875 - Wilhelm Pramme, View of the Brocken, Harz landscape with spruces and forest path

Wilhelm Pramme, View of the Brocken, Harz landscape with spruces and forest path Oil/canvas, signed 'Pramme' lower right, artist's stamp verso 'Wilh. Pramme, Wernigerode, Papental 33'. View across the Harz towards the Brocken: three tall spruce trunks, free of branches far up, stand in the foreground, between them a grassy clearing with a tree stump, on the right a two-track forest path leads out of the picture. Behind it a dense stand of young spruces, above that tiered, blue-green wooded ridges, on the horizon the rounded summit of the Brocken with the silhouette of its buildings. The sky in light blue with white clouds. Age-appropriate condition, canvas slightly dented at upper left, a small repaired hole in the centre of the canvas without retouching. Image 50 x 65.5 cm (HxW). Framed in a black moulding with a silver-coloured outer edge, frame bumped, frame width 7 cm. Wilhelm Pramme (1898 Halberstadt - 1965 Wernigerode) was the son of a cigar maker and first trained as a lithographer. In 1927 and 1928 he undertook a journey around the world that took him via Austria, Hungary, Italy and Greece to Egypt, Ceylon, India, Afghanistan, the Soviet Union and Poland. In 1930 he settled in Wernigerode and belonged to the artists' colony there; the Harz remained his principal subject throughout his life. Works by him are held by the Harzmuseum Wernigerode and Wernigerode Castle. The Brocken is the leading motif of Harz painting as a whole and was recorded by Pramme, as by his colleagues, again and again from changing viewpoints.