Wintermorgen im Wettersteingebirge, Zugspitze

Following his study in the School of Applied Arts in Strasbourg, Karlsruhe and the Dresden Academy, Otto Pippel entered the public eye in 1912 with his first exhibition in the Munich Glaspalast. The subject of his first exhibition piece was a winter landscape. Four years earlier, during a trip to France, Pippel was exposed to Impressionist handling of paint. Influenced by this, Pippel would adhere to an Impressionist manner when rendering to his own depictions of people, landscapes and interiors, gaining him a reputation as one of the leading figures of the South German Impressionist movement.
The present painting is a return to the artist’s early inspiration, a winter landscape. The light glints on the snow, while the soft glow of the rising sun reflecting off the mountains brings warmth to the palette and the landscape itself. Zugspitze, the highest mountain peak in the artist’s native Germany, dominates the composition. Pippel uses a row of trees to bring distance between the viewer and the mountain, accentuating the majesty of Zugspitze.