Jean-Baptiste Robie

Still life with meadow flowers - The beauty of meadow flowers -

about 1900

Conrad Kiesel (1846-1921), The gift of flowers. Oil on wood, 43 x 35 cm, 69 x 61 cm (frame), signed at lower left "Conrad Kiesel pxt [pinxit]", about 1900. In a magnificent gilt stuc...

Johannes Friedrich Heinrich Hänsch (1875-1945), Red blooming war landscape with dead soldier, 1918. Watercolor and gouache on paper, 15 x 24.5 cm (image), 27 x 37 cm (sheet size / frame), monogrammed and dated "19JH18" at lower left. - Paper slightly darkened About the artwork Despite the relatively small format, the watercolor with an internal frame depicts a panoramic view of a flat landscape stretching to the horizon. As far as the eye can see, the poppies bloom in flaming red. The flowers are not rendered individually, however, creating an almost cohesive red surface. The bright red is interspersed with vegetal green. A complementary contrast that creates an intense color effect. In this color contrast, a white area breaks through from the middle ground, widening towards the foreground and surrounding a brown hole. Next to it, in blue, is the actual protagonist of the painting, the first thing that catches the eye: a dead soldier. Next to him is his helmet, revealing the empty interior. The brown, hollow shape corresponds to the hole in the ground. A shell funnel is surrounded by bright ash, which, like the inverted helmet, becomes a sign of death. The soldier's arms point to the funnel, while the empty helmet paraphrases the calotte of the skull and, like the funnel, thematizes the empty darkness of death. The soldier's body, however, is intact and not - as in Otto Dix's triptych "The War" - a dismembered corpse. Instead, Johannes Hänsch activates the landscape, especially the color, to illustrate a blooming landscape of death that extends from the shell funnel in the foreground to the rising column of smoke on the horizon. If the soldier's body is intact, the tangle of barbed wire emblematically placed over the empty helmet also appears tattered. On the right side of the picture, the barbed wire even seems to stretch its arms to the sky in horror. Against the background of this allegory, the content of the bright red also becomes clear: the landscape is drenched in blood, literally a sea of blood, and the single unknown soldier stands pars pro toto for all those who died on the battlefield. Dying in war is not dying in community, but in solitude. In order to emphasize the isolation in death, Johannes Hänsch has set the blue of the soldier in the axis given by his body in the middle ground of the picture into the red sea. A master of landscape painting, Hänsch succeeds in creating a natural-looking landscape allegory that illustrates the horror and death of war, without depicting the brutality of war itself. This singular 'war memorial' of the unknown soldier is the opposite of heroization and yet the dignity of the deceased soldier is preserved through the integrity of his body. About the artist As the son of the sculptor Adolf Haensch, the young Johannes received his first artistic training in his father's Berlin studio. However, he eventually decided to become a painter, and in 1897 he entered the Berlin Academy of Arts. He initially studied under Paul Vorgang and Eugen Bracht, and was particularly influenced by Bracht's increasingly colourful landscape painting. In 1901 he moved to the class of Friedrich Kallmorgen, with whom he spent several weeks on excursions into nature. In 1905 he became a master pupil of Albert Hertel, who taught him watercolour painting. From 1903 to 1933 he exhibited annually at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition, the exhibitions of the Berlin Artists' Association and the Munich Glaspalast. In 1905 he was awarded the Carl Blechen...

Hans Richard von Volkmann (1860 Halle (Saale) - 1927 ibid.), Clay jug on a bench. Pencil and Watercolour on paper. 20 x 26,7 cm (visible size), 37 x 45 cm (frame), dated and monogrammed lower left "Februar 1890 - HR. V. V." - Minimally tanned. Framed behind glass in a passepartout. About the artwork Using the technique of his early youth - pencil and watercolour - Hans Richard von Volkmann depicts a still life. However, this is not a conventional indoor still life, but an open-air depiction, painted outdoors and not in the studio. It is therefore an open-air painting, characteristic of von Volkmann's oeuvre, which could have been painted in the Willingshausen colony of painters, where open-air painting was programmatically practised there and the artist stayed there that year. And indeed, this painting is a manifesto of open-air painting. Von Volkmann demonstrates that leaving the studio for the light of nature leads to an entirely new quality of art. To prove this, he uses the genre of still life, which can be described as the studio subject par excellence. Moreover, light plays an essential role in the classical still life. It is the real protagonist of the still life. And it is precisely this moment, essential to the still life, that von Volkmann exploits to demonstrate the potential of plein-air painting: He presents the objects as they appear in the sunlight. The date of February and the bare branches in the foreground make it clear that this is a clear winter day in bright sunlight. The delicate plant in the foreground casts a clearly defined shadow, as does the jug. However, the shadow is most pronounced on the jug itself: The underside of the handle appears almost black, making the top, and therefore the jug itself, shine all the more brightly. The shining of the objects in the sunlight is also visible on the bench. As complementary phenomena to the shadow zones, light edges can be seen on the boards of the seats and the upper foot of the bench shines entirely in the light. To achieve this intensity of light, von Volkmann activated the bright white of the painting ground. By depicting the objects in glistening sunlight, von Volkmann demonstrates that this quality of light is only to be found outdoors. And this light leads to a new way of looking at the objects themselves. The jug on the bench seems like an accidental arrangement, as if the artist had stumbled upon this unintentional still life and captured it with fascination. And in this fascination there is a moment of realisation that refers to the objects themselves. It is only when they shine brightly in the sunlight that their true nature is revealed. In this way, sunlight allows the objects to come into their own, so to speak. Sunlight, which is not present in the studio, gives the still life an entirely new dimension of reality, which is also reflected in the colours interwoven by the sunlight: The bench and the jug stand in a harmonious grey-pink contrast to the green of the implied meadow. The emphasis on the jug as the central subject of the picture also implies that the watercolour has not been completed. This non finito inscribes a processuality into the picture, making it clear that something processual has been depicted, the temporality of which has been made artistically permanent. This is why von Volkmann signed the painting and dated it to the month. About the Artist Von Volkmann made his first artistic attempts at the age of 14. He painted many watercolours of his home town of Halle. This laid the foundation for his later outdoor painting. In 1880 his autodidactic beginnings were professionalised with his admission to the Düsseldorf Art Academy. There he studied under Hugo Crola, Heinrich Lauenstein, Johann Peter Theodor Janssen and Eduard von Gebhardt until 1888. Von Volkmann then moved to the Karlsruhe Academy, where he was Gustav Schönleber's master pupil until 1892. In 1883 he came for the first time to Willingshausen, Germany's oldest painters' colony, at the suggestion of his student friend Adolf Lins...

