painted foliage appears there heavily
depleted into a faintly silvery green. Where it borders the sky, the outline is edged
by a garland of finely glazed foliage that lets the sky shine through. Every variation
182
2 Charles-Francois Daubigny Orchard at Harvest Time, 1876
(Städel Museum, Frankfurt)
1 Joseph Wenglein, Adolf Heinrich Lier Painting on the
Kalter, 1868 (Neue Pinakothek, Munich)
1 This is confirmed by a note in
the artist’s own hand on the
back of the cardboard: »I painted
this small picture directly from
nature in 1882«. Karlsruhe Nov.
1908. Dr. Hans Thoma.
2 Oil / cardboard, 36.0 x 45.3 cm
(14.17 x 17.83 in), Neue Pinakothek
Munich, colour ill. in:
Neue Pinakothek. Katalog der
Gemälde und Skulpturen,
published by Bayerische
Staatsgemäldesammlungen,
Munich 2003, p. 424
3 See Hans Thoma, Stream between
Rocks, 1862, and Grasses beside
the Stream, 1862, ills. in: Christa
von Helmolt, Hans Thoma.
Spiegelbilder, Stuttgart 1989, p. 46
4 See Hans Thoma, Thicket, 1876,
oil / canvas, 79 x 102 cm
(31.1 x 40.16 in), ill. in: Ludwig Justi,
Hans Thoma. Hundert Gemälde aus
deutschem Privatbesitz, Berlin 1922,
without page references, plate 18
5 Elder Bush, 1886,
Oil / paper / cardboard, 47 x 33 cm
(18.5 x 12.99 in),
private ownership, text and
colour ill. in: Hans H. Hofstätter,
Margret Zimmermann,
Hans Thoma – Lebensbilder (1839–1924).
Gemäldeausstellung zum 150. Geburtstag,
Augustinermuseum Freiburg
im Breisgau 1989, Königstein
im Taunus 1989, p. 250 f.
6 id., p. 250
of light, half-light or half-shadow and shadow is deployed. Perceptibly the artist
created the picture on site in a penetrating observation of nature.1 We can imagine
him »sur le motif«, just as Joseph Wenglein (1845 Munich – 1919 Bad Tölz) portrayed his teacher Adolf Heinrich Lier Painting on the Kalter2 in 1868 (fig. 1).
Belonging to the generation exactly between Lier (1826 Herrnhut – 1882 Wahren, near Brixen) and Wenglein, Thoma likewise joined an artistic movement in
his youth that rejected all subjects grand and stately, found its themes in local
scenery and practised open-air painting. These landscapes could comprise large
panoramas but also small »insignificant« views. Internationally the most influential artists were Courbet (1819 Ornans – 1877 La-Tour-de-Peliz) and the Barbizon
painters. Daubigny (Paris, 1817 – 1878) also belonged to the Barbizon School, a
group of artists that met in the woods outside Paris to paint there in the open air
far away from the academic studios. Daubigny’s painting Orchard at Harvest Time
of 1876 (fig. 2) is an invitation to a visual stroll through a sumptuous orchard. Its
predominant colour, green, is played out in endless variations in this late work and
constantly applied in different structures.
During his period at the Karlsruhe Academy with Schirmer (1807 Jülich  –  1863
Karlsruhe) such closely observed sections of nature are already in evidence with
Thoma, 3 all the more so after his Paris visit in 1868 where he met Courbet, and in
his subsequent Munich period from 1870 on, where he joined the Leibl circle. There,
incidentally, the aforementioned Adolf Heinrich Lier (also influenced by Courbet
and the Barbizon painters) ran a landscape painting school from 1869 to 1873. 4
Through Thoma’s move to Frankfurt in 1877, where in 1880 he also gained access
to the painters’ colony in the village of Kronberg in Taunus. There the »paysage
intime« was also fashionable – the intimate landscape, so called because of its
atmospheric conception of nature. Hans Thoma painted our Bush in that manner in 1882. A few years later, in 1886, Thoma made a blossoming Elder Bush 5
(fig. 4) that he could see from his studio window in Frankfurt’s Wolfgangstraße
the object of a study similarly executed as a picture: »The bare, counterposed
walls outline the narrow and intricate setting of a backyard garden. It forms the
184
3 Hans Thoma, Landscape with cloud, 1893,
Oil on board (Kunsthalle Mannheim)
4 Hans Thoma, Elder Bush, 1886
(private ownership)
framework for the elder bush placed in the middle of the picture. Standing in
full bloom, it towers over the walls of an adjacent garden and hides other gardens from view; above it – blue sky«. 6 The portrait format here reinforces the
window view, the feeling of organic forces and the corporeal form of the bush
spreading out in the confined urban setting and striving towards the light with
its white blossom-heads at the top, seeming to draw a »response« from a lone
cloud high above the rooftops in the sky. The contrast to the way in which our
small Bush can spread out unconstrained and freely in the sunlight there, although being exposed to wind and weather, is perfectly clear.
The painting Landscape with Cloud (fig. 3), created eleven years later, proves that
our Bush was not to remain inconsequential in Hans Thomas’ pictorial memory.
Here, obviously, the same bush – now viewed from the path – was enlarged into
a more comprehensive landscape by adding a treeline on the hill ridge as well as
higher cloud formations.
agm
References: Hans H. Hofstätter, Margret Zimmermann, Hans Thoma – Lebensbilder (1839 – 1924). Gemäldeausstellung zum 150. Geburtstag, Augustinermuseum Freiburg im Breisgau 1989, Königstein im Taunus 1989 – 
Ludwig Justi, Hans Thoma. Hundert Gemälde aus deutschem Privatbesitz, Berlin 1922 – Christa von Helmolt,
Hans Thoma. Spiegelbilder, Stuttgart 1989
Note: The certificate on the back of the Bush painting is an ink-written confirmation by the artist’s own hand.
Hans Thoma wrote it in 1908 in his capacity as teacher at the Karlsruhe Academy adding his PhD to his name.
185
27
Hans Thoma
(1839 Bernau / Black Forest – 1924 Karlsruhe)
Happy Summer Day
in Marxzell
View of the Hamlet Schwann near Conweiler
1915. Oil on wood; 113 x 86 cm (44.49 x 33.86 in)
Signed and dated bottom left: 19 HTh 15 (ligated)
P rovenan ce : Private ownership, Southern Germany
»Begrenze und begreife – 
Das war ein rechter Rat
Damals, bei Sorg und Saat.
Jetzt ist erfüllt die Zeit:
Es rauscht die Welt von Reife,
Und von der Stirne streife
Dir die Nachdenklichkeit…« 1
T
1 Restraint and understanding – 
Once that counsel was sound
while tending and sowing the ground
Now is the time of fulfilment:
The world is aglow with ripeness
And from your brow should be wiped
Contemplation …
2 Rainer Maria Rilke, quoted from
Christa von Helmolt, Hans Thoma.
Spiegelbilder, Stuttgart, 1989, p. 19
his beginning of a »song written for Hans Thoma«, composed by Rainer
Maria Rilke for his 60th birthday in 1899 2, forms a vivid poetic accompaniment to our encounter with the Black Forest hills, radiant with lush summer
green under some cumulus clouds gathering forcefully in the light blue sky. It
is in an imposing portrait format, created by the 76-year-old Thoma, a native
Black Forest artist, from his last summertime residence, Marxzell in 1915 – 
the same year in which it was already being published by his first biographer,
Fritz von Ostini.
From the elevated standpoint of a gently sloping flowery meadow in summertime, the viewer can see two girls dressed in red and blue, walking along
the meadow bordered with bushes, enjoying nature – the smaller one pressing
ahead and dutifully holding the elder girl’s hand. The foreground is essentially
braced between a conifer (reminiscent of a Black Forest fir) that is intersected
by the left edge of the picture as a strong vertical placement and – at the same
time – a coloured pole of darkness on one side and, accompanied by the loose
rhythm of small posts, a stake with a chirping bullfinch near the right edge of
the picture on the other side. The rightward-descending slant of the whole section is accompanied and bordered by a narrow, lightning-blue water-ditch on
the valley floor.
186
In the middle ground, on the hill beyond the ditch,
fields spread out in the tender green of early summer, and
rising above them is a mixed forest partly enclosed by a
wall, towards which an open carriage carrying a couple is
pulled in from the right by a galloping horse. On the flat
hilltop behind it lies the hamlet of Schwann 3 in the distance between sunlit meadows above dense forests, forming a colourful outline beneath the cloudy sky.
Above the generally flat-shaped horizon, the energetically formed sky occupies more than one third of the
painting. Some slightly grey-tinged white cumulus clouds
and stratus cloud banks moving in from the right indicate
possible rain later.
Marxzell is situated in the Alb valley in the northern
Black Forest, not far from Karlsruhe. The villages there
developed from clearings and so they are surrounded by
cultivated meadows embedded in extensive conifer and
mixed woodlands. 4 After Hans Thoma, widowed in 1901,
had given up his teaching work in Karlsruhe in 1910 and
had visited his birthplace of Bernau for the last time in 1912,
he regularly went to Marxzell from 1913 on to spend the
summer months there in a shingled forest cabin with his
ever-solicitous sister 5 – painting, writing his memoirs 6 and
1 Hans Thoma, Taunus Landscape, 1890,
oil / canvas (Neue Pinakothek, Munich)
receiving visits, such as those from his two granddaughters. 7
Hans Thoma’s »open letter« signed at the end of August
1915,
which
followed
Ostini’s
»Tribute to the master on his 76th birthday« (with
3 Schwann, with its Schwanner
the above-mentioned publication and a colour illustration of our picture), actually
Warte, a viewing tower, offers
wonderful views into the Rhine
closes with a reference to this particular landscape: »With the picture on page 13,
and Oden valleys, the Pfalz
Happy Summer Day in Marxzell, I am now coming to the conclusion; this is my
mountains and part of the Vosges
4 According to the town’s
most recent picture, in a really good colour reproduction. – I should like to say that
website www.marxzell.de
it is a highly personal picture that resulted from affection to my little summer5 Near Burbacher Straße, see above,
house and garden that have given happiness to a couple of children. It is an image
the town of Marxzell’s website
of profound peace that arose in the murderous wartime year of 1915 […].« 8
6 The »Gesammelten
Erinnerungsblätter« (collected
This last sentence expresses Hans Thoma’s full awareness of the antithesis to
memoirs), which is the subtitle of
reality
constituted by his earthly idylls that he found everywhere throughout his
Hans Thoma’s Im Herbste des Lebens
(in the autumn of life)
life in all the places he visited – from the Central German Uplands to the Roman
had already been published in
Campagna. They are sought-out vantage-points that do not permit any inferences
Munich in 1909. The autobiography
Im Winter des Lebens (in the winter
about conditions at the end of the 19th or beginning of the 20th century but contain
of life) was published in Jena in 1919.
