850 - Ernst Eichhorn-Holeck, Rocky Crags in the Oker Valley, cliff with spruces, Upper Harz, Harz painter

Ernst Eichhorn-Holeck, Rocky Crags in the Oker Valley, cliff with spruces, Upper Harz, Harz painter (1888 Ziegenhals to 1963 Goslar), oil on hardboard, signed lower left, cliff of pale rock blocks stacked on top of one another on a slope, dark coniferous forest in the background, slender spruces in the foreground against a blue sky with wisps of white cloud, yellow-green embankment with fallen trunks on the slope, good condition commensurate with age, craquelure in places, image 59.5x48 cm (HxW), framed, frame with knocks, frame width 3 cm Ernst Eichhorn-Holeck (1888 to 1963) came from Ziegenhals in Upper Silesia, completed an apprenticeship as a painter and attended the School of Applied Arts in Breslau; he passed his master craftsman's examination in Dresden. Initially an animal and church painter, he turned to landscape painting. After the First World War he lived in Bad Harzburg, and from 1934 in Goslar. In 1946 he was a founding member of the Harz group of the Bund bildender Künstler (Federation of Visual Artists), whose chairmanship he took over in 1950; in 1956 he became its honorary member. The Oker Valley near Altenau in the Upper Harz with its rocky crags is one of the painters' views of the Harz.