Italian Landscape Oswald Achenbach

The Achenbach brothers, Oswald and Andreas, were among the most prominent and popular landscape painters in Düsseldorf, a city that had emerged as a centre of the arts by the mid-nineteenth century. Oswald’s early work bears the influence not only of his brother, who was twelve years his senior, but also of the idealised landscapes of Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, his teacher at the Düsseldorf Academy. Following a visit to Rome and the surrounding countryside in 1850, the artist favoured Italy as the subject matter of his work. He finalised his compositions in his studio in Düsseldorf using sketches made during his travels. This early landscape shows the ruined tower of an ancient mausoleum in Campagna standing next to an atmospheric bridge overgrown with vegetation. The dramatic expanse of sky and the gently shimmering water were among Achenbach’s favourite motifs in the 1850s. Although the elegance of this painting’s structure, its meticulous detail, and its brown tones still point to the influence of Schirmer and the Düsseldorf tradition, Achenbach was here clearly already striving for the overall effect of the image, the rendering of atmosphere, and the visualisation of the silvery light that unifies the scene. His entire oeuvre was defined by the increasingly subtle synthesis of ideal and real, tradition and innovation.

Dominika Sodics