the innocent purity of nature and a human being’s sense of security in it. Conse7 Hans and his wife Cella Thoma
quently, Thoma regarded the murals for the Hans Thoma museum in Karlsruhe,
had adopted a niece of Cella’s in
1880, who, as married Ms. Blaue
that opened in 1909, as the summit of his art. In them he linked scenes from the
gave birth to two girls
life of Christ symbolically with landscape subjects – ultimately referring to Runge
8 Hans Thoma, Ein offener Brief
(1777 Wolgast – 1810 Hamburg).
von Hans Thoma an den Herausgeber,
in: Alexander Koch (ed.), Fritz
The joyful unity of the experience of nature in the sense of being at home in
von Ostini (text), Hans Thoma.
the universe is also something conveyed by our picture, which is far from being a
Eine Huldigung zu des Meisters
76. Geburtstag, in: Deutsche Kunst
mere veduta. In it the advice given by Thoma to his fellow human beings is fulund Dekoration XIX, vol. no. 1,
October 1915, p. 40
filled: »If at the delightful festival of Pentecost people wander out into the bridally
188
adorned world of the landscape, it will reveal its beauty to
anyone with a soul to receive it, and especially to the hearts
of children; yes, every corner of the earth flourishes and
blossoms. It is not really necessary to wander far and to seek
doubtfully where it is most beautiful. Only do not forget
your eyes; open wide these portals to the soul, then beauty
will enter gladly, for it is at home everywhere and goes in
search of souls that recognise it«. 9
The painting draws its artistic quality in particular from
the exciting transformation of actual nature observations into
rigorous formal compositional structures. The portrait format
already seems an unusual choice with a landscape because
the sensory experience of the expanse of a terrestrial landscape is generally transferred into horizontal format. This
2 Hans Thoma, Albtal near Marxzell, 1906
again places Thoma at the end of a development that pro(private ownership)
ceeds from Early Romanticism in the figure of Caspar David
Friedrich (1774 Greifswald – 1840 Dresden). It is reminiscent
of his Chalk Cliffs on Rügen 10 in its »vue plongeante« or downward-sweeping view,
where depth and distance are almost vertiginously perceived in portrait format. 11
Thoma repeatedly chose this view throughout every stage of his work, albeit
always tempered in comparison with Friedrich. It is already to be found in the
early commissioned picture View of Laufenburg 12 from 1870  –  the year in which he
went to Munich to join the Leibl circle following his influential encounter with
Courbet (1819 Ornans – 1877 near Vevey), but also to receive decisive impressions from Böcklin (1827 Basel – 1901 Fiesole). The most famous example is the
Thoma, Die deutsche Landschaft,
Taunus Landscape 13 (fig. 1) painted in 1890, at the end of his Frankfurt period and 9 Hans
in: Im Herbste des Lebens. Gesammelte
also at the beginning of his success, which already contains all the typical characErinnerungsblätter, Süddeutsche
Monatshefte, Munich 1909, p. 200
teristics of Thoma’s style that are also found in our Happy Summer Day in Marxzell:
Oil / canvas, 90 x 70 cm
a vividly colourful palette; sharply demarcated sections that appear behind each 10 1818,
(35.43 x 27.58 in), Oskar Reinhart
collection Winterthur
other perspectively foreshortened and at the same time visually set above each
other on the painted surface; consistent clarity of the terrain and precision of 11 Cf. Oskar Bätschmann,
Die Entfernung der Natur.
detail from close range to the furthest distance; variation between pasty and
Landschaftsmalerei 1750 – 1920,
Cologne 1989, chapter entitled
finely glazed paint application that sometimes allows the underlying contour
»Abgründe«, p. 136 ff., who
lines (in our example, especially those of the clouds) to shine through; and a
also mentions Hans Thoma as
a typical representative of the
strongly graphic linear structuring of the planimetric picorial surface, especially
»vue plongeante« on p. 142.
by means of outlines and pathways.
12 Oil / canvas, 65 x 45 cm (25.59 x 17.72
From 1892 Thoma became increasingly concerned with graphic techniques
in),
Staatliche Museen Preußischer
that led to an »almost poster-like stylisation«,14 which also had an impact on
Kulturbesitz, National Gallery Berlin
his painting. Accordingly, in 1922 Ludwig Justi made the following observations
13 Oil / canvas, 113.8 x 88.8 cm
about Albtal near Marxzell from 1906 (fig. 2): »Shrubbery and foliage are often
(44.8 x 34.96 in), Neue Pinakothek,
Munich, ill. in: Neue Pinakothek.
executed in the manner of a drawing, particularly in the shade, with curly lines.
Katalog der Gemälde und
A similar process – very thinly painted coloured surfaces containing graphically
Skulpturen, published by Bayerische
Staatsgemäldesammlungen,
striated details, particularly at the front – often appears in Thoma’s paintings of
2003, p. 389
15
that period«. Or, to mention a final portrait format that is closer in time to our 14 Barbara Hardtwig, Christiane
Happy Summer Day in Marxzell: For Midsummer from 1907 (fig. 3) Justi staRösner, in: Gemäldekataloge der
Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen.
tes: »The painting is again very plain, often applying graphic means […] conNeue Pinakothek München,
vol. VIII / 3, Munich 2003, p. 161
tour effect, surface shift, network of lines. Unity of colour shades and powerful
189
contrasts, covering or transparently floating tones; a closed paint
layer, bordered plains or a striated foreground«. 16
Thoma is able to simultaneously address two entirely complementary perceptual levels. On the one hand, there is the sensory perception
of natural phenomena, such as the light breeze that catches the silvery
foliage of a bush in the foreground or even acoustic phenomena, when
we can almost hear the rustling leaves, twittering birds or children’s
voices in the distance, and then feel even more intensively the tranquillity of the sunny hamlet »transported« into the distance.
On the other hand, a strongly abstract compositional method
takes effect in clear, almost shadowless colours. This makes the graphic stylisation of the objects (such as the lavishly sown dots of the
flower meadow or the regular striations of the trees) appear strongly
anti-sculptural and anti-spatially flat, whereas these surfaces originate (against the diminutive effect of perspective) as nearly radial segments behind the conifer at the left edge of the picture.
This abstractly decorative »poster-like« pictorial effect may serve as
3 Hans Thoma, Midsummer, 1907
a reminder that Hans Thoma was – as one of its oldest fellows – an
(whereabouts unknown)
honorary member of the Berlin Secession and a corresponding member
of the Munich and the Vienna Secessions – and that those same tendencies continued in his late work. This may confirm on another level the double meaning of the
»time of fulfillment« which Rilke claimed in relation to the artist and his work.
agm
References: Christa von Helmolt, Hans Thoma. Spiegelbilder, Stuttgart 1989 – Alexander Koch, ed., Fritz von
Ostini (text), Hans Thoma. Eine Huldigung zu des Meisters 76. Geburtstag, in: Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration
XIX, vol. no. 1, October 1915 – Hans Thoma, Die deutsche Landschaft, in: Im Herbste des Lebens. Gesammelte
Erinnerungsblätter, Süddeutsche Monatshefte, Munich 1909 – Hans Thoma, Im Winter des Lebens, Jena 1919 – 
Ludwig Justi, Hans Thoma. Hundert Gemälde aus deutschem Privatbesitz, Berlin 1922 – Barbara Hardtwig,
Christiane Rösner, in: Gemäldekataloge der Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen. Neue Pinakothek Munich,
vol. VIII / 3, Munich 2003
Furthermore current exhibitions should be mentioned: Hans Thoma: The Pringsheim Frieze – in honour of
Richard Wagner’s 200th birthday anniversary at the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, 27. Apr.– 13. Oct. 2013 and Hans
Thoma. »The German People’s Favourite Painter« at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, 3. Jul.– 29. Sept. 2013
15 Ludwig Justi, Hans Thoma.
Hundert Gemälde aus deutschem
Privatbesitz, Berlin 1922, without
page references, plate 8, with ill.,
Albtal near Marxzell, 1906, cardboard,
66 x 82 cm (25.98 x 32.28 in)
16 Ludwig Justi, loc. cit., plate 9,
with ill. Midsummer, 1907, on wood,
82 x 66 cm (32.28 x 25.98 in)
190
28
Dionys Verburgh
(c. 1655 Rotterdam – 1722 Rotterdam)
River Landscape with Ruined Castle
and Travellers Resting in front
of a Tavern
End of 17th century. Oil on wood, parquetted; 46 x 63 cm (18.11 x 24.8 in)
Monogram at bottom centre: DV.f.
E x pert R eport : Walther Bernt on 16 April 1973
T
1 Dionys Verburgh, River Landscape
with Travellers outside an Inn, oil / wood
(private ownership)
1 Cf. Thieme / Becker, Allgemeines
Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler
von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart,
study edition, Leipzig 1999,
vol. 33 / 34, p. 230; see also H. C.
Hazewinkel, De Rotterdamsche
Schildersfamilie Verburgh, in: OudHolland, Leiden 1938, pp. 217 – 222
he Dutch landscape painter Dionys Verburgh lived and worked in the second
half of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th in the harbour city of
Rotterdam in the river delta of the Rhine. 1 The major part of his oeuvre consists
of mountainous river landscapes like those found along the Rhine, where the river
flows through the uplands of the Taunus and Hunsrück or Westerwald and Eifel.
Towards the end of the great period of Dutch landscape painting Verburgh here unites two of its most important achievements. One is the Flemish »world landscape«
dating back to Joachim Patinier (1475 / 80 Dinant – 1524 Antwerp) and Pieter
Brueghel the Elder (1525 / 30 Breda – 1569 Brussels) with sometimes imaginary
panoramas of fantastic landscapes. The other is the realistic reproduction of
landscape developed in 17th century Holland with genre-like depictions of its
population. Moments from these two fundamental traits of Dutch landscape
painting unite in our River Landscape with Ruined Castle in a manner highly
typical of Verburgh (for comparison see fig. 1).
From an elevated viewpoint the observer sees a river valley cut deep into the
mountainous ranges, stretching diagonally from the bottom left-hand corner to
the centre of the painting. The foreground consists of the flat terrain on the nearside bank, which rises in the middle ground to a steep rocky outcrop above the
river in the middle of the picture with a ruined castle on it. Towards the right in
the background this elevation climbs to the higher mountain slopes graduated
one behind the other. A path leads from the middle of the lower edge of the picture past herbage and undergrowth surrounding a felled tree and a broken stump
on the left, past a clump of trees in the middle below the ruined castle towards
two small high-gabled farmhouses, one close behind the other. Then the path curves upward towards a knoll and disappears behind the ruined castle. At the level
of the houses a rider on a brown horse rides down the path, while other people
walk up towards the knoll, sit or stand by the side. On the right in front of the
rider a relatively well-dressed couple – she in a yellow cloak and white cap, he in a
192
2 Hercules Seghers, Mountain Landscape, c. 1630 – 1635, oil / cnv.
(Uffizi, Florence)
2 Kurt Müllenmeister,
Meer und Land im Licht des 17. Jhd.
