865 - E. Spiller, View of the Brocken, large Harz landscape with forest track, oil painting

E. Spiller, View of the Brocken, large Harz landscape with forest track, oil painting Oil on canvas, signed lower right. Wide-format forest landscape: a light-coloured track leads from the foreground between tall spruce trunks towards a sunlit clearing; beyond, the view opens across wooded ridges to the distant summit of the Brocken. The sky blue with bright banks of cloud, the meadows in strong green, the trunks set in brown and grey against the light. Age-appropriate condition, craquelure, small partial areas of paint loss. Image 60 x 120.5 cm (HxW). At 1,141 metres the Brocken is the highest mountain in the Harz and in northern Germany. From the 18th century onwards it attracted travellers, naturalists and painters; Goethe first climbed it in 1777 and gave it a literary monument in the Walpurgis Night scene of 'Faust'. The view of its characteristic summit, often veiled in haze, became a standard motif of Harz painting.