Rolling mill Neustadt-Eberswalde

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Rolling mill Neustadt-Eberswalde (Carl Blechen)
Rolling mill Neustadt-Eberswalde
Carl Blechen , around 1830
Oil painting on wooden panel
25.5 × 33 cm
Old National Gallery , Berlin

Rolling mill Neustadt-Eberswalde is the title of a realistic painting by Carl Blechen from around 1830. It shows the old Eberswalder iron rolling mill in Eberswalder Neustadt on the Finow Canal , which still exists today as an industrial monument in the Eisenspalterei district . The picture is shown today in Berlin's Alte Nationalgalerie .

description

The painting is carried out using the technique of oil painting on wood and has the dimensions 25.5 × 33 cm. It belonged to the collection of the banker Christian Wilhelm Brose until 1869 , after which it belonged to his sons Karl and Georg Brose. In 1891 it was bought by the Berlin National Gallery, where the picture has had inventory number A III 860 ever since.

You can see the modern iron rolling mill, built from 1816 to 1818 based on the English model, with its classical architecture. In the foreground in the evening light is the Finow Canal with three fishermen who represent an idyllic poetic counterweight in front of the smoking chimney of the boiler house of fast industrial production. The fisherman on the left waits patiently until a fish bites, the two boatmen are handling nets in their boat . The picture is dominated by dark colors. It extends in the middle to the green-black reflections of the rolling mill on the water, in the blue sky on the right and yellowish sky on the left as a black plume of smoke and on the canal banks with their sparse vegetation and rust-colored areas. The three figures come from the painting tradition of the 18th century as accessories . In Italy, Blechen had already used a similar color and light design in his romantic painting Schlucht bei Amalfi (Old National Gallery). In contrast to earlier works, in which Blechen liked to change proportions in order to increase the effect, he has stuck to reality in this picture. The art historian Helmut Börsch-Supan sees Blechen's picture as a skeptical view of industrialization because it disfigures nature. Karl-Friedrich Schinkel saw it similarly. In contrast to Menzel's iron mill, the picture lacks the pathetic. The art historian Irma Emmrich , on the other hand, sees Blechen's picture as a “commitment to industrialization.” In 1989, she wrote that Blechen “assessed the industrial plant as a legitimate part of the landscape” and “overcame the reservations of the Romantics”. There was “an optimism in him that also inspired the pioneers of the capitalist economic system”.

In a contemporary consideration of the exhibition in 1881 it says about the picture:

“ Ludwig Tieck was of the opinion that a nature that works in the service of man has an unpoetic effect because it is robbed of its bitter virginity. But Blechen [… has…] delivered his painterly masterpiece with the sketch shown. As early as 1881 [...] this small landscape depiction was recognized as 'a very single phenomenon'. […] 'The Poetic' […] is here entirely in favor of a great natural mood. The graphic maturity in the powerful silhouette of the factory chimneys are supported by painterly subtleties of equal value. Blechen's purest and most refined artistry lives on this small table. "

- 39. Sheets, rolling mill. In: The Museum, a guide to enjoying works of fine art.

History, background and reception

The basic theme of this picture is the beginning industrialization in Prussia, which Blechen was interested in depicting. The picture is one of the earliest industrial representations in German painting. In 1830 he was in Eberswalde, at that time a center of the Prussian metal industry, to make master drawings of the local Gesundbrunnen for a calendar that was to be illustrated with engravings, but he also visited the numerous industrial plants in Eberswalde several times to sketch them. So he made drawings from different angles not only of the rolling mill, but also of the buildings of the iron hammer , copper hammer and brass works (listed in Paul Ortwin Rave : Karl Blechen. Leben, Würdigung . Berlin 1940, No. 1804 to 1813). The drawings are sober, prosaic and realistic and without figures. Birgit Verwiebe, curator of the Alte Nationalgalerie, believes that this picture, in its painterly execution, with its figures represents a “nobilization” and “poetization” of the industrial reality prosaically recorded in the drawings. The art critic Boris Homeyer dedicated an article in of the art magazine art . There he takes the view that the picture should be understood as a turning point in German landscape painting. It was not in line with any of the art movements of the time. He sees in Blechen's picture the contrast between pre-industrial times and the present, between the classicists with their heroic depictions and the romantics with their longing for the inexplicable and fairytale. He sees the men on the bank as "symbolic figures detached from space and time" who, with their Phrygian hats, appear like Neapolitan fishermen whom Blechen painted several times on his trip to Italy. In addition, the smoke from the chimneys blows to the left, opposite to the bow of the boat, which points to the right. The canal should be understood as a “boundary of the ages”. Like the artist, she and the viewer of the picture are on this side of the bank, whereas the rolling mill appears on the other bank in a monumental size when viewed from below. The related broken perspective of the composition hides metal sheets in the reflections of the water.

Exhibitions (selection)

  • November 20, 1881 to January 20, 1882: 14th special exhibition in the Königliche National-Galerie Berlin: Works by Maria von Parmentier , Karl Blechen, Adolf Schrödter and August Bromeis . National Gallery Berlin
  • May to October 1886: Jubilee exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts in the state exhibition building in Berlin.
  • January to May 1906: Exhibition of German art from the period 1775–1875. (Exhibition of the century) in the Royal National Gallery in Berlin
  • May 15 to July 20, 1958: The picture of German industry 1800–1850: Exhibition organized with the support of the Federal Association of German Industry eV Schloss Cappenberg in Dortmund
  • May 7 to July 7, 1969: Industry and technology in German painting from Romanticism to the present. Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg
  • August 31 - November 4, 1990: Carl Blechen - between romanticism and realism. National Gallery Berlin

literature

  • German painters in the nineteenth century (=  Klett-Galerie . Volume 2 : Karl Blechen: Neustadt-Eberswalde rolling mill ). Klett, Stuttgart, OCLC 632672160 .
  • Peter-Klaus Schuster: Carl Blechen: between romanticism and realism . Prestel-Verlag, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7913-1084-4 .
  • Sung-Kook Park: Studies of Industrial Motifs in Romantic Painting . 1st edition. Tectum-Verlag, Marburg 2004, ISBN 3-8288-8727-9 .

Web links

Commons : Walzwerk Neustadt-Eberswalde  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Directory of paintings and sculptures in the Royal National Gallery in Berlin . ES Mittler and Son, Berlin 1914, p. 11 , No. 763 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  2. ↑ a b Walzwerk Neustadt-Eberswalde smb.museum-digital.de or nat.museum-digital.de Alte Nationalgalerie (description of the picture).
  3. ↑ a b Helmut Börsch-Supan in: Carl Blechen. Between romance and realism. Exhibition catalog of the Berlin National Gallery, Prestel-Verlag 1990, ISBN 3-7913-1084-4 , p. 115 f.
  4. ↑ Irma Emmrich: Carl Blechen. VEB Verlag der Kunst Dresden, licensed edition: Beck Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-33556-X . P. 97 f.
  5. ↑ Wilhelm Spemann: The Museum, a guide to enjoying the works of fine art . Ed .: Richard Graul, Richard Stettiner. W. Spemann, Berlin 1896, p. 79 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive Textarchiv - Internet Archive - illustration on p. 39).
  6. ↑ Boris Hohmeyer in: art - Das Kunstmagazin, issue 7/2011, p. 81 ff.
  7. ^ Hugo von Tschudi : Exhibition of German art from the period 1775–1875 in the Royal National Gallery, Berlin . Ed .: Board of Directors of the German Centenary Exhibition. F. Bruckmann, Munich 1906, p. 126 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive - illustration, short text on p. XXIV).