Seestücke und Flusslandschaften
niederländischer Maler des 17. Jhd.
in privaten Sammlungen,
vol. 1, Bremen 1973, p. 142 b
3 Hercules Seghers, The Enclosed Valley, etching / lightbrown
primed paper (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.)
red waistcoat – have left the path in the direction of the thatched house in front.
Before the couple a blue-jacketed man on a white horse seeing from the back has
also stopped on his way. His horse is being held by the halter, presumably by the
landlord, who summons his boy. The landlady, however, stands in the open door
of the house and watches her little daughter and a stooping servant carry objects
back and forth between the house and the people stopping for a rest. The closing
point of the little scene in front of the house is a single cartwheel, which lies on
the ground in the right bottom corner of the picture and moreover designates the
hamlet as a wayfarers’ resting station.
In the left lower corner of the picture the terrain drops away towards the river.
There a man and his wife who is sitting on the ground beside him wait on a path
ending by the shallow water’s edge for the ferry. That carries two passengers and is
further to the right, still in the middle of the river, next to a riverboat with hoisted sails.
On the far side of the river three mountain ridges are staggered along the steep
river bank upwards to the right edge of the picture and lead into the hazy distance,
where another sailing boat is visible before the river melts into the horizon. In the
sky occupying almost the entire upper half of the painting, streaks of cloud span
the river valley in long arcs; they loosen towards the upper edge of the picture,
exposing more and more blue sky.
As to colour, the slightly cloudy sky with its grey tones tinged with light blue,
pink and even white contrasts with the generally darker reddish-yellowish-brown
and ochre tones of the earth formations of the landscape. Against them the sparse
vegetation of isolated groups and rows of trees stand out only through the gradation of somewhat deeper shades of brown. The staffage figures, the ruined castle
as well as the houses, are mostly in keeping with the brown and ochre tones of
their environment. Only in the scene in front of the house – accompanied by
white – do the more powerful bright colours appear: yellow, red and blue, the
triad of the primary colours. Nevertheless the colour calculation remains balanced because the brown and ochre tones of the landscape contain enough red and
yellow to be complemented by the blue of the sky. The river’s smooth surface also
mirrors in rather more muted reflection the bright blue and pink shades of the sky
and the water course thus moves like a bright ribbon through the darker tones of
194
the landscape. Only on the contour of the nearside river bank up to the ruined
castle, where branches of bushes and trees are projected against the river or the sky,
is the greenish-brown foliage heightened with white, making it seem silvery in the
backlight. It also softens the contrast between light and dark at this point and does
not visually narrow the breadth of the river too much.
How typical the colours of our River Landscape with Ruined Castle are of
Verburgh’s landscape painting is evident from the findings by Kurt Müllenmeister,
who made these general remarks on Verburgh’s use of colour: »The palette is
mostly brown with intermediate silvery tones. A few local dabs of colour for the
people or animal staffage in the foreground heighten the effect of his beautiful and
compositionally well-balanced paintings.« 2
This tone-on-tone painting of the landscape, which reproduces earthy, rocky
or overgrown surfaces through fragmented chiaroscuro to demonstrate their characteristic structures, is distantly reminiscent of the works of Hercules Seghers
(c. 1590 Haarlem – 1638 Amsterdam), the Dutch landscape painter and engraver in the Flemish tradition. Examining Seghers’ famous Mountain Landscape of
around 1630 – 1635 at the Uffizi in Florence, which was owned and reworked in
1656 by Rembrandt (1606 Leiden – 1669 Amsterdam), one can still see how Seghers shaped the fissured rocky crags of the foreground into uniform structures in
the distance (fig. 2). Those structures are even clearer in his sometimes experimental engravings with their often bizarre landscape formations (fig. 3).
But Verburgh’s River Landscape with Ruined Castle has nothing in the least
bizarre about it; on the contrary, Verburgh strives to represent the landscape’s
form and structure as realistically as possible, so that the topography along the
middle Rhine is recognisable. The painting may therefore be regarded as a view
of a Rhine landscape. 3
Yet, however realistic the rendering, Verburgh’s picture is most decidedly composed and the landscape has become abstract to a certain extent. Thus, the breadth
of the river, mentioned above, is of not inconsiderable importance for the composition of the picture. The bright ribbon of the river leading obliquely into the picture
is counterbalanced by a bright area slanting from the ruined castle to the rear of
houses on the right edge, including a section of the path curving towards the ruined castle. Thus, between these two oblique lines a conical shape emerges and
forms the darker foreground, whose top is crowned by the ruined castle. As the
outer contours of the cone, both left and right, are continued in the outlines of the
mountain ridges in the background, two diagonal axes cross at the centre of the
picture and point out the ruined castle in their focus.
The ruined castle on the tip of a conical hill above a river valley is thus emphasised both by the composition and its projection against the bright sky, and it is
possible to speculate whether this might be a view of one of the many castles on
the steep banks of the Rhine between Mainz and Koblenz. Most of these medieval
castles were badly damaged or destroyed in the course of the 17th century, during
the Thirty Years’ War (1618 – 1648) or the War of the Palatine Succession (1688 – 1697).
Three castles may be taken into consideration: Lahneck Castle near Lahnstein 4
is the most similar both in shape and proportion. It consists of a lengthwise main
building with polygonal tower, from which a wooden oriel juts out just where a
dark indentation is visible in Verburgh’s picture (fig. 4). It also has fortified walls
195
4 Lahneck Castle,
photographed from the north-west
around 1920 – 40. On this old photograph the partly open and barren ground
of the landscape is visible.
5 Lahneck Castle across the Lahn,
photographed from the north-west, 1896
3 There is no evidence that Verburgh
ever travelled through the landscapes
of the Middle Rhine. However,
the art museum of Uppsala has a
painting, attributed to Verburgh,
showing a harbour scene with a view
of Speyer before 1689; although this
painting harks back to a picture
by the Dutch painter Abraham
Storck, it nevertheless indicates
that views of the Rhine were part
of Verburgh’s metier. Cf. Karl
Rudolf Müller, Eine neuentdeckte
Speyerer Stadtansicht aus der Zeit
vor der Stadtzerstörung von 1689, in:
Pfälzer Heimat, 1966, 1, pp. 10 – 13
6 Katz Castle above St. Goarshausen,
photographed from the west,
c. 1850 (above)
7 Stolzenfels Castle,
photographed from the north,
c. 1890-1900 (right)
4 Lahneck Castle, built from 1226
on by the Elector and Archbishop
of Mainz, Siegfried III von Eppstein,
was badly damaged by Swedish and
Imperial troops in 1632 and 1636
during the Thirty Years’ War. French
troops destroyed the remaining roofs
in 1688, in the War of the Palatine
Succession. Its reconstruction
began in 1852. Albrecht Dürer
(Nuremberg, 1471 – 1528) drew
Lahneck Castle in 1521 in its still
intact state on his homeward journey
from his stay in the Netherlands
(1520 – 1521). Cf. wikipedia.org
situated in front and, as a so-called »spur
castle«, it is situated on a cone-like elevation above the river. However, it rises
above the somewhat narrower river
Lahn, shortly before this meets the
Rhine (fig. 5).
Katz Castle, actually Neukatzenellenbogen, 5 is situated on a conical hill
on the Rhine near St. Goarshausen not
far from the Loreley and does indeed
display the very conspicuous corner towers on the river front of the main building,
but it has a round tower (fig. 6). And finally, Stolzenfels Castle, 6 situated across
the Rhine opposite Lahnstein, again has a square main tower, but seems to have
more component elements on the whole than the ruined castle in Verburgh’s picture. Seen from the north, however, its site presents an astonishingly similar view
of the Rhine valley (fig. 7).
Ultimately, it will be impossible to resolve the problem of the original model
beyond all doubt. On the one hand Verburgh might have depicted the ruins of
Lahneck Castle above the Lahn which he widens into a broad river; on the other
hand, various impressions from memory or other source material, treated with
artistic licence, might have met in the design of this very characteristic view of a
Rhine landscape. As his depiction also touches the themes of travel on water and
over land, Verburgh’s clientele might have treasured it as a souvenir of a journey
along the castle-studded Rhine. In this sense the ruined castle, an age-defying
landmark, greets the travellers with one white and one yellow flag flying from the
corner towers.
gf
References: Thieme / Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, study
edition, Leipzig 1999, vol. 33 / 34  –  H. C. Hazewinkel, De Rotterdamsche Schildersfamilie Verburgh, in: Oud-Holland,
Leiden 1938, pp. 217 – 222 – Kurt Müllenmeister, Meer und Land im Licht des 17. Jhd. Seestücke und Flusslandschaften
niederländischer Maler des 17. Jhd. in privaten Sammlungen, vol. 1, Bremen 1973 – Karl Rudolf Müller, Eine neuentdeckte
Speyerer Stadtansicht aus der Zeit vor der Stadtzerstörung von 1689, in: Pfälzer Heimat, 1966, 1, pp. 10 – 13 – Walther
Bernt, Die Niederländischen Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts, vol. 3 , Munich 1970
5 Built by the Counts of
Katzenellenbogen from 1360 on,
it was partly destroyed in 1626 and
1647 during succession disputes and
further destroyed in 1692 by French
troops. The castle was reconstructed
after 1896 with major changes in its
external form. Cf. wikipedia.org
6 Erected between 1242 and 1259 by
Arnold II von Isenburg, Archbishop
of Trier, the castle was damaged in
the Thirty Years’ War and destroyed
in 1689 in the War of the Palatine
Succession. In 1826 reconstruction
work on Schloss Stolzenfels began
in the Romantic Neo-Gothic style,
with contributions by Karl Friedrich
Schinkel (1781 Neuruppin – 1841
Berlin). Cf. wikipedia.org
196
29
Ludwig Vogel
(1788 Zurich – 1879 Zurich)
Rest in the Campagna
C. 1810 / 13. Oil on canvas; 49.5 x 62 cm (19.49 x 24.41 in)
Signed lower middle: L. Vogel Rom 18..
P rovenan ce : Private collection, Switzerland
L
1 Cf. Beat Wyss,
Die ersten Modernen, in:
Die Nazarener, exh. cat. Schirn
Kunsthalle, Frankfurt / Main
2005, pp. 155 – 167
udwig Vogel’s idyllic portrayal of a family resting from the exertions of their
journey is nothing less than a very early example of the anti-academic movement of early German Romanticism, what might even be called the first »Secession«
in the 19th century, or in fact the »first Modernists«. 1 The unspectacular family
idyll in the Roman countryside shows Vogel’s first attempts to create a Nazarene
genre picture in terms of reviving painting in the spirit of Christianity rather
than Antiquity.
