877 - Hedwig Hornburg, mountain landscape at Mallnitz, watercolour of the Hohe Tauern, signed

Hedwig Hornburg, mountain landscape at Mallnitz, watercolour of the Hohe Tauern, signed Watercolour on paper, signed 'Hedwig Hornburg' lower right, inscribed verso 'Hedwig Hornburg' and with the place name Mallnitz. A wide high alpine valley in cool blue, green and grey tones: above a pale green valley floor with a brightly flashing stream, wooded slopes are staggered from which single slender, darkly set conifers rise. Behind them several craggy rocky summits ascend, their flanks and hollows carrying fields of snow; the summit zone is set in wet-in-wet greys and blues against a pale sky. Age-appropriate good condition. Image 47.5 x 67 cm (HxW), behind glass, framed in a pale moulding, frame slightly bumped, overall size 50 x 70 cm (HxW) Mallnitz lies in the Carinthian part of the Hohe Tauern National Park at the foot of the Ankogel and Hochalmspitze massif and, since the building of the Tauern Railway in 1909, was a much visited starting point for mountaineers and summer visitors. The high alpine watercolour is among the most demanding tasks of painting in water colours: rock, snow and moving cloud have to be set wet-in-wet in a single pass, and corrections are hardly possible. Painters travelled into the Tauern valleys in summer and worked directly in front of the motif.