Lot Essay
Ferdinand Bellermann travelled to Venezuela in 1842 at the invitation of a wealthy Hamburg ship owner and merchant Carl Rühs, who later became Prussian Consul in Venezuela. Alexander von Humboldt had been instrumental in obtaining a travel stipend from the King of Prussia which enabled the artist to accept the invitation. Bellermann arrived in Puerto Cabello in the middle of July of that year and, on the day of his arrival, befriended a German business man named Gloeckler. He invited Bellermann to spend the summer months in San Esteban where he owned a house. The stay in this romantic valley became for the artist a key experience in the nature of the tropics. As he noted in his diary "the time I spent there belongs to one of the most wonderful memories of my life." Between excursions to other parts of the country he returned several times to San Esteban, and spent the last weeks there, before returning to his native country in 1845.
During his stay at San Esteban, Bellermann executed a very detailed oil sketch, entitled Sugar Plantation of San Esteban Near Puerto Cabello which is a masterly rendering of the scene. The harmony of the composition, the coloration and the expert brushwork evident in En el Trapiche suggest that either Gloeckler himself or another well-known German merchant in Venezuela commissioned the artist to execute an oil painting of the landscape. The date of the work can be placed approximately between the time of Bellermann's return to Germany and 1870, since it is known that he painted the same subject several times. Listed in the catalogue of the Berliner Akademie in 1848 there appears a work of the same subject from a private collection. Another work, with quite similar dimensions (147 x 189cm.) as En el Trapiche, from the collection of the King of Prussia, was exhibited in Vienna in 1868 and Berlin in 1870.
The title En el Trapiche refers to the sugar mill visible in the left mid-foreground. Bellermann, who had studied landscape painting at the Berliner Akademie with Karl Blechen and August Wilhelm Schirmer, retained throughout his creative life the manifold influences of his teachers. They, for their part, had absorbed the styles of J.M.W. Turner and Claude Lorrain, which lingered on in the classical compositions of Bellermann's landscape paintings. Amongst Bellermann's large format oil paintings which he painted after his return from Venezuela and which have become known, En el Trapiche undoubtedly is one of his most brilliant works.
Helga Weissgärber
Werneuchen, Sept. 1997
Note: The oil sketch to this painting, entitled Sugar Plantation of San Esteban Near Puerto Cabello belongs to the collection of the Staatliche Mussen zu Berlin-Preussischer Kulturbeitz, Kupferstichkabinett/Sammlung der Zeichnungen, (Nr. SZ 146). It is illustrated in the catalogue Ferdinand Bellermann, Kupferstichkabinett und Nationalgalerie, Berlin 1987, p. 72 and was exhibited in Caracas, Galería de Arte Nacional, Ferdinand Bellermann - Memoria del 1842-1845, 1991-1992, p. 55, n. 102 (illustrated)
During his stay at San Esteban, Bellermann executed a very detailed oil sketch, entitled Sugar Plantation of San Esteban Near Puerto Cabello which is a masterly rendering of the scene. The harmony of the composition, the coloration and the expert brushwork evident in En el Trapiche suggest that either Gloeckler himself or another well-known German merchant in Venezuela commissioned the artist to execute an oil painting of the landscape. The date of the work can be placed approximately between the time of Bellermann's return to Germany and 1870, since it is known that he painted the same subject several times. Listed in the catalogue of the Berliner Akademie in 1848 there appears a work of the same subject from a private collection. Another work, with quite similar dimensions (147 x 189cm.) as En el Trapiche, from the collection of the King of Prussia, was exhibited in Vienna in 1868 and Berlin in 1870.
The title En el Trapiche refers to the sugar mill visible in the left mid-foreground. Bellermann, who had studied landscape painting at the Berliner Akademie with Karl Blechen and August Wilhelm Schirmer, retained throughout his creative life the manifold influences of his teachers. They, for their part, had absorbed the styles of J.M.W. Turner and Claude Lorrain, which lingered on in the classical compositions of Bellermann's landscape paintings. Amongst Bellermann's large format oil paintings which he painted after his return from Venezuela and which have become known, En el Trapiche undoubtedly is one of his most brilliant works.
Helga Weissgärber
Werneuchen, Sept. 1997
Note: The oil sketch to this painting, entitled Sugar Plantation of San Esteban Near Puerto Cabello belongs to the collection of the Staatliche Mussen zu Berlin-Preussischer Kulturbeitz, Kupferstichkabinett/Sammlung der Zeichnungen, (Nr. SZ 146). It is illustrated in the catalogue Ferdinand Bellermann, Kupferstichkabinett und Nationalgalerie, Berlin 1987, p. 72 and was exhibited in Caracas, Galería de Arte Nacional, Ferdinand Bellermann - Memoria del 1842-1845, 1991-1992, p. 55, n. 102 (illustrated)