After a confectioner’s apprenticeship in his home town of Zurich and accompanying drawing lessons by local artists such as Füssli (1741 Zurich – 1825 London)
and Gessner (Zurich, 1730 – 1788), Vogel moved to Vienna in 1808 for some further
training at the academy. There he was very soon dissatisfied with the curriculum,
which largely consisted in refining aspects of technique and copying antique statues. By 1810, therefore, Vogel had already turned his back on the famous Vienna
academy under Heinrich Friedrich Füger – its feared taskmaster and classicist par
excellence – and moved to Rome, along with his fellow students Friedrich Overbeck
(1789 Lübeck – 1869 Rome) and Franz Pforr (1788 Frankfurt – 1812 Albano).There
they established their studios in the buildings of the Franciscan monastery Sant’ Isidoro – dissolved by Napoleon – and they lived as monastic artists on the Pincian
Hill. They founded the Brotherhood of St. Luke, soon joined by several other artists,
such as the famous landscapist Joseph Anton Koch (1768 Obergiblen / Tyrol – 1839
Rome) and the history painter Peter Cornelius (1783 Düsseldorf – 1867 Berlin). The
ideology of this group demanded art to revert to Christianity, which is why they
decided to name themselves after St. Luke the Evangelist, who they felt had been
unduly forgotten as the patron saint of painters. It is common knowledge that before
1800 the painters had been organised in so-called Guilds of St. Luke.
Due to their long hair and their pious ways they were soon mocked by the
Romans as »The Nazarenes« alluding to Jesus of Nazareth and his disciples. The
derogatory term »Nazarenes« did not become a serious term of art-history until
1900. An essential requirement for membership in the Brotherhood of St. Luke
was conversion to Catholicism, which was impossible for Vogel, a follower of
Zwingli, to meet. After his friend Pforr’s tragically early death and the political
198
1 Ludwig Vogel, The Confederates before Winkelried’s
Body, 1841 (Kunstmuseum, Basel)
2 Joseph Anton Koch, Subiaco, 1824
(privat collection)
3 Camille Corot,The roman campagna la cervara, 1827
(privat collection)
200
upheavals in Switzerland resulting from Napoleon’s fall in
1813, Vogel returned to his native city and took up a brisk activity there as a history and genre painter.
In his homeland, he did not pursue the revival of religious painting sought by the Brotherhood of St. Luke. In the
course of his long life it seemed to him much more important
to establish an identity-forging iconography of Swiss history. Examples of this are Tell’s Apple Shot of 1829 according
Schiller’s famous drama, or various versions of the picture
entitled The Confederates before Winkelried’s Body of 1841 (fig. 1)
or of 1856 in the government buildings of canton Schwyz.
As a genre painter Vogel devoted himself to portraying
the enlightened Swiss middle classes, as in his picture SummerHouse of 1822. But already in Rome he pursued typical folk
themes with a certain precision in rendering the regional
costumes of men and women. Although Vogel later painted
similar Italian genre pictures, such as the Italian idyll dated
1841, the present picture must have originated a great deal
earlier. That becomes clear from the artist’s own designation »Rom 18…«; unfortunately the following two numerals
are no longer completely legible. But the reference to Rome
as the place of origin can only refer to the period from 1810
to 1813 when he stayed there. Furthermore, the nature of the
portrayal still seems closer to the mind-set of the Brotherhood of St. Luke than the later romance.
In the foreground on the right, we see an exhausted Italian
family sheltered by a wood. The pater familias with his walking stick or crook is leaning wearily against a small wall that
may belong to a fountain, from which both mules have been
drinking. The father notices that his dog has trotted up urging
him on. The matron, obviously refreshed, is sitting higher up
on the wall and talking to her dog. The wet nurse has settled
down on the ground to breastfeed the baby while the older
daughter nearby is taking up her water bottle. Vogel concentrated on the intimate togetherness of the family. The painter
consistently avoided any archaeological references to the
Roman past. Even Monte Sorratte visible in the distant background serves more as an explanation of the topography than
as a reminder of the »Soracte« glorified in antique poetry by
Horace or Vergil as the seat of Apollo.
Vogel’s resting family alludes to representations of »Rest
on the Flight«, an event in the New Testament that relates the episode in which Mary and Joseph fled with their
baby Jesus from Herod’s henchmen. Contemporaries such as
Philipp Otto Runge (1777 Wolgast – 1810 Hamburg) in 1808
(Kunsthalle Hamburg) or Joseph Anton Koch in 1824 tackled
that subject, the latter even in context with an Italian
landscape picture Subiaco (fig. 2), where in the foreground
on the right the Holy Family may certainly be considered
no more than staffage. Camille Corot (Paris, 1796 – 1875),
one of the leading representatives of the Barbizon School,
portrays this completely differently: he lived in the Campagna from 1825 to 1828 and his landscapes aim at a new
realism nurtured by Dutch 17th-century painting that
does not enhance Latium in any heroic way (fig. 3).
Eventually Vogel was not setting out to create a landscape picture but a genre scene in rural atmosphere. Nor
does his painting represent a Biblical scene. He does, however, allude to Christian tradition and the famous story
of Jesus’ childhood. He enjoys portraying the serene and
loving closeness of the married couple with their children,
wet nurse and animals on their journey.
fb
4 Ludwig Vogel, Italian Idyl, undatet
(privat collection)
References: Keith Andrews, The Nazarenes: A Brotherhood of German Painters in Rome, Oxford 1964 – Religion,
Macht, Kunst: die Nazarener, exh. cat. Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt / Main 2005 – Heinrich Thommen,
Gedanken zur Ikonographie im Werk des Zürcher Malers Ludwig Vogel (1788 – 1879), in: Unsere Kunstdenkmäler
32, 1981, pp. 406 – 421. – Heinrich Thommen, Im Schatten des Freundes: Arbeitsmaterialien von Franz Pforr im
Nachlass von Ludwig Vogel, Basel 2010 – Peter Vignau-Wilberg, »Ach ja, Italien! Dahin steht mein Sinn«: die
Lukasbrüder in Rom. Religiöse Malerei 1810 – 1830, Hamburg 2013 – K. E. Hoffmann, Aus dem Leben des Züricher
Malers Ludwig Vogel, Zürich 1921
201
30
Paul Vredeman de Vries
(1567 Antwerpen – nach 1630 Amsterdam)
Adriaen van Nieulandt I
(1587 Antwerpen – 1658 Amsterdam)
The Queen of Sheba before Solomon
C. 1625. Oil on copper; 70 x 88 cm (27.56 x 34.65 in)
P rovenan ce : Private collection, Switzerland
T
1 Old Testament, First Book
of Kings 10, 19 – 20
2 On this, see Caecilie Weissert,
Nova Roma. Aspekte der
Antikenrezeption in den Niederlanden
im 16. Jahrhundert, in: Artibus
et Historiae, vol. 29,
no. 58, 2008, p. 173 ff.
3 Psalm 72, 11
he painting of the Queen of Sheba before Solomon by Paul Vredeman de Vries
with staffage figures by Adriaen van Nieulandt I is a typical work of its time
from the Flemish-influenced Dutch school of the 1st quarter of the 17th century.
Painted on an unusually large copper panel, it shows a scene from the First Book
of Kings (1 Kings, 10, 1 – 13). It is devoted to the Queen of Sheba, who travelled
with her retinue from what is now Yemen to King Solomon (961 – 931 BC) in Jerusalem, in order to test his wisdom and convert to Yahweh. In the »golden age of
Netherlandish painting« themes from the Old Testament were very popular and
many artists created them for religious edification.
Our painting depicts the King receiving the black Queen in his magnificent
throne room on her arrival with her oriental retinue. The painter’s embellishments, rich in nuances, turn this important moment into a scene of splendour. An
exotic Moorish boy holds Solomon’s heavy purple erminelined mantle; the golden
throne under a massive red baldachin is adorned with the »Lions of Solomon« 1;
burly slaves in contorted mannerist poses bring in rich presents: choice plate and
elephant tusks, the source of the much-coveted ivory.
The Queen of Sheba, kneeling in the centre of the composition, pays homage
to King Solomon. International Christian mission and the colonialism of the
seafaring and trading nation of the Netherlands influenced this didactic representation. 2 In our painting the long white train effectively contrasts the black
complexion of the African woman. An educated viewer of those days would
know that the white cloth of her veil alludes to Mary’s Immaculate Conception,
the divine origin of the Child, and Christ’s shroud. For King Solomon is typologically regarded as a predecessor of Jesus of Nazareth and the Queen of Sheba
does not come to him as a lover but in a spirit as pure as Mary’s. She wants to
adopt King Solomon’s faith. »May all kings bow down to him and all nations
serve him«, the Book of Psalms says. 3
202
1 Christopher Plantijn,
Biblia Polyglotta, woodcut plate
no. 162, printed at Antwerp in 1573
(left)
2 Hans Vredeman de Vries, King
Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, 1601
(Pushkin Museum, Moscow)
(right)
4 Ezekiel 40 – 42
5 1 Kings 7
6 On this, see Caecilie Weissert,
Nova Roma. Aspekte der Antikenrezeption in den Niederlanden im
16. Jahrhundert, in: Artibus et Historiae,
vol. 29, no. 58, 2008, p. 173 ff.
7 For the biography and literature
see RKD, Rijksbureau Amsterdam,
Databases artists: Paul Vredeman
de Vries
8 Hans Vredeman de Vries studied
the works of Vitruvius and Serlio
in the translation by Pieter Coecke
van Aelst. He wrote the following
treatises on architecture: Dorica
et Jonica; et Corinthia et Composita
(1565); Tuscana (1578); Hortorum
viridariorumque… formæ (1583); Variæ
architecturæ formæ (1601); Perspectiva
(1604); Architectura, oder Bauung
der Antiquen auss dem Vitruvius,
waellches sein funff Collummen orden,
daer auss man alle Landts gebruch
von Bauuen zu accommodieren
dienstlich fur alle Baumaystren
usw. ann dag gebracht (1598)
The story of Solomon and the disintegration of his empire among his sons
seemed to evoke unity and wisdom in the Netherlands War of Independence
(1568 – 1648), split as it was between Protestantism and Catholicism. Solomon’s
throne of wisdom under a red velvet baldachin and Solomon’s pillar of wisdom
point to this. In our painting opulent draped cloth winds round the pillar which
stands at the right edge of the picture like a support. From it the coordinates of
the pictorial space radiate in all directions. The draped pillar represents a common
allusion to Solomon’s knot. In the woodcut The Queen of Sheba before Solomon in
the Plantin Bible of 1573 (fig. 1), for example, this is even more unambiguous than
in our painting. In the Biblia Polyglotta by Christoffel Plantijn (c. 1520 Saint-Avertin – 1589 Antwerp), widely distributed in the Netherlands, one of the woodcuts
depicts the Queen of Sheba hurrying towards King Solomon who rises from his
throne. As in the present painting, a female servant holds her train, while the King
takes a step forward and bows to her. The baldachin is knotted around one of the
pillars flanking the throne.
