Seaside Landscape Carl Philipp Schallhas

Schallhas studied landscape painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where he then worked as an assistant lecturer. The greatest influence on his art was exerted by his master at the academy, Johann Christian Brand, who taught his students how to paint landscapes directly from nature. Schallhas’ landscape drawings record his direct experiences of the landscape, whereas his oil paintings follow the Dutch tradition of landscape painting, while reflecting the views on nature that prevailed in the Age of Enlightenment. The motifs of his idyllic representations of nature are always harmoniously arranged. A unique piece in the painter’s oeuvre is this signed painting depicting the sea, which was executed in the year before his early death. Schallhas probably never saw the sea himself, but the sandy shore rising on the left suggests his direct experience of the landscape in the environs of Pozsony (today Bratislava, Slovakia).