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Lot Essay
In 1839 Eugene von Guérard arrived in Dusseldorf having spent twelve years travelling in Italy sketching the famous sites established in the itineraries of German, French and English artists from the time of Goethe's famous journey in 1786. His first teachers were his father, Bernhard, a painter of miniature portraits, and Giovan Battista Bassi, a landscape painter in whose studio in Rome von Guérard studied between 1830 and 1832. Bernhard had been appointed as court painter to Franz I of Austria and had various royal patrons in Vienna and Italy. It was from him that von Guérard established the habit of keeping small, meticulously documented sketchbooks of places visited, a practice maintained throughout his thirty years in Australia. Some of these sketches formed the basis of later paintings, some were used as 'aide-memoires', and others simply expressed delight in the world around him. It was during this period in Rome that the young von Guérard met the Director of the Dusseldorf Academy, Wilhelm von Schadow. A year or so after the death of his father from cholera in Naples, von Guérard began the journey to Dusseldorf to enrol in what was then regarded as one of the most progressive academies in Europe, attracting students from all over Germany, Russia, Scandinavia and, by the 1840s, the USA.
Von Guérard enrolled at the Dusseldorf Academy in 1840, under the first Professor of Landscape Painting to be appointed to an academy in Europe, Johann Wilhelm Schirmer. Schirmer, a painter well versed in the tradition of the heroic landscape, also encouraged his students to study nature and sketch in the open air. Von Guérard's sketchbooks from the 1840s, the decade prior to his journey to Australia in 1852, document the landscape and record castles, villages and people observed on his journeys along the Moselle and Rhine rivers and neighbouring regions.
Most of von Guérard's known works from the 1840s represent Italian subjects, drawn from his Italian sketchbooks. However a number of German subjects from this period have emerged in the last few years. Works such as Path from Grafenburg to Erkrath, 1841, and Oak Tree in Bilker Busch, 1842, both presented at Christie's in London in 1993, are exremely interesting for the information they give on the formation of the style of this most important colonial painter of the Australian landscape. In them, the young artist responds to his local environment, freed from some of the conventions associated with Italian subjects.
Mountainous Landscape is most probably a composite or ideal landscape, relating to the exquisite landscape drawings which fill a small sketchbook made on 'winter evenings' in Dusseldorf. Rugged landscape forms, passages of water and banks of fir trees characterise a number of these carefully thought through and beautifully executed drawings. In the volcanic form of the mountain on the horizon, von Guérard is possibly recalling his years in Naples with a reference to Vesuvius. The practice of close observation of the details and structures of the natural world is clear in von Guérards handling of grasses, root systems, foliage and the fall of light on the landscape.
It is possible that the scene represents a specific tourist destination. It bears a resemblance to an engraving based on a drawing by Ludwig Richter, Die Jungfernbrucke, reproduced in a popular contemporary travel guide for the Harz region, the Harz-Album. The well-worn track, the steps cut out of the rock and the wooden handrail in the painting all suggest that the site was a much-frequented destination. The soldiers respond to the landscape much as any traveller or tourist might. In choosing a group of soldiers relaxing to give human interest and scale to the work, von Guérard may have been influenced by Carl Friedrich Lessing, one of his teachers at the Academy, whose works of the 1840s sometimes included soldiers from the time of the Thirty Years War. The touches of red in their garments serve to enlighten the composition.
The Romantic notion of the Sublime so important to many of von Guérard's Australian landscapes and so much part of the cultural context from which he emerged, underpins this painting. The landscape, with its craggy rock forms, distances and darknesses, heroic fir trees and relatively small figures, combine to express the power and spirituality of nature, the sense that God's presence pervades the natural world.
We are grateful to Ruth Pullin for providing this catalogue entry
Von Guérard enrolled at the Dusseldorf Academy in 1840, under the first Professor of Landscape Painting to be appointed to an academy in Europe, Johann Wilhelm Schirmer. Schirmer, a painter well versed in the tradition of the heroic landscape, also encouraged his students to study nature and sketch in the open air. Von Guérard's sketchbooks from the 1840s, the decade prior to his journey to Australia in 1852, document the landscape and record castles, villages and people observed on his journeys along the Moselle and Rhine rivers and neighbouring regions.
Most of von Guérard's known works from the 1840s represent Italian subjects, drawn from his Italian sketchbooks. However a number of German subjects from this period have emerged in the last few years. Works such as Path from Grafenburg to Erkrath, 1841, and Oak Tree in Bilker Busch, 1842, both presented at Christie's in London in 1993, are exremely interesting for the information they give on the formation of the style of this most important colonial painter of the Australian landscape. In them, the young artist responds to his local environment, freed from some of the conventions associated with Italian subjects.
Mountainous Landscape is most probably a composite or ideal landscape, relating to the exquisite landscape drawings which fill a small sketchbook made on 'winter evenings' in Dusseldorf. Rugged landscape forms, passages of water and banks of fir trees characterise a number of these carefully thought through and beautifully executed drawings. In the volcanic form of the mountain on the horizon, von Guérard is possibly recalling his years in Naples with a reference to Vesuvius. The practice of close observation of the details and structures of the natural world is clear in von Guérards handling of grasses, root systems, foliage and the fall of light on the landscape.
It is possible that the scene represents a specific tourist destination. It bears a resemblance to an engraving based on a drawing by Ludwig Richter, Die Jungfernbrucke, reproduced in a popular contemporary travel guide for the Harz region, the Harz-Album. The well-worn track, the steps cut out of the rock and the wooden handrail in the painting all suggest that the site was a much-frequented destination. The soldiers respond to the landscape much as any traveller or tourist might. In choosing a group of soldiers relaxing to give human interest and scale to the work, von Guérard may have been influenced by Carl Friedrich Lessing, one of his teachers at the Academy, whose works of the 1840s sometimes included soldiers from the time of the Thirty Years War. The touches of red in their garments serve to enlighten the composition.
The Romantic notion of the Sublime so important to many of von Guérard's Australian landscapes and so much part of the cultural context from which he emerged, underpins this painting. The landscape, with its craggy rock forms, distances and darknesses, heroic fir trees and relatively small figures, combine to express the power and spirituality of nature, the sense that God's presence pervades the natural world.
We are grateful to Ruth Pullin for providing this catalogue entry