Analogous to the events in the Netherlands during the Eighty Years’ War of
that time, under Solomon’s son Rehoboam the ten northern tribes broke away
from the Southern Kingdom because of the high taxes and forced labour. Jerusalem with the Temple of Solomon is the new centre of the Israelite kingdom, and
viewers of the picture in those days, depending on where they lived, might also
have associated with it Protestant Amsterdam or Catholic Antwerp.
Ezekiel describes Solomon’s Temple as a square city surrounded by defensive
walls, simultaneously the Garden of Eden and Heavenly Jerusalem.4 Our picture
is an entirely Nordic design of Solomon’s »Temple City«, surrounded by a medieval city wall with a round tower. Within it, set inside an enclosed garden, there
stands a large house with courtyards, of which the Old Testament Book of Kings
says: »He panelled the main hall with pinewood and covered it with finest gold.
Against the walls of the main hall and inner sanctuary he built a structure around
the building, in which there were side rooms. He made the courtyard of the
priests, and the large court and the doors for the court, and overlaid the doors with
bronze. He erected the pillars in front of the temple.« 5 Solomon’s throne hall in
our painting is decorated in the latest Renaissance fashion which was just arriving
204
3 Heinrich Andreas Lohe, The Tabernacle of Moses, pictorial panel
in the wooden ceiling of the Hospitalkirche at Hof, 1688 / 89
4 Hans Vredeman de Vries, Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream, engraving 2
from The Life of Daniel, Antwerp 1576
5 Hans Vredeman de Vries, Daniel’s Dream of the Animals,
engraving 2 from The Life of Daniel, Antwerp 1576
Compare below: The Alchemist’s Laboratory, engraving from
Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae by
Heinrich Khunrath, 1595
6 Hans Vredeman de Vries, Belshazzar’s Feast, engraving from
The Life of Daniel, Antwerp 1576
in the Netherlands. Pillars, beams, cassette roofs and ornaments
represent the ancient canon of forms 6 which Paul Vredeman’s 7
father, Hans Vredeman de Vries (1527 Leeuwarden – after 1607
Hamburg), had publicised a generation earlier in his treatises on
architecture.8 Paul Vredeman stayed in Germany with his father
from 1586 on, at Danzig and Hamburg, for instance, and also at
Prague, at the court of Emperor Rudolf II.9
The son often relied his father’s architectural inventions,
whose complicated and extensive structures were greatly admired
by contemporaries (fig. 2). Unlike his father, in his late work after
1620 Paul Vredeman de Vries moved from exterior views preferably to »the now popular middle-class interiors, palaces with
gardens«.10 Following his father’s example he provided them
7 Paul Vredeman de Vries and Adriaen van
with vistas into side rooms as picture-in-picture motifs.11 In parNieulandt I, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, c. 1609
ticular, »the motif of the dramatically opened door on the left
(Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris)
of the picture looking out onto the garden is characteristic« of
him and »the architecturally articulating elements do not exclusively emphasise
depth, they also accentuate width«.12
In the Queen of Sheba before Solomon the throne hall is open on three sides to a
Renais-sance garden with two slender cypresses, to a tree-planted inner courtyard
with a round tower fortified with battlements and to a side room with gold-ornamented groined vaults. On the left wall of the side room there is a large fireplace,
as is to be found in Dutch castles and palaces. Large windows with bull’s eye panes,
together with a transverse skylight, also admit light into the room. There stands
9 For biography and literature
see RKD, Rijksbureau
Moses’ tabernacle tent with the Arc of the Covenant, the Lord’s dwelling-place,
Amsterdam, Databases artists:
which the Israelites used until Solomon’s temple was built.13
Paul Vredeman de Vries
In related fashion, the tabernacle is later depicted on the coffered ceiling of
10 Heiner Borggrefe, Vera Lüpkes,
Paul Huvenne, Ben van Beneden,
the
Hospitalkirche at Hof, which is based on a pictorial phantasy by Matthäus
eds., Hans Vredeman de Vries
Merian the Elder (1593 Basel – 1650 Langenschwalbach) for the Luther Bible
und die Renaissance im Norden,
Munich 2002, p. 148
(fig. 3).14 The pitchers and plates in the inner sanctum of this ceiling picture also
11Ibid.
explain the still life at the front edge of our painting: they allude to the ritual
12Härting, Frans Francken II,
associated with the worship of Yahweh. In his extensive published work Hans
page 165 on Paul Vredeman de Vries
Vredeman de Vries also prepared the originals for six copper engravings of the
13 Exodus 25, 8
Life of Daniel in Gerard de Jode’s 1579 Thesaurus biblicus.15
14 Luther’s Bible (of 1545), printed at
Strasbourg by Lazarus Zetzner;
In the 2nd copper-engraving in the series Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream (fig. 4), the
the copper-engravings of 1625–1630
scenery
is enlivened by many figures and has the architecture of an arena stage
which Merian personally made
were inserted serially into the
with a round arch leading outside and a double door into an inner courtyard. The
Bible text, which is why this Bible
interior features a podium with several steps and a throne beneath a baldachin.
is also called the Merian Bible.
The third copper-engraving in the series with Daniel’s Dream of the Animals (fig. 5)
15 Although the text also contains
the story of Solomon, it was,
shows a tent-like canopied bed and a large fireplace reaching to the ceiling. Hans
however, illustrated by someone
Vredeman used this composition again in similar fashion in 1595, as an alchemist’s
else. On this see the edition of
the Thesaurus biblicus of Gerard de
laboratory. All the depictions describe scenes showing various forms of perception.
Jode of 1579 in the Herzog August
The 6th copper-engraving in the series, Belshazzar’s Feast, has a groined vault
library, Wolfenbüttel, at www.
Virtuelles-kupferstichkabinett.
with
an oculus in the clerestory (fig. 6). There is also no lack of pillars, vistas and
de Graph Res. D. 113.1–3
spatial expansions with round arches and open windows.
16 On this, see Borggrefe, loc. cit.,
Hans’ son, Paul Vredeman de Vries, often collaborated in Amsterdam with the
pp. 30, 43, 148, 362ff., 366
young figure painter Adriaen de Nieulandt I.16 Borggrefe, in his index of the works
17 Borggrefe, loc. cit., p. 30
206
by Hans and Paul Vredeman de Vries, points to this fact, noting that Nieulandt
I had an »extraordinary presence« in the paintings by the Vredemans de Vries.17
Among other works, the two artists collaborated several times around 1610 on the
theme of The Queen of Sheba before Solomon (figs. 7 and 8), which was among their
central works, beside The Judgement of Solomon and Ahasuerus Crowning Esther.18
Adriaen van Nieulandt I was a successful independent painter of figures and
landscapes from 1607 to his death in Amsterdam in 1658. When Antwerp fell in
1589 during the Wars of Religion, the Flemish Nieulandt family of artists had fled
to Amsterdam, where Adriaen van Nieulandt I was apprenticed to Pieter Isaacsz
(1569 Helsingör – 1625 Amsterdam) and Frans Badens (1571 Antwerp – 1617 Amsterdam). As paintings at the time were not routinely signed, only 18 signed works
from his oeuvre are known at the present time.19 Het Gulden Cabinet of 1662
mentions that he had depicted many scenes from the Old Testament.20
A comparison of The Queen of Sheba before Solomon with Nieulandt’s figural
depictions in his late signed work Tamar before King Judah of 1648 (fig. 9) produces definite parallels which characterise all of Nieulandt’s work (figs. 10 and 11).
Nieulandt I preferred to design many-figured scenes in landscape format, with
the horizontal compositional scheme rising slightly towards the right.21 The figures in his pictures are often dressed in splendid oriental robes and are richly varied.
Depictions of muscular bodies characterize the talented painter of nudes. The
sweeping poses and carriage of the heads in the rhythmically-arranged figures are
full of movement. The painter worked with types which constantly recur in his
paintings. These include the bearer, the striding king, the reverse-facing figures
and gesticulating hands. The artist develops the pictorial rhetoric of his paintings with gazes and gestures, paying special attention to the compositional use
of colour. A well-arranged play of colour contrasts, which particularly accentuates
the rich cloth draperies, enlivens his compositions.
Typically for that time, the artists were then under the sway of the preeminent
figure of Peter Paul Rubens (1577 Siegen – 1640 Antwerp). At the summit of his
fame, he represented the most important source of inspiration in the Netherlands;
in the 39 ceiling paintings he created from 1615 onwards for the Jesuit church at
Antwerp he had also depicted the Queen of Sheba before Solomon. The wall
frescoes, which were destroyed by fire in 1718, are known to us from drawings by
the young painter Jakob de Wit (Amsterdam, 1695 – 1754) (fig. 12).22 Among other
things, the Michelangelesque figure of the bearer in the foreground, who is shouldering a heavy golden bowl, is stylistically reminiscent of Nieulandt’s bearer figure.
The theme of the Queen of Sheba travelling to King Solomon was widely
disseminated, not only in the Netherlands. The mysterious exoticism of distant
lands and the Queen of Sheba’s religious impulse were popular subjects everywhere. In Rome, a large colony of Netherlandish and Dutch artists had gathered
around Paul Bril (1556 Antwerp – 1626 Rome), then working at the Vatican.
Raphael (1483 Urbino – 1520 Rome) had prominently depicted the theme of The
Queen of Sheba before Solomon (fig. 13) a century earlier in the frescoes of the Vatican loggia, thus establishing a model which was called upon internationally for all
subsequent representations.
Emphasis and emotional dynamism of Raphael’s figures impressed entire
generations and are also evident in the present picture. King Solomon rushing
207
8 Paul Vredeman de Vries and Adriaen
van Nieulandt I, Solomon and the Queen
of Sheba, c. 1609 (Landesmuseum für
Kunst / Kulturgeschichte, Münster)
9 Adriaen van Nieulandt I,
Tamar before King Judah, 1648, signed
A. van Nieuland fec. 1648 (privately owned)
18 See RKD Databases Images:
(41 paintings). With Hans Vredeman
de Vries artwork nos. 53252, 53253,
55490, 55679, 55680, 197230
19 On this, see RKD, Rijksbureau
Amsterdam, Databases artists
Adriaen van Nieulandt I the artwork
numbers 1525, 1540, 3988, 7262, 25830,
29963, 39782, 39960, 40139, 40837,
45499, 71114, 105686, 115448, 116051,
197230, 207525, 209828. . There
also a biography and literature
20 On this, see the biography of
»Adriaen Nieulant« in: Arnold
Houbraken, De groote schouburgh
der Nederlantsche konstschilders en
schilderessen, 1718 and Cornelis
de Bie Het gulden cabinet vande
edel vry schilder const, 1662, p. 147
with a portrait of Adriaen van
Nieulandt by Cornelius Johnson
21 On this, see RKD, Rijksbureau
Amsterdam, Databases
22 On this, see John Ruppert
Martin, The ceiling paintings for
the Jesuit Church in Antwerp.