Frederick Vezin (1859 Torresdale Philadelphia - 1933 Düsseldorf), Autumn Landscape in the Sunlight, oil on canvas, mounted on cardboard, 32 x 41 cm (inside measurement), 44 x 51 cm (frame), signed and dates lower right "F. Vezin. [19]05". - Cardboard slightly curved, small inconspicuous retouch at the centre of the upper edge of the picture. About the artwork Although the painting appears to be a sketch, Frederick Vezin considered it to be a finished work of art, as evidenced by his signature on the lower right. And it is precisely this sketchy quality that leads to an understanding of the painting, which was certainly created in the landscape itself: the natural phenomena were to be depicted artistically at the moment of their observation. This is not done by meticulously sketching nature, but - and here Vezin follows the teaching of French Impressionism - by illustrating nature in its visual fullness. The artist's eye is, as it were, immersed in the visuality of nature, which is made visible by his hand. The painting is therefore not a reflection of the landscape, but its artistic intensification. This intensification also includes the fact that the foreground of the painting - corresponding to the field of vision - eludes a detail-oriented close-up view. Instead, the spatula-like application of paint, the vertical structure of which corresponds to the structure of the floral growth, has the effect of making nature tangible in its colourful substance. At the same time, the foreground, which remains indeterminate in its concrete objectivity, creates an atmospheric space that connects with the actual protagonist of the picture, the group of trees, which flares up in shades of red and brown. Here, too, the leaves are more speckled than clearly outlined. It is precisely this 'sketchiness' that opens up a visual experience that makes the landscape accessible in its visual fullness, thus revealing its essence. In addition to this abundance, the landscape is presented as a structure of order in that the composition of the picture makes the composition of the landscape visible. For example, the group of trees forms a distinct dark green shadow, which is repeated in the shadows cast by the trees behind it. A patterned diagonal axis is created in the picture, which is composed in this way by the landscape itself. Strictly speaking, this is a cultivated landscape: a fence at the bottom and a low stone wall at the top, running from left to right, are two elements that also have a strong compositional effect. And on the top of the hill, a stone house is embedded in the landscape as the brightest surface in the picture. Nature and culture here form a harmonious synthesis, giving the painting an Arcadian touch. In order to give the landscape as much space as possible, the horizon line is raised, but the design of the sky is also crucial. The clouds, combined with the shapes of the trees, create a bright blue sky. To the European eye, such a sky is reminiscent of a summer landscape. Accordingly, within the seasonal cycle, the blue sky is reserved for summer, and French Impressionism is also primarily an ode to summer. In Vezin's painting, however, the brilliant blue sky stands above an autumnal landscape, some of the trees even defoliated. It can therefore be assumed that the painting was made not in Europe but in the United States, and that it illustrates the proverbial Indian summer, making Frederick Vezin a pioneer of American landscape painting. About the artist Frederick Vezin was the son of a French immigrant to the United States and a German-born mother. This predestined him to promote artistic exchange between the old and new worlds. Having spent part of his schooling in Germany, in 1876, at the age of 20, he enrolled at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, where he studied with Peter Janssen the Elder, Eduard von Gebhardt and Wilhelm Sohn, among others. He graduated in 1883, settled in Munich and returned to Düsseldorf in 1895, where he lived until his death in 1933. A native of the United States, he travelled to the country frequently and became a popular portrait and society painter. His artistic talent, however, was most evident in his landscape paintings. Trained in French Impressionism, he developed a virtuoso use of colour and a free brushwork that remained tied to the landscape motif, opening up the landscape itself in a new way. Frederick Vezin turned his attention primarily to the landscape of his homeland, becoming a pioneer of modern American landscape...

Classical Still Life of Flowers in a Vase Attributed to Edouard Charton (French, born 1855) signed oil on canvas, unframed canvas: 22 x 18 inches provenance: private collection, Fran...

Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer 1636-1699 French Still Life with Flowers on a Carved Stone Ledge Oil on canvas Impeccable detail and luminous color breathe life into this floral still lif...

A nicely detailed still life with flowers in a blue vase by French artist Eugene Henri Cauchois (1850-1911). Cauchois was born in Rouen, France, was a student of Duboe, Cabanel and Q...

A gorgeous floral still life which marries the depth and the richness found in the work of the Flemish old masters with the elegance and light of French painting. As you will see, th...