| Note: The drawing represents a rural landscape in the Mark Brandenburg, a region just outside Berlin. With his inimitable brush style-free and spontaneous-Blechen depicted a group of trees in the background, with lively vegetation and perhaps a river in the foreground. The draftsman first sketched some summary contours with graphite, and then applied the sepia ink broadly with a brush, using the full tonal range of the medium-from light to very dark washes. The sheet beautifully exemplifies Blechen's tendency to invest his landscapes with intense passion so that they become expressions of his emotions and states of mind. Rural landscape in the Mark Brandenburg was meant as an independent study. It may be dated to 1831-1840, when the artist depicted that region on many occasions.In spite of early artistic inclinations, Blechen trained as a bank clerk before studying at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. There he was notably influenced by Heinrich Anton Dähling (1773-1850) who strengthened his interest in Romantic and poetic subjects. Blechen was also influenced by the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, which he was able to study in Berlin at the time. In 1823, he travelled to Dresden, where he visited Johann Christian Dahl. The latter impressed Blechen with his impulsive style of oil sketching. Blechen was strongly attracted to the Berlin theatre life and, in 1824, Karl Friedrich Schinkel helped him obtain work as a stage designer and painter of sets at the Königstadt Theatre, a post he left in 1827 in order to pursue an independent career. In 1828, he left Germany and travelled south, remaining for thirteen months in Rome, Naples and various cities in central Italy. Blechen's Italian journey was the central event of his brief creative life, however the frequent claim that it changed the very basis of his artistic vision fails to recognize that the compulsive, highly personal features of his art are noticeable both before and afterwards. In 1831, Blechen was granted a professorship-with the support of Karl Friedriech Schinkel-at the Berlin Academy in 1831, where he taught landscape. He would take his students on excursions outside Berlin in order to draw and paint en plein air. Rural landscape in the Mark Brandenburg may have been executed during one of Blechen's lessons. In 1836, the first signs of Blechen's mental illness became apparent, which forced him to resign from his teaching post at the Academy. His gradual deterioration is reflected in the work from that period, where the artist's style becomes increasingly effusive and abstract. | |
Tools 
Cultural Objects Names Authority® Full Record Display
..... Movable Works