Brussels 1968, pp. 62 – 66
10 Comparison of picture details: Adriaen van Nieulandt I, Tamar
before King Judah (left) and Paul Vredeman de Vries and Adriaen van
Nieulandt I, The Queen of Sheba before Solomon (right)
12 Jakob de Wit, The Queen of Sheba before
Solomon, around 1715. Copper engraving by
Jan Punt, 1751 (British Museum, London)
13 Raphael, The Queen of Sheba before
Solomon, from 1517 (loggia of the Vatican)
11 Comparison of picture details: Paul Vredeman de Vries and
Adriaen van Nieulandt I, Ahasuerus Crowning Esther, signed PAVR,
1612 (left) and the spectator from Paul Vredeman de Vries and
Adriaen van Nieulandt I, The Queen of Sheba before Solomon (right)
towards the Queen of Sheba, the horizontal compositional axis, the large vessels being carried in, the Queen’s flowing robes, the variation of the Mannerist
postures, the gathered ceremonial curtain and the antique architectural staffage
betray the continuing effect of the great Italian master beyond the limits of time
and borders of nations.
As was common in those days, Paul Vredeman de Vries collaborated with many
contemporary painters, not only with Adriaen de Nieulandt I. The various teams
of artists enhanced the attraction of the works. In the Mauritshuis at The Hague,
for instance, the Ball at the Court of Archduke Albrecht and Archduchess Isabella, painted
on wood and dating from around 1610, has staffage figures by Frans Francken II
(Antwerp, 1581 – 1642) (fig. 14). Like our painting it shows a vista into a side room
with a fireplace and rich wall decoration and presents a central open stage for the
figurative scene in the middle of the action. Although Frans Francken II lived in
Antwerp in the southern Netherlands, he often collaborated with Paul Vredeman
de Vries in Amsterdam and shared many motif details with him, including the
representation of beautiful black women.23
The painting David Plays the Harp before King Saul (fig. 15), which is also ascribed to Paul Vredeman de Vries, contains staffage figures attributed to the painter
Hans Jordaens III. Architecture and pictorial arrangement are almost identical to
the composition of The Queen of Sheba before Solomon.24
However, whereas the depiction of The Queen of Sheba before Solomon follows
the literary model of the Old Testament in a suitable scenic ambience, the depiction of David playing the harp before King Saul (Samuel I, 16 – 23) has no appropriate complement in the architectural staffage of Solomon’s Temple. Not only is
the composition of space and figures inconherent within the dominating geometrical grid; the relatively crude execution of the picture also betrays ignorance of
the content and lack of stylistic autonomy.
208
The statuesque poses of the stereotypicallyconceived figures by Hans Jordaens III are of
mediocre quality; just like Paul Vredeman’s
architecture, they indicate that this is a workshop piece.25 Unlike The Queen of Sheba before
Solomon the composition is more strongly
dominated by the architecture. Although many
details are identical, this makes the painting
much weaker than the present one. The smaller
proportions of the staffage figures, and also the
pull of the spatial depth provoked by the lines
of the tiled floor over-extend the pictorial space
towards the back. This makes the arena stage in
the foreground appear wider and deeper, which
14 Paul Vredeman de Vries with staffage figures by Frans Francken II, Ball at the
is particularly characteristic of the architectural
Court of Archduke Albrecht and Archduchess Isabella, c. 1610 (Mauritshuis, The Hague)
decorative elements by Hans and Paul Vredeman de Vries, especially before 1600. Unlike The
Queen of Sheba before Solomon the section of the hall is cut off on the left and does
not form a closed stage. Instead of the richly ornamented corner of the room the
painter added two arches on the right of the picture behind the baldachin.
A comparison between the two variants David Plays the Harp before King Saul
and The Queen of Sheba before Solomon shows the difference between workshop
copies and genuine works, as well as the high quality of our joint venture by Paul
Vredeman de Vries and Adriaen van Nieulandt I. This work, executed on copper for a wealthy patron, exudes an aura of affluence, which would have been very
attractive to any collector of the time.
bb
15 Paul Vredeman de Vries and
Hans Jordaens III (staffage figures),
David plays the Harp before King Saul,
c. 1620 (private ownership)
References: Heiner Borggrefe, Vera Lüpkes, Paul Huvenne, Ben van Beneden (editors), Hans Vredeman de
Vries und die Renaissance im Norden, exh. cat. Brake Castle / Antwerp, Munich 2002. Here, see the list for
further reading. – Michiel Roding, Adriaen van Nieulandt I. Pieter Isaacsz’s Versatile Pupil, in: Badeloch Noldus,
Juliette Roding, ed., Pieter Isaacsz (1568 – 1625). Court Painter, Art Dealer and Spy. Turnhout, Belgien 2007 – 
E. Buijsen, Een samenwerking tussen Paul Vredeman de Vries en Adriaen van Nieulandt I, in: Oud Holland
109 / 1995, pp. 152 – 157 – Cornelis de Bie, Het Gulden Cabinet, Antwerp 1662 – Friedrich W. H. Hollstein et al.,
Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, ca. 1450 – 1700. 72 vol., Amsterdam 1949 – U. M. Schneede,
Interieurs von Hans und Paul Vredeman, in: Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 18 / 1967  – Thieme / Becker,
Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart Leipzig 1907 – 1950, vol. 25 / 1931
Adriaen van Nieulandt (1) – Adriaan van d. Willigen, Fred Meijer, A dictionary of Dutch and Flemish still-life
painters in oils, 1525 – 1725, Leiden 2003, p. 150 Adriaen (I) van Nieulandt
23 On this, see especially Härting, Frans
Francken II, WV 55 Salomons Götzendienst,
WV 69, 70 and 71 Königin von Saba
vor Salomo, WV 163 Das königliche
Hochzeitsmahl, WV 325, WV 327 Grossmut
des Scipio (canopy left) and WV 324, 328
Grossmut des Scipio (canopy right), or
the Krönung der Esther WV 82 – 84
24 The painting was offered at the
Dorotheum auction house in Vienna
in October 2003 attributed to Hans
Jordaens III (lot no. 131) and in June
2004 attributed to Hans Jordaens III
and Paul Vredeman de Vries (lot no. 58)
(RKD artwork no. 121568 with illustrations)
25 On this, see RKD, Databases images:
Hans III Jordaens. Nearly all the pictures
are attributed to Jordaens only. The figures
in them vary greatly in style and do not
correspond to the present staffage figures.
209
31
Albert August Zimmermann
(1808 Zittau – 1888 Munich)
View of the Watzmann
and Hochkalter
Before 1833. Oil on canvas; 128.5 x 181.5 cm (50.59 x 71.46 in)
Signed bottom right: A. Zimmermann (under three stars)
P rovenan ce : Georg Schäfer collection, Schweinfurt. Private collection Switzerland
E xhibi t ions : 1833, Akademische Kunstausstellung Dresden
A
lbert August Zimmermann, a Saxon, had just arrived in Bavaria
from the Dresden academy of art to continue his training as a
landscape painter in the art metropolis of Munich when he came
across the sublime world of the high mountain ranges. The striking
beauties of the Berchtesgaden Alps lay – to him – just outside the city
gates and provided the twenty-some-thing with alluring and dramatic
motifs, promising attractive panting and economic success.
The first climbing of the Watzmann in August 1800 by Valentin
Stanič had made the mountain a household name and the Berchtesgaden region with Lake Koenig (Königssee) became a desirable destination for excursions in the ensuing decades. Also, in 1810 Napoleon
returned the district to the Kingdom of Bavaria, whose original duchy
it had been part of since the foundation of Berchtesgaden’s Augustine
1 Kaspar Auer, Berchtesgaden Region,
monastery in the Middle Ages. Over the centuries the region with the
chalk lithograph, 1816 (private ownership)
monastery as its spiritual centre was repeatedly depicted. In 1816, for
instance, the Munich painter and lithographer Kaspar Auer (Munich, 1795 –1821)
made the classic view available to the general public as a chalk lithograph (fig. 1).
A comparison of Zimmermann’s painting with Kaspar Auer’s drawing makes it
immediately clear that, although both artists show the same view of the landscape,
our young painter’s View of the Watzmann and Hochkalter omits the monastery in
favour of a magnificent natural display.
In our painting we wander with Albert August Zimmermann into the picture along the Berchtesgaden river »Ache« towards the Watzmann. Seen from a
slightly elevated viewpoint, the wide bowl of the Berchtesgaden valley lies before
us. The representation of the impressive view seems so close to nature that we are
induced to believe that the painter set up his easel out of doors to reproduce with
minute attention to detail the multiple facets of the landscape with photographic
210
2 Photographic view of Berchtesgaden
with Mount Watzmann
3 Postcard of King Watzmann with his
family, around 1900
1 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure
Reason, first published in 1790.
Kant defined the sublime as a
concept relating to the spiritual
and conveying sublimity. He
explains that an object which
provides unlimited experience
may be regarded as sublime.
2 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical
Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas
of the Sublime and Beautiful, first
published in 1757. According to
Burke, the experience of the sublime
is founded on panic, terror and
pain. For him the sublime is not an
element of beauty but its opposite.
It may equally be associated with
tremendous objects or places. As
early as the third century AD the
philosopher Cassius Longinus
(around 212 – 272 Emesa) in his
work On the Sublime described
the sublime as the expression
of a major experience, powerful
enough to induce ecstasy.
exactitude. However, according to the customs of his time Zimmermann created
this large-scale picture View of the Watzmann and Hochkalter in his Munich studio
from studies – drawings and watercolours prepared on site. The first thing to catch
the eye is the monumental panoramic landscape with its craggy, rocky mountains,
charming Alpine pastures, extensive grassland and the river valley. The painting
culminates in the striking silhouette of Mount Watzmann with the Hochkalter
behind it projecting into the picture from the right on the far side of the Wimbach
valley. The Watzmann and Little Watzmann with the Watzmann »Children« rise
majestically from behind the mountain ridges of the Grünstein and Achenkanzel
situated in front – one of the most beautiful motifs of the Salzburg region (fig. 2).
The painter imbues the rich topography of the area with different atmospheric
light effects and accentuates it with cloud formations above the peaks. The varied
scenery is presented in the mild light of a late summer’s day – the leaves of some of
the trees are already turning an autumnal red. Various nuances of green, yellow and
earthy red-brown dominate the bushy landscape. While still tender white mist
veils the wide valley the mountains reflect the reddish early light. Isolated clouds,
soaring dramatically upwards, cling to the peaks and catch the morning sun. Calm
sublimity and grandeur pervade all.
Albert August Zimmermann painted a peaceful pastoral scene. He shows the
life of humankind in harmony with nature and avoids any reference to the legendary Wild King Watzmann who once allegedly ruled the Berchtesgaden region.
