903 - Willy Habl, Wide Landscape with Fields and Watering Place, North German Farmland, 20th C.

Willy Habl, Wide Landscape with Fields and Watering Place, North German Farmland, 20th C. (1888 Egeln to 1964 Hamburg), watercolour over pencil underdrawing on paper, signed Habl at lower right. A wide view across gently undulating farmland: in the foreground a green pasture with fence posts and a watering place beside which stands a pollarded willow, behind it a field toned in light brown, staggered fields in ochre and green crossed by hedges and rows of trees, on the horizon a dark blue wooded ridge under a blue-grey sky. Condition commensurate with age, slightly browned and creased, foxed, locally stained, image 37x51 cm (HxW). Habl's landscapes of the post-war years are reduced to a few broadly washed areas of colour; the depth arises solely from the staggering of strips of field and the cool colour of the distant edge of the wood. This manner of painting goes back to his training in graphic art: from 1904 to 1908 he learned lithography in Hamburg and in his early work produced above all etchings, figures in regional costume and a cycle of bookplates. Two of his oil paintings were shown at the Great German Art Exhibition in Munich in 1942. A sheet for a collection of North German landscape painting of the 20th century.