789 - P. Glaschke, view of Wernigerode Castle, Harz landscape with spruces, forest path and mountain ridge

P. Glaschke, view of Wernigerode Castle, Harz landscape with spruces, forest path and mountain ridge Oil on canvas, signed lower right "P. Glaschke", view from a stony forest path across a wooded valley to Wernigerode Castle with a tall pointed tower and several turrets, bright in the haze on a hill, below it a red roof between trees, on the left tall spruces, in the right foreground a group of slender spruces, in the middle ground sunlit yellow-green deciduous forest in front of a dark coniferous slope, on the right staggered mountain ridges, light blue sky with white and pink-tinged clouds, in the foreground tufts of grass and autumnal reddish-brown shrubs, good condition commensurate with age, image 80x64 cm (HxW), framed, silver-coloured profile frame with dark brown cove, frame bumped, frame width 8 cm Wernigerode Castle goes back to a castle built between 1110 and 1120 above the settlement on the north-eastern flank of the Harz and first documented in 1213 as "Castrum Wernigerode". It received its present form when Count Otto zu Stolberg-Wernigerode had the Baroque palace rebuilt from 1862 to 1885 into a prestigious showpiece palace in the historicist, predominantly Neo-Gothic style with around 250 rooms and numerous towers. The complex is regarded as the key building of northern German historicism and since 1998 has been a museum of art and cultural history of the 19th century. As a view of the castle in a wide forest landscape, the painting belongs to the landscape painting of the Harz, in which Wernigerode lies about twelve kilometres east-north-east of the Brocken; the Harzmuseum Wernigerode devoted an exhibition entitled "Die Harzmaler" to the painters of this region, with paintings of the 19th and 20th centuries.