1071 - Schuch, Carl

Schuch, Carl Wien 1846 - 1903 51,5 x 44 cm Peonies in a dark green glass jug. Oil/canvas. Hugo Helbing, Munich, sale 9 July 1919, cat. no. 71 (the consignor at the time was the Austrian art dealer Gustav Nebehay, 1881-1935, who offered a large collection of works by Carl Schuch in this sale, cat. nos. 61-106); Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett, sale 24-26 November 1954, cat. no. 664; Georg Schäfer Collection. As a gift fom the Schäfer collection to the consignors’ family. Lit.: Cézanne - Manet - Schuch : drei Wege zur autonomen Kunst. Exhibition catalogue Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte der Stadt Dortmund, May - July 2000. Carl Schuch & Frankreich. Exhibition cat. Städel Museum Frankfurt, Sept. 2025 - February 2026. Carl Schuch’s late floral still lifes are among the most striking examples of his engagement with French painting and, at the same time, represent one of the most original and modern achievements in German-speaking painting of the late 19th century. During his years in Paris from 1882 to 1894, his still-life painting reached its zenith. Whilst there, Schuch studied in particular the works of Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet and Claude Monet, and from these developed an increasingly independent visual language centred on colour and the act of painting. The floral still life shown here illustrates this development particularly well. The lush bouquet of red and pink peonies is set against a greenish drapery and placed in an almost black vase with a green sheen. Schuch is less interested in a botanically accurate depiction of the flowers than in the interplay of colour tones, light and brushstrokes. The vivid red of the blooms creates a striking contrast with the green of the background; at the same time, the dark areas are by no means simply black, but are built up from a variety of shades. This approach - conceiving darkness in terms of colour and gradually bringing the objects into being through many short, visible brushstrokes - is characteristic of Schuch’s late paintings. His relationship with Manet and Impressionism becomes particularly evident here. Schuch admired Manet and Monet and studied their free, visible brushstrokes and their sensitivity to the effects of colour in great depth. Unlike in a strictly Impressionist painting, however, Schuch does not lighten his palette entirely. His flowers appear in deep, subdued colours that tie in with his earlier painting, which was influenced by Courbet’s Realism and the Munich Leibl Circle. Thus, in his late floral still lifes, French modernism is combined with a style of painting that is entirely his own: dark and almost tentative. It is precisely this that gives the painting its special appeal: the flowers are not merely the subject of the still life, but become the occasion for an exploration of painting itself. Colour, texture, light and brushstrokes increasingly take on an intrinsic value of their own, rather than merely serving a representation as true to life as possible. Schuch thus draws inspiration from French art without adhering to any particular stylistic movement - and, in his late still lifes, finds his way to a distinctly personal form of modern painting.