Lot 1136 Dα

Jacob Philipp Hackert is generally known as "Europe's Landscape Artist in Goethe's time", the title of the exhibitions in Weimar and Hamburg featuring his work. Best known for large-scale, Arcadian landscapes, his interpretations of the eruptions of Mt. Vesuvius in 1774 and 1779 represent important testimony of these spectacular events, witnessed by himself.
The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius on August 11, 1779, was accompanied by a fountain of fire three times the height of the mountain. Hackert's painting shows the eruption from the spit of Posilippo, across from Castell dell´Ovo. The view continues to the two caps of Vesuvius, the "Somma" on the left, and right the "grande cono" in the process of eruption. The distance allows the documentary depiction of nature's phenomenon to fade into the background, instead the impression created by the jet of fire prevails; clouds and lightening before the dark sky, the reddish sea enlivened by fishing boats. Hackert, in his earlier painting of 1774, showed groups of interested and courageous explorers; now he pictures a foreground of lamenting fishermen showing signs of fright and fear. In its dramatic depiction of this singular event, this work by Hackert defies comparison.
The popularity of the views of Mt. Vesuvius' eruptions encouraged Hackert to paint several different versions. One version, not known in literature until now, of same size with slight additions to the side edges, appeared in 2009 at Daxer & Marschall, Munich.