Andreas Achenbach, Heath landscape in the evening... Lot 40

Andreas Achenbach, Heath landscape in the evening glow with hikers. Oil on canvas. 1838. monogrammed and dated lower left. 32.1 x 41.1 cm. Framed. //rg/53/4 Andreas Achenbach, born in 1815, belongs to that generation of German painters for whom Italy was no longer the goal of their artistic aspirations. In contrast to his brother Oswald, who had a decisive influence on the image of Italy in the second half of the 19th century, Andreas visited Italy, but his experience of Italy remained an episode. Instead, he became the "ruler of land and sea," as one reviewer called him in 1861, became a chronicler of the Nordic landscape, and achieved fame with his dramatic Marinen early in the 1830s. More intimate and quiet, still touched by the spirit of Romanticism, Achenbach presents his heath landscape in Evening Red. The fading sky, with clouds drifting through it, occupies more than half of the painting ground, while below it a hilly landscape characterized by sandy greens stretches to the horizon. Red and ochre tones, with sky blue mixed in at times, dominate the upper half of the painting; the sky is contrastingly illuminated in a manner Andreas expressed to his brother Oswald in August 1845: "One must seek to bring out the illumination more by contrast than by darkness alone, for black and white make no effect." Precise in execution and brilliant in lighting, this small painting is an early example of Achenbach's virtuoso painting and his ability to render plein air effects and moods, which was particularly appreciated by his contemporaries. Drawing brilliance and coloristic uniformity condense into a depiction of atmospheric phenomena, which have poetic moods "that penetrate deeply into the soul of the beholder," as Wolfgang Müller von Königswinter noted in 1854 in his treatise on Düsseldorf artists. It is a barren stretch of land that tells of abandonment and loneliness - the hiker in the foreground, behind him the old woman and houses bear witness to a landscape that is still filled with Romantic props - such as the figure of the lonely hiker and the atmospheric chiaroscuro effects - but their symbolic meaning has given way to a subjective description of the experience of nature, though without Achenbach striving for or taking the step toward making light and color independent. In those years before and around 1840, Scandinavian motifs predominated in Achenbach's landscapes - he had visited Denmark, Norway, and Sweden with his father in 1835: "Great, especially Nordic journeys early enriched his imagination and soon gave his works the convincing truth of the view of nature" in which "the spirit of poetry accompanies him," wrote a contemporary in 1845 (Betrachtungen von Lorenz Clasen, in: Correspondenzblatt 1, no. 5, July 1845, p. 51). This "convincing truth of the view of nature" also underlies our heath landscape, which, however, does not reflect a motif from Scandinavia, but from native regions. Peter Prange Provenance: privately owned since the 1850s, southern Germany. Taxation: Differentially taxed (VAT: Margin Scheme).