Thorn von der Bazar-Kämpe aus gesehen

Established as a painter of architectural subjects and urban scenes and appreciated for the sharp precision and colorist refinement of his paintings, Eduard Gaertner had rapidly become an acclaimed artist, having gained the steady patronage of King Federick William III and Czar Nicholas I. After 1840, however, the reduction of popular interest in topographical painting motivated Gaertner, now less heavily employed by the court, to adjust the painterly aspects of his work to the taste of a more bourgeois clientele with more intense Romantic sensibilities. Practicing a looser painterly technique, he sought to enliven his rather stiff, objective architectural views with suggestions of dawn or dusk and the relevant refined effects of atmospheric color, perhaps in an effort to counter the competition of photography. The precision of the details has led many a viewer to speculate on the influence the already relatively well-developed photographic camera might have had on his work.

With the rise of photography appearing to be making the architectural painter redundant and the trend for city views having passed its peak, Gaertner turned to landscape painting. Journeys to Prague, West and East Prussia and Silesia throughout the 1940s introduced fresh subject matter; but it was architecture rather than scenery that most engaged Gaertner's attention, occasionally inventing idealised landscape settings for real buildings. Resulting from his extensive travels and revised artistic temperament, Thorn von der Bazar-Kämpe aus gesehen typifies the artist's mature style in its serene mood. The scene set in this work has been located as the German town of Thorn viewed from the higher level Bazar-Kampe with an ancient ruin in the foreground on the river Weichsel. He is known to have painted two works of same subject both originally owned by the Thorn-based Gustav Weese, the wealthy manufacturer of Lebkuchen, the traditional and highly popular, German cake.