The violent and life-threatening forces of the mountain manifested themselves
in the ancient tales about King Watzmann, who destroyed the fields of his subjects and slaughtered them cruelly. For his diabolical atrocities he reaped divine
punishment: he was turned to stone together with his family to serve as an eternal warning landmark. (fig. 3)
In the view of the Watzmann by Caspar David Friedrich (1774 Greifswald – 1840
Dresden), which dates from 1824 / 25 about 8 years before Zimmermann’s, ineffable remoteness and mythic sublimity still determine the picture’s symbolic character (fig. 4).
Caspar David Friedrich’s painting of the Watzmann expresses a highly negative relationship with the present. Distant celestial spheres are transmuted step
by step into a murky presence, which merges darkly into the painting’s foreground. Zimmermann’s intention is quite the opposite: he represents a peaceful
era in which the threatening forces of the mountain are banished and humans
live in harmony with nature. However, both pictures originated against the
intellectual horizon of German idealism. The idea of the sublime and the beautiful, as formulated by Immanuel Kant 1 shortly before 1800 and Edmund Burke 2
before him, left both a positive and a negative imprint on Romantic painting in
the 19th century. The views of gigantic mountains, both beautiful and terrifying,
were apt to evoke both: the sublime as the experience of the immeasurable and
the overwhelming – but also awe and terror.
The »heroic depiction of landscape« by the painter Joseph Anton Koch (1768
Obergiblen / Tirol – 1839 Rome), who was one generation older, served as a model
for Albert August Zimmermann painting a world devoid of conflict where nature
and humankind live in harmony (fig. 5).
Whereas the gentle plain is the living-space for humankind, the zones of vegetation become more and more inhospitable with increasing altitude. But, in an
212
eternal cycle, the clouds towering atmospherically above the titanic mountains
replenish the glaciers. Their waters transform the impassable heights into green
wooded mountain ridges, they carve themselves into the valleys to create lifegiving arteries and turn the plains into fruitful land, living space for humanity
to tame and cultivate.
Zimmermann, however, does not merely follow Koch’s heroic ideas of the
natural cycle in which human life is embedded; he also anchors it in history. The
idyllic view of the herdsmen with goats and sheep in the foreground is reminiscent
of a Bavarian Arcadia where peace, order and custom hold sway.
Albert August Zimmermann remained in Munich. He founded a popular
school of landscape painting in the Bavarian art metropolis shortly after 1830.
Throughout the years from 1857 on, though holding guest professorships in Milan,
Vienna and Salzburg, this successful painter never forgot his city of choice and
retired there in his old age a highly honoured man. As an outstanding representative of heroic-historical landscape painting, he found there a plethora of motifs for
his large-scale landscapes, occasionally furnishing them with stunning displays of
light in the style of his Munich colleague Carl Rottmann (1797 Handschuhsheim – 
1850 Munich) 3, or filling them with rough landscape formations like Ludwig
Richter (Dresden, 1803 –1884) (fig. 6).
Due to minute attention to detail and polished quality Zimmermann’s broad
landscape vistas and the impressive portraits of mountains in atmospheric light  –  the
Watzmann, the Grand Venediger (Großvenediger) or the High Tauern (Hohe
Tauern) – were precious souvenirs for the well-heeled visitors to the Alpine regions
and were often hung in 19th-century homes as mementos of delightful journeys.
Given the size and careful execution of our painting, it was probably a commissioned work. The layout and quality anticipate the painter’s later major works. Those
which he considered to be especially successful and important items in his oeuvre he labelled as masterpieces with three little stars. Among these paintings we
213
4 Caspar David Friedrich,
The Watzmann, c. 1824/25
(Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin) (left)
5 Joseph Anton Koch,
Landscape with Rainbow, 1806
(private collection) (right)
3 Carl Rottmann also captured
the Watzmann and the Obersee
in several views. See i. a. Carl
Rottmann, Obersee with Watzmann,
c. 1825 / 1826 (private ownership).
6 Ludwig Richter, The Watzmann, 1824
(Neue Pinakothek, Munich) (left)
7 Albert August Zimmermann,
View across Lake Como to Bellagio
and Mount Grigna, 1859 (Kunstsalon
Franke-Schenk, Munich) (right)
find his picture View across Lake Como to Bellagio and Mount Grigna of 1859, also
owned by Kunstsalon Franke-Schenk (fig. 7). The View of the Watzmann and
Hochkalter proved so successful for Albert August Zimmermann that Ludwig
Schütze (b. Dresden around 1807), a copper and steel engraver as well as lithographer, made an etching from it.
bb
References: Siegfried Wichmann, Münchener Landschaftsmaler im 19. Jahrhundert, Weyarn 1981, p. 77, ill. 168 – 
Friedrich von Boetticher, Malerwerke des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, Leipzig 1944, vol. 4, p. 1053, no. 3 – 
Saffer-Zwengauer, Albert August Zimmermann, in: Münchner Maler im 19. Jahrhundert, vol. 4, Munich 1983, p. 414
214
Centennial Catalogue I – Addenda
Joachim Antonisz Wtewael, Venus and Adonis (No. 28, pp. 188 ff.)
Anne W. Lowenthal confirms the painting’s authenticity. She integrates the 1589 /90 painting into
the Dutch master’s catalogue of works as his first known creation.
Pieter de Molijn, Attack at the fringe of a forest (No. 22, pp.154 ff.)
A stylistic examination by Dewin Buijsen, director of the Royal Gallery Maritshuis in The Hague
concluded that the figure staffage of the painting was executed by the Dutch artist Esaias van de
Velde (ca. 1590 Amsterdam – 1630 The Hague).
Hans Makart, Judith and her servant with Holofernes’ head at Bethulia (No. 19, pp. 136 ff.)
footnote no. 6 to be corrected as follows: Horst Ludwig, Malerei der Gründerzeit, Complete catalogue of paintings at the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, published by Bayerische Staatsgemälde
sammlungen (Bavarian State Collection of Paintings), Hans Ludwig (ed.), Munich 1977, p. 283
Illustration credits: The illustrations are visual quotations that serve to illustrate the texts in a scholarly
way. Unless otherwise indicated in the captions, the pictures are from the Kunstsalon Franke-Schenk’s archive.
We apologize that, despite concerted efforts, it has not allways been possible to establish the authorship of
the illustrations. The owner of the above mentioned copyrights are requested to inform us to save their rights.
Index of Names
A
Achenbach, Sigrid 119
Aelst, Pieter Coecke van 204
Alberti, Leon Battista 112, 114
Allanfranchini, Patrice 73
Alt, Jakob 174
Andrews, Keith 201
Anker, Albert 15
Arnold, Ernst 96, 98
Auer, Kaspar 210
B
Bachelin, Auguste 73
Badens, Frans 206
Bärnreuther, Andrea 53, 54
Bätschmann, Oskar 189
Bamberger, Fritz 22 – 26, 66
Barbakoff, Tatjana 153, 155
Barron, Stephanie 156
Baum, Julius 48
Becker, Karin 101
Beckmann, Max 42, 46, 47
Bekker vom Rath, Hanna 94, 95
Beloubek-Hammer, Anita 101, 140,
141, 143
Beneden, Ben van 205, 209
Bénédite, Léonce 104, 106
Benjamin, Walter 14
Berchem, Nicolaes 162
Berend-Corinth, Charlotte 50, 54
Bergand, A. 106
Bernt, Walther 158, 160, 164, 192, 196
Bertuleit, Sigrid 53, 54
Besch, Ingeborg 40
Bie, Cornelis de 207, 209
Biesboer, Pieter 158, 161, 163, 164
Billesberger, Siegfried 68
Blechen, Karl 25, 72, 73
Böcklin, Arnold 189
Boetticher, Friedrich von 170, 214
Boer, Pieter de 28
Börsch-Supan, Helmut 36, 39
Boisclair, Marie-Nicole 61, 62
Bonnard, Pierre 106
Borggrefe, Heiner 206, 209
Borromeo, Federico 28, 30, 31, 33
Boudin, Eugène 104
Bril, Paul 207
Brodersen, Albert 112
Brueghel d. Ä., Jan 28 – 35
Brueghel d. Ä., Pieter 28
Brun, Friederike 76, 77, 78, 79, 80
Brüne, Heinrich 146, 148
Bühler, Hans-Peter 38, 39, 40
Bürkel, Heinrich 36 – 40
Büttner, Frank 59, 62, 166
Buijsen, E. 209
Burke, Edmund 212
Burnand, René 73
Busch, Günter 119
Buss, Georg 126
Butler, Augustin de 144, 148
Butts, Barbara 52, 54
C
Cartier, Jean-Albert 106
Caspar, Karl 44, 47, 48
Caspar-Filser, Maria 42 – 48
Cassirer, Paul 16, 120, 122
Catel, Franz Ludwig 38
Cézanne, Paul 42, 44, 45, 46, 90,
91, 132
Chiappini, Rudy 98
Cogniet, Léon 70
Condert, Marie-Claude 104, 106
Constable, John 105
Corinth, Lovis 10, 17, 42, 46, 48,
50 – 54
Cornelius, Peter 198
