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拍品专文
Over the course of his long career, Robert Zünd returned repeatedly to the theme of the Eichwald (Oak Forest), and the works from this series are the most important in his œuvre. The artist wrote, ‘Meine einzige Seligkeit besteht darin, malen zu können, die schöne Natur, die ich so herzlich liebe, nachahmen zu können‘ (‘My only joy lies in being able to paint, to imitate the beautiful nature that I love so dearly') and his extraordinary eye for the most minute details of nature and his ability to portray them exactly are on full display in the present work. Almost photographic in its level of detail and abruptly cropped in the way a photograph might be, Zünd’s extraordinary composition represents a starkly modern approach to landscape painting in the mid-19th century.
Born in Lucerne, Zünd moved to Geneva in 1848, where he studied under two of the most important Swiss landscape painters of the 19th century, François Diday and Alexandre Calame. The Swiss poet Gottfried Keller encountered Zünd’s work early in his career and described his landscapes as idealen Reallandschaft–ideal real landscapes. Zünd’s art was a perfect synthesis of contemporary styles, blending a highly polished Academic technique and idealism with a Romantic approach to the forest–both a quiet refuge and an inherently wild place. Zünd’s Eichwald feels at once closed in and imposing with the towering old growth trees continuing off into the distance and obscuring the horizon, and yet also peaceful and calm, with the shaft of sunlight descending to illuminate the beautifully delineated plants covering the forest floor before the viewer. Eichwald is one of only a few works by the artist not to include staffage, allowing the viewer to stand in awe of nature without the mediation of a painted human figure.
Eichwald is considered Zünd’s most significant work. A larger version of this same composition, painted in 1882, was acquired by the Kunsthaus Zürich in 1883, and is perhaps the artist’s best-known painting. Another version of the same size as the present work, dated in pencil on the stretcher to 1859 (around the same year as the present work is thought to have been painted), is in the collection of the Kunstmuseum Lucerne. The three paintings hung together at the Zünd exhibition in Lucerne in 2017 and such is the exactness of Zünd’s work that the details of these compositions are barely distinguishable from one another. Oils from this part of Zünd’s œuvre rarely appear on the market, and the appearance of the present work at auction is certainly noteworthy.
Born in Lucerne, Zünd moved to Geneva in 1848, where he studied under two of the most important Swiss landscape painters of the 19th century, François Diday and Alexandre Calame. The Swiss poet Gottfried Keller encountered Zünd’s work early in his career and described his landscapes as idealen Reallandschaft–ideal real landscapes. Zünd’s art was a perfect synthesis of contemporary styles, blending a highly polished Academic technique and idealism with a Romantic approach to the forest–both a quiet refuge and an inherently wild place. Zünd’s Eichwald feels at once closed in and imposing with the towering old growth trees continuing off into the distance and obscuring the horizon, and yet also peaceful and calm, with the shaft of sunlight descending to illuminate the beautifully delineated plants covering the forest floor before the viewer. Eichwald is one of only a few works by the artist not to include staffage, allowing the viewer to stand in awe of nature without the mediation of a painted human figure.
Eichwald is considered Zünd’s most significant work. A larger version of this same composition, painted in 1882, was acquired by the Kunsthaus Zürich in 1883, and is perhaps the artist’s best-known painting. Another version of the same size as the present work, dated in pencil on the stretcher to 1859 (around the same year as the present work is thought to have been painted), is in the collection of the Kunstmuseum Lucerne. The three paintings hung together at the Zünd exhibition in Lucerne in 2017 and such is the exactness of Zünd’s work that the details of these compositions are barely distinguishable from one another. Oils from this part of Zünd’s œuvre rarely appear on the market, and the appearance of the present work at auction is certainly noteworthy.