Lot 2207 Dα

This drawing in an old mount, formerly from a French collection, has thus far not been mentioned in the literature on Reinhart. The sheet, marked on the reverse, can be brought into connection with a drawing by Reinhart dated 1792 in the Metropolitan Museum in New York ( inv. no. 2007.264) and with the painting "Große Ideallandschaft" from 1796 in the Schäfer Collection in Schweinfurt (both illustrated in the exhibition catalogue of 2012, pp. 282-3). This sheet shows a section of these two landscape compositions in portrait format. Namely the large deciduous tree with the willow growing underneath it at the edge of a pond with large stone blocks, as well as a stone stele in the background, which, however, can only be seen in the New York drawing.
The painting from the Schäfer Collection is one of Reinhart's earliest large-scale idealised landscapes, painted during his first decade in Rome. Extensive studies from nature preceded his paintings, and the present sheet is undoubtedly one of them. Whether Reinhart actually saw and drew the motif of the present drawing in the park of the Villa Borghese, as can be read on the reverse, cannot be definitively proven. The artist's attention is also more focused on the varying foliage of the trees, the reflections in the water and the formation of the stones. This patient observation, coupled with a pinch of melancholy, is what makes up the unmistakable character of his painting in these early works.