Corot, Camille 45, 102, 200, 201
Courbet, Gustave 124, 184, 189
D
Dauberville, Guy-Patrice 148
Daubigny, Charles-François 184
Dillis, Georg 40
Dittmann, Lorenz 132, 136
Dix, Otto 126
Delfs, Hans 98
ten-Doesschate Chu, Petra 161, 164
Doetecum, Johan van 205
Doetecum, Lucas van 205
Doodeheefver, Hendrik 28
Düchting, Hajo 118
Dürer, Albrecht 70, 132, 196
Dücker, Elisabeth von 86
Dughet, Gaspard 58, 61, 62
E
Eberle, Matthias 115, 116, 118, 119,
122, 125
Ebertshäuser, Heidi C. 40
Eckert, Rainald 112
Eichendorff, Joseph von 67
Eikemeier, Peter 158, 164
Eissenhauer, Michael 101
Elsheimer, Adam 161
Ernst, Max 129, 131
Ertz, Klaus 28, 33, 34
F
Fehlman, Mark 59, 62
Fino, Lucio 76
Fischbach, Johann 174
Francken II., Frans 206, 208, 209
Freudenberg, Philipp 120
Frey, Johann Jakob 56 – 62
Friedländer, Max J. 122
Friedlmaier, Karin 176
Friedrich, Caspar David 67, 189,
212, 213
Füssli, Johann Heinrich 198
G
Gabelmann, Andreas 98
Gaehtgens, Barbara 120
Gail, Wilhelm 64 – 68
Garbrecht, Jörg 140
Gaschke, Jenny 163, 164
Gauermann, Friedrich 174
Gauguin, Paul 46, 88
Gebauer, Anja 25, 26, 66, 68
Gerlinger, Hermann 96
Gessner, Konrad 198
Girardet, Karl 70 – 73, 180
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang v. 8, 10,
52, 70, 74, 76, 119
Gogh, Vincent van 44, 46, 88
144, 150
Gollek, Rosel 110, 111
Gosebruch, Martin 132, 136
Goyen, Jan van 158
Greisinger, Sybille 59, 62
Griebel, Matthias 126
Grimm, Claus 52
Grohmann, Will 96, 98, 101
Grosz, George 126
Günther, Rolf 126, 130
Guillaumin, Armand 104
H
Hackert, Jakob Philipp 74 – 81
Hagenlocher, Alfred 48
Hairs, Marie-Louise 34
Hancke, Erich 120, 124, 125
Hansch, Anton 174
Happel, Reinhold 156
Hardtwig, Barbara 189
Hausler, Bettina 70
Hazewinkel, H. C. 192, 196
Heem, Jan Davidsz de 52
Heemskerck, Maerten van 19
Heine, Thomas Theodor 82 – 86,
129, 131
Helmholt, Christa von 184, 186, 190
Henze, Wolfgang 98
Herterich, Ludwig von 45
Heydt, Karl von der 120, 122,
147, 148
Hodler, Ferdinand 14
Hofer, Carl 20
Hoffmann, Klaus 140, 143
Hoffmann, K. E. 201
Hoffmann, Rosemary 25, 26
Hofstätter, Hans H. 184, 185
Holland, Hyacinth 68
Holländer, G. H. 101
Hollstein, Friedrich W. H. 209
Houbraken, Arnold 207
Howoldt, Jens Eric 116
Husslein-Arco, Agnes 52, 54
Huvenne, Paul 206, 209
I
Imiela, Hans-Jürgen 40
Isaacsz, Pieter 206, 209
Israels, Josef 122
J
Jawlensky, Alexej von 48, 88 – 95
Jawlensky-Bianconi, Angelica 95
Jensen, Jens Christian 180
Jode, Gerard de 205
Johnson, Cornelius 207
Jordaens III., Hans 208, 209
Justi, Ludwig 52, 184, 185, 189, 190
K
Kalckreuth, Leopold K. W. Graf v. 112
Kandinsky, Wassilij 46, 47, 94
Kant, Immanuel 212
Keisch, Claude 76
Khunrath, Heinrich 205
Kipplan, K. 44, 48
Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig 18, 96 – 101
Klee, Paul 47
Klesmann, Gerhard 40
Kley, Heinrich 126, 128
Klinger, Max 126, 128, 129
Klotz, Heinrich 118
Kluckert, Ehrenfried 44, 45, 46, 48
Koch, Alexander 188, 190
Koch, Joseph A. 198, 200, 201, 212, 213
Köcke, Ulrike 156
Köster, Felicitas E. M. 44, 48
Koja, Stephan 52, 54
Krahmer, C. 146, 148
Krückl, Albrecht 38, 39, 40
Krüger, Matthias 164
Kubin, Alfred 47, 84, 86
Kümmel, Lisa 88
L
Lack, Peter 175, 176
Langenberg, Ruth 119
Lebourg, Albert 102 – 106
Lenbach, Franz Seraph v. 108 – 111
Legendre, Mathilde 106
Lespinasse, François 106
Lesser, Auguste Creuzé de 76
Lichtwark, Alfred 11, 112, 114, 119
Liebermann, Max 16, 112 – 125
Lier, Adolf Heinrich 184
Lindemann, Bernd W. 163, 164
Lohe, Heinrich Andreas 205
Longinus, Cassius 212
Lorrain, Claude 58
Lüttichau, Mario-Andreas von 98
Lüpkes, Vera 206, 209
M
Mali, Christian 174
Manet, Edouard 116, 118, 119
Makart, Hans 110, 111
Marc, Franz 19, 47, 94
Marsalle, Louis de 101
Martin, John Ruppert 207
Matisse, Henri 88, 90, 91
Maul, Gisela 76
Max, Gabriel von 129, 131
Meggle-Freund, Margarete 68
Mehl, Sonja 108, 110, 111
Mehnert, Karl-Heinz 101
Meier-Graefe, Julius 144, 146, 148
Meijer, Fred G. 28, 209
Meissner, Franz Hermann 130
Merian, Matthäus 42, 206
Meyer-Ellinger, Herbert 95
Miller, Norbert 76
Modersohn-Becker, Paula 47
Moeller, Magdalena M. 101
Molijn, Pieter de 158, 216
Monet, Claude 46, 102, 104, 105,
106, 116, 118, 146
Müller, Friedrich Burghard 38
Müller, Karl Rudolf 195, 196
Müller, Richard 126 – 131
Müllenmeister, Kurt 194, 195, 196
Münter, Gabriele 47, 94
N
Natter, G. Tobias 119
Nieulandt, Adriaen van 202 – 209
Nitze-Ertz, Christa 28, 34
Noack, Friedrich 169
Nolde, Emil 132 – 143
Nordhoff, Claudia 76, 78, 79,
80, 81
Nouwen, Margreet 112, 115, 116
O
Osterwolt, Tilman 143
Osthaus, Karl Ernst 44, 150, 157
Ostini, Fritz von 186, 188, 190
Otterbeck, Christoph 95
Overbeck, Friedrich 198
P
Paczkowski, Renate 156
Patinier, Joachim 192
Pauli, Gustav 122, 125
Peschken-Eilsberger, Monika 85
Pflug-Franken, Hans 170
Pforr, Franz 198, 201
Pieroni-Jawlensky, Lucia 95
Piper, Reinhard 84
Pisatura, Antonella Basilico 168
Pissarro, Camille 102, 104
Plach, Georg 110
Plantijn, Christoffel 204
Plötz, Jürgen M. 25, 26
Poussin, Nicolas 58, 60
Presler, Gerd 96, 98, 101
R
Raff, Thomas 82, 84, 86
Raphael 207, 208
Ranke, Winfried 110, 111
Rathke, Ewald 95, 96
Rattemeyer, Volker 95
Reese, Beate 26
Reifenkugel, Brigitte 40
Reimer, Hans 77, 78, 79, 81
Reinhardt, Brigitte 143
Reinhart, Johann Christian 58, 59,
60, 61, 62
Reinhart, Oskar 189
Rembrandt 120, 195
Renoir, Jean 147, 148
Renoir, Pierre-Auguste 144 – 148
Reuther, Manfred 134, 136,
140, 143
Richardson, Holly 118, 119
Richter, Adrian Ludwig 213, 214
Richter, Dieter 77
Rilke, Rainer Maria 186, 190
Roding, Juliette 209
Roding, Michiel 209
Roennefahrt, Günther 180
Rösner, Christiane 189
Röthel, Konrad 50, 54
Rohden, Johann Martin von 58
Rohlfs, Christian 150 – 157
Rørbye, Martinus 66, 67
Rottmann, Carl 24, 25, 26, 58,
61, 213
Rott, Herbert W. 26, 58, 59, 60,
62, 166
Rubens, Peter Paul 28, 30, 31, 33,
108, 178, 207
Rüba, Erich 146, 148
Runge, Philipp Otto 200
Ruysch, Rachel 12
Ruysdael, Jacob Isaacksz. van 158
Ruysdael, Jacob Salomonsz. van
158 – 164
S
Sagner-Düchting, Karin 106
Salomé, Laurent 104, 106
Schäfer, Georg 176, 180, 210
Scheidig, Walther 156
Schenk, Rolf 59, 61, 62
Schinkel, Karl Friedrich 77, 196
Schleich d. Ä., Eduard 25, 39, 40,
174, 176
Schnackenburg, Bernhard 163, 164
Schneede, U. M. 209
Schneider, K. 96
Schoeps, Julius H. 119
Schreiber, Peter Conrad 166 – 170
Schütze, Ludwig 214
Schuster, Peter Klaus 52, 53, 54
Schwammberger, Adolf 170
Schweers, Hans F. 47
Sckell, Ludwig 172 – 176
Scotti, Roland 98
Seghers, Hercules 194, 195
Seignemartin, Jean 102
Sinsheimer, Hermann 84
Sisley, Alfred 102, 104
Sitt, Martina 158, 160, 163, 164
Slive, Seymour 162, 163, 164
Spielmann, H. 96
Spitzweg, Carl 13, 39, 40, 178 – 180
Sprotte, Martina 136, 143
Stechow, Wolfgang 160, 161, 164
Steinfeld, Franz 172, 174
Stifter, Adalbert 39, 174
Stöbe, Erhard 52
Stolzenburg, Andreas 81
Stratton, Suzanne L. 25, 26
Strugalla, Matthias 40
Stuttmann, Ferdinand 124
T
Teniers d. J., David 9
Thoma, Hans 182 – 190
Thommen, Heinrich 201
Tischbein, Johann H. W. 8
Trübenbach, Armin 86
Turner, William 72, 73
Twombly, Cy 52
U
Urban, Martin 132, 136, 138, 140, 141
V
Velázquez, Diego 111
Velde, Esaias van de 158, 216
Verburgh, Dionys 192 – 196
Vignau-Wilberg, Peter 201
Vogel, Ludwig 198 – 201
Vogt, Paul 152, 154, 156
Volmert, Miriam 164
Vredeman de Vries, Hans 204, 205,
206, 209
Vredeman de Vries, Paul 202 – 209
Vroom, Cornelis 158, 161
W
Waldmüller, Ferdinand Georg 106,
172, 174
Walter, Rodolphe 106
Wandschneider, Andrea 101
Weidner, Thomas 81
Weiler, Clemens 88, 90, 94, 95
Weissert, Caecilie 202, 204
Wenglein, Joseph 184
Werefkin, Marianne von 47, 88
Werner, Stefanie K. 112, 114, 116
Wesenberg, Angelika 114, 119, 120
Wichmann, Siegfried 176, 180, 214
Willigen, Adriaan van d. 209
Wirth, Günther 48
Wit, Jakob de 207, 208
Wodarz, Corinna 130
Wyss, Beat 198
Z
Zedler, Johann Heinrich 77
Ziem, Félix 102
Zimmermann, Albert A. 210 – 214
Zimmermann, Margret 184, 185
Zimmermann, Richard 175
All works are for sale
Toutes les œuvres sont à vendre
Alle Werke sind verkäuflich
Reservations are possible, fixed orders have priority.
The scholary analysis of each number was done to the best of one’s
knowledge and belief.
Liability: § 459 BGB. Qualified sale: § 455 BGB.
Place of fulfilment and jurisdiction is Munich/Germany.
Kunstsalon Franke-Schenk GmbH: ID-Nr. DE 186893302
VR-Bank Starnberg-Herrsching-Landsberg eG
IBAN: DE85 7009 3200 0002 4020 84
BIC: GENODEF 1STH
© 2013, Kunstsalon Franke-Schenk GmbH
Residenzstrasse 23, D-80333 Munich

Still Life with Garland - Kunstsalon Franke

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