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This painting belongs to the original series of four works exhibited at the National Gallery in Karlsruhe in 1855 and was dedicated to Frederick the Regent and his Prussian fiancee Louise. Painter Schilmer captured landscapes from the surroundings of Baden-Baden at different times of the day without targeting a cosmological scheme. He completed these paintings in his studio despite previous precise nature studies. He painted the paintings a year after the regent made him head of the newly established art school in Düsseldorf and summoned him to Karlsruhe.
The Geroldsau Valley in the work is viewed from the eastern foothills of the Leisberg Mountains. From the thorn-covered slope, the view swept south. Several houses, including the town mill, line the meandering Grobbach stream and the road along it (the starting point of today’s Black Forest Boulevard). As if in a basin, the morning light reflects on the grass in front of the mill. Diagonally above the sawmill is the Höllhäuserweg road, like a thin ochre ribbon on a sun-drenched hill. In the distance, the carefully drawn mountains of the Black Forest complete the composition: Steinberg, Badnerhöhe, Vorfeldkopf, Langert, Urberg, Lanzenkopf and Solberg mountains.
The long shadows of the trees and the smoke of the dark hillside to the left herald the beginning of the days of early autumn. The view of the northern Black Forest makes you feel the freshness of an autumn morning. It not only invites us to look, but also invites us to wander in a world that is clear, walkable, and peaceful, as underlined by the painting’s theme of the lady under the parasol approaching with the boy.
From a historical point of view, Schilmer inherited the tradition of the “cityscape” (veduta) that has always dominated Baden’s landscape painting. While “Cityscape” is primarily concerned with an objective, effective part of nature, sometimes intensified by adding content, Schirmer elevates it to the illusion of the moment. He observed the appearance of atmospheric phenomena at that moment, without (as the Impressionists did later) detaching them from their topographical background and making them independent subjects.
Thanks to the National Gallery in Karlsruhe, we present today’s work. If you love landscapes as much as we do, check out our DailyArt prints here !
PS Have you heard of the wonderful landscapes of the Hudson River School painters? You have to look at them. <3
59.5 x 82.5 cm
Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe
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