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拍品专文
The sugar plantation of San Esteban where Bellermann stayed as the guest of a German businessman, Gloeckler, in his summer months in Venezuela between 1842 and 1845, was one of the artist's favourite subjects (as he recorded in his diary: 'the time I spent there belongs to one of the most wonderful memories of my life.').
Two larger variants are known: 'En el Trapiche' (147 x 189cm.), from the collection of the King of Prussia (exhibited in Vienna, 1868 and Berlin, 1870) and the undated picture, 140 x 180cm., sold at Christie's, New York, 24 Nov. 1997, lot 8. An oil sketch (Sugar Plantation of San Esteban near Puerto Cabello) relating to these two larger pictures is now in the collection of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett Museen/Sammlung der Zeichnungen (No. SZ146), for which see the exhibition catalogue Ferdinand Bellermann, Kupferstichkabinett und Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 1987, p.72. The sketch was one of around 300 studies brought back from Venezuela by the artist in 1845 and purchased by the State. The present picture, dated 1847, is presumably the first fully worked up picture of this subject produced by Bellermann on his return to Germany for exhibition the following year.
Encouraged by Humboldt and with a travel stipend from the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, Bellermann was able to take up the invitation from the wealthy Hamburg ship owner and merchant Carl Rühls to travel to Venezuela in 1842.
'Between 1842 and 1846, after the eastern parts of Gran Colombia had split off to form the sovereign state of Venezuela, the versatile Prussian landscapist, Ferdinand Bellermann, toured that country as its first major traveller-reporter artist. Accompanied by his countryman, the naturalist Karl Moritz, Bellermann went from east to west painting in a vigorous style with rich impasto and spirited light and colour. Although his method of building compositions from dark to light to highlight... places Bellermann's work in the late continental baroque tradition... this artist captured for the first time the individuality of the Venezuelan landscape,...' (S.L. Catlin in D. Ades, Art in Latin America (exhibition catalogue), The Hayward Gallery, London, 1989, p.55).
Two larger variants are known: 'En el Trapiche' (147 x 189cm.), from the collection of the King of Prussia (exhibited in Vienna, 1868 and Berlin, 1870) and the undated picture, 140 x 180cm., sold at Christie's, New York, 24 Nov. 1997, lot 8. An oil sketch (Sugar Plantation of San Esteban near Puerto Cabello) relating to these two larger pictures is now in the collection of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett Museen/Sammlung der Zeichnungen (No. SZ146), for which see the exhibition catalogue Ferdinand Bellermann, Kupferstichkabinett und Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 1987, p.72. The sketch was one of around 300 studies brought back from Venezuela by the artist in 1845 and purchased by the State. The present picture, dated 1847, is presumably the first fully worked up picture of this subject produced by Bellermann on his return to Germany for exhibition the following year.
Encouraged by Humboldt and with a travel stipend from the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, Bellermann was able to take up the invitation from the wealthy Hamburg ship owner and merchant Carl Rühls to travel to Venezuela in 1842.
'Between 1842 and 1846, after the eastern parts of Gran Colombia had split off to form the sovereign state of Venezuela, the versatile Prussian landscapist, Ferdinand Bellermann, toured that country as its first major traveller-reporter artist. Accompanied by his countryman, the naturalist Karl Moritz, Bellermann went from east to west painting in a vigorous style with rich impasto and spirited light and colour. Although his method of building compositions from dark to light to highlight... places Bellermann's work in the late continental baroque tradition... this artist captured for the first time the individuality of the Venezuelan landscape,...' (S.L. Catlin in D. Ades, Art in Latin America (exhibition catalogue), The Hayward Gallery, London, 1989, p.55).