Summer night on the Rhine
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| Summer night on the Rhine |
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| Christian Eduard Böttcher , 1862 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 117 × 183 cm |
| Cologne City Museum |
Summer Night on the Rhine is the title of a genre painting by the Düsseldorf painter Christian Eduard Böttcher . It is one of the main works of wine and Rhine romanticism .
description
The group picture shows middle-class people of the 19th century who are gathered for evening parties at several tables outside an inn by moonlight and candlelight .
The walls and portal of a Romanesque castle ruin can be seen on the right edge of the picture . On the left edge of the picture, the gaze falls on the slightly cloudy night sky, lit by the full moon , and on its reflection in a river. The title of the picture names the Rhine as the location of the depicted scene. In front of the river landscape, which gives the picture a great depth effect through the depiction of a river bend in the distance, a small town church tower stands out, which can be identified as the tower of St. Peter in Bacharach in the Upper Middle Rhine Valley . According to this, the scene, which, as evidenced by the vines shown on the right, is located above the village on a vineyard, could be located in the ruins of Stahleck Castle . However, there is no location identical to the picture in this complex.
In the center of the picture, illuminated by a large candlestick, sits and stands under the crown of a mighty beech tree in a large round table and in an elevated position on a terrace with a decorative vase, a circle of five women and six men. Thanks to Böttcher's “color and light direction”, this group of figures forms the center of the image composition. In the middle of the laid table is a large glass bowl with a punch . A boy jumps over to bring a key to one of the masters. In the foreground is a small table at which three men drink wine, smoke a pipe and talk by the light of a table candle. A copy of the Kölnische Zeitung lies on her table . An elderly man, a clergyman, whose hand is hooked on the servant's arm, says goodbye to them. On the far left, the landlord covers a guest who fell asleep while drunk with a blanket on a bench. On the right, a man with a hat and cane is also about to leave the garden restaurant, which is visibly coming to an end. Its long shadow falls on the sandy floor. He is greeted by two men who are just reaching the restaurant via a steep path. In the background, on the stone parapets of the former castle, the outlines of other people can be seen.
Many of the people portrayed in the figure-rich composition were recognized as Boettcher's painters colleagues, friends and family members - though in some cases rather vague or controversial. The Düsseldorf School , from which the fellow painters originate, also belonged to Cooper. The man leaning against the trunk of the beech tree shows Theodor Mintrop's distinctive facial features . The couple at the table below could be Alfred Rethel (or his brother Otto ) and Bertha von Beckerath (1840–1902). The man with reddish brown hair standing to the right of the board is identified as Moritz von Beckerath . The couple below him should be Beckerath's brother Leonhard, a winemaker and wine merchant from Rüdesheim, and his wife Laura, née Deus. The lady who turned to Beckerath is probably his sister Hedwig, widowed from Bruck (1842–1912). The figure of the gentleman who receives the key from the boy is identified as a self-portrait by Böttcher. The lady in white who dominates the center of the picture and pours the punch from the punch will probably be the wife of the picture creator, Mielchen (Emilie) Böttcher, née Hunzinger. The person who turns his back on Böttcher could be Wilhelm Sohn or his father Heinrich Karl. He looks into the eyes of a girl (possibly the host's daughter) who is offering bouquets of flowers from a basket. Other painters were recognized as guests on the lower table: Eduard Geselschap as the pipe smoker and Adolf Schmitz and Fritz Werner .
Origin and provenance
After a phase in which Böttcher devoted himself to socially critical issues in the wake of Carl Wilhelm Hübner and created works decried as “ tendency painting ”, in 1848 for example from the prison genre, after the German Revolution he switched to late romantic folk life painting with idylls , children's and pub scenes as well as Rhenish landscapes. Under the title Der Abend am Rhein , Böttcher created a washed pen drawing in 1860 that already contains essential elements of the summer night on the Rhine and is considered to be its preliminary drawing. This drawing, which is similar to a drawing made in 1854 and depicting a folk festival by Adolph Tidemand ( Bettina Baumgärtel ), is in the graphic collection of the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf. The painting, which was completed in the studio in 1862, was initially exhibited in several art centers in Germany before it was purchased by the Katharina Schiefer Foundation for the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in 1864 and presented there as a “major work”. Today it is on loan to the Cologne City Museum .
reception
The painting is regarded as an image invention that has become particularly well known - also through reproduction engravings - and as a major work of the "late phase of wine and Rhine romanticism" ( Wend von Kalnein ). It produces from traditional motifs of romance adding mood . It formulates a nostalgia , a hard realities of the industrial age rather ausblendendes, idealized and compressed concept of a living world Rhenish bourgeoisie and the idea of a "Rhenish way of life", which was to the 20th century spread and remained effective. It gained popularity in particular through the narrative, detailed and humorous compassionate depiction of a bourgeois sociability and cosiness as well as a relaxed atmosphere, as it arises after drinking wine through light drunkenness ("wine bliss") on mild summer nights.
The painting belongs to narratives and creations that varied the motif of the Rhine landscape and its inhabitants in many facets in the 19th and 20th centuries. They contributed to developing clichés and images of oneself and others about Rhinelanders. In 1904 the Düsseldorf artists' association Malkasten organized a festival to honor the 70-year-old genre and landscape painter Ernst Bosch , which ended with a wistful look back with the depiction of the painting as a tableau vivant . Later artists were able to carry the folk genre expressed in the picture well into the 20th century, as for example the comedy The Merry Vineyard by Carl Zuckmayer and its film implementation in 1952 shows.
literature
- Irene Markowitz : Rhenish painters of the 19th century . In: Eduard Trier , Willy Weyres : 19th century art in the Rhineland . 5 volumes (1979–1981), Volume 3: Painting , Düsseldorf 1979, p. 122 f.
- Wend von Kalnein : Summer Night on the Rhine, 1862 . In: Wend von Kalnein (Ed.): The Düsseldorf School of Painting . Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1979, p. 273 f. (Catalog No. 36).
- Bettina Baumgärtel : Summer Night on the Rhine, 1862 . In: Bettina Baumgärtel (Hrsg.): The Düsseldorf School of Painting and its international impact 1819–1918 . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86568-702-9 , Volume 2, p. 410 f. (Catalog No. 347).
Individual evidence
- ^ Wolfgang Hütt : Die Düsseldorfer Malerschule 1819–1869 . VEB EA Seemann Buch- und Kunstverlag, Leipzig 1984, p. 196
- ^ Sabine Schroyen: Sources on the history of the artists' association Malkasten. A center of bourgeois art and culture in Düsseldorf since 1848. LVR-Archivhefte, Volume 24, Rheinland-Verlag Habelt, Bonn 1992, ISBN 3-7927-1293-8 , p. 35 ( PDF )