Christian Rohlfs - Hügelige Landschaft (Abendlandschaft) - image-1

Lot 491 Dα

Christian Rohlfs - Hügelige Landschaft (Abendlandschaft)

Auction 1070 - overview Cologne
03.06.2016, 18:00 - Modern Art
Estimate: 25.000 € - 30.000 €
Result: 27.280 € (incl. premium)

Christian Rohlfs

Hügelige Landschaft (Abendlandschaft)
Circa 1900

Oil on canvas, relined 56 x 72.5 cm Framed. Signed and dated "C. Rohlfs 84" in an unknown hand lower right. - Two unobtrusive old retouches.

The landscape view offered here features an unusually dark palette and conveys the earthly gravity and simultaneous expanse of this area defined by gentle rises. According to the observations presented in the expertise by Paul Vogt, this is one of the last works that Christian Rohlfs created before moving to Hagen. It was created around 1900, either in Thuringia or during the artist's stay in the countryside near Lübeck.
“For a realist like Rohlfs, the 'interesting motif' that had led other artists all the way to Italy was of more or less secondary importance. He sought and found the breadth of the world in its smallest parts. This attitude of always seeing the whole in the part - of rediscovering the cosmos in the microcosm of plants, bushes, a piece of ground - is surely also a trait inherited from his Holstein heritage. [...] His eye for specific, characteristic qualities of visible being additionally suggests that many paintings were now no longer created in his studio on the basis of preparatory sketches but directly before nature. This is also suggested by the numerous pictures in smaller formats, which made it easier to work outdoors. Most of the critics of those years were bothered by the painter's 'crude' hand. They were referring to the unaccustomed impasto of the paint's application, which Rohlfs had learned from [Alexandre] Struys. This in particular proved especially suited for that representation of materiality sought by Rohlfs. At that time an application of paint emphasising the material still represented its brightness and permitted him to dynamise the pictorial surface and to provide his characteristic brushstroke with vitality.” (Paul Vogt, Christian Rohlfs - Leben und Werk, in: Christian Rohlfs 1849-1938, exhib. cat. Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung München/Von der Heydt-Museum Wuppertal 1996, pp. 13f.)

Certificate

With a photo-certificate by Paul Vogt, Essen, dated 19 resp. 20 June 1995 (photocopy) and a photo-certificate from the Christian Rohlfs Archiv, Osthaus Museum Hagen, dated 19 October 2015. Archive no. CR 77/95.

Provenance

Galerie Roche, Bremen (1999); Private possession since, Baden-Württemberg