Departing Rhine steamer with a view of the Siebengebirge

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Departing Rhine steamship with a view of the Siebengebirge (also "Rhine steamship and view of the Drachenfels", or "Rhine steamship" for short) is an oil sketch by Oswald Achenbach . At first it received a lot of attention, was exhibited and illustrated in several art magazines in the 1920s, most recently in 1943 in J. Heinrich Schmidt's Achenbach monograph. Apparently she is lost in the chaos of war. Precisely this, however, is as far as you can open it from the obtained solely black and white illustrations, more than others, Oswald Achenbach as the independent forerunner of the German Impressionism expel, as he has so far been recognized only by a few.

Achenbach's sketches

Oswald Achenbach's oil sketches are painted partly on canvas, partly on paper or cardboard and partly on wood. They are mostly signed and occasionally monogrammed. But about a third of his oil sketches have neither a signature nor a monogram. As an exception, he also made sketches as watercolor or gouache. They are only partially forerunners of an elaborated painting (or even only intended as such). Rather, Achenbach himself attributed a creative intrinsic value to them and found greater artistic satisfaction in their production with increasing age. The pictures are rather small-format, made on site, so in contrast to the then predominant studio art of open-air painting in the sense of the Barbizon school . The common characteristic is the fleeting brushstroke, which tries to convey the impression seen and felt and does not strive for subtle elaboration. From the point of view of traditional painting of the 19th century, this is the often criticized characteristic of the unfinished, while the modern viewer finds tension and stimulation in it. An external characteristic of the unfinished is that Achenbach often lets the painting ground, namely the texture of the canvas or the grain of the wood, shine through the application of paint. Light effects, light-dark contrasts, sky and clouds replace the detailed elaboration of the foreground. It was not by chance that Achenbach found the great role model in William Turner . In his choice of the subject, however, he is still largely attached to the idealizing- heroic landscape composition of bourgeois taste. And accordingly, the sun-shined colors are reserved for the French Impressionists. But it is precisely on this point that the “Rhine Steamer” seems to point beyond the majority of his sketches.

The sketch "Rhine steamship"

Departing Rhine steamer with a view of the Siebengebirge , oil sketch

The picture shows a paddle steamer that heads for the middle of the stream with a smoking chimney and is said goodbye to a group of people on the bank. In the background is the chain of hills on the other bank. If you take a closer look, you can only see coarse lines and spots of color (converted into gray tones); but they complement each other to create a perfect overall impression. The monogram "OA" can be deciphered as a signature at the bottom left. Nothing is known about the format of the picture, the material, the coloring and the year of creation. So the viewer of the reproduction is completely dependent on his imagination. He likes to think of the warm colors of a sunny summer day and see an impressionist masterpiece.

literature

  • J. Heinrich Schmidt: Oswald Achenbach. 2nd edition, 1946.
  • Mechthild Potthoff: Oswald Achenbach. Cologne-Berlin 1995.
  • Martina Sitt (ed.): Andreas and Oswald Achenbach. The be-all and end-all of the landscape. Cologne 1997, here in particular the article by Ekkehard Mai , p. 43 ff.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Exhibition “Underpaintings, sketches, studies, watercolors and drawings by Oswald Achenbach” of the municipal art collection in Düsseldorf from 1916.
  2. ↑ The Rhineland, 1916 Volume 4; Art and artists : Illustrated monthly for fine arts and applied arts, 1925 p. 473; The cross section , 1926 issue 6 after p. 464, there with provenance information Coll. Benno von Achenbach.
  3. ↑ 2nd edition 1946, Fig. 142 on p. 131
  4. ^ Karl Koetschau in the foreword to the exhibition catalog from 1916.
  5. ↑ Numerous oil sketches can be found on artnet Oswald Achenbach | artnet and Google: oswald achenbach bilder
  6. ↑ E.g. “On the Gulf of Capri”, undated; “The tomb of Cäcilia Metella in Rome”, around 1875; Format 13 x 18 or 10 x 14 cm; both at artnet.
  7. ↑ E.g. “The Bay of Naples”, 1886, on artnet; “On the Gulf of Naples”, 1884; “Garden terrace”, 1877/1885, the latter two by JH Schmidt Figs. 135, 137, 138.
  8. ^ Mechthild Potthoff: Oswald Achenbach , p. 78.
  9. ^ School of Barbizon - Digital Collection
  10. ^ The Barbizon School - Lexicon and Offers - Buy and Sell
  11. ↑ The term Impressionism originally arose from this criticism in France; John Rewald : The History of Impressionism , p. 7.
  12. ^ Mechthild Potthoff: Oswald Achenbach , p. 115.
  13. ^ For example, Gottfried Keller: Heroic Landscape , 1842, Zurich Central Library.