915 - Willy Habl, River Landscape with Ducks in Flight above the Reed Bank, dated 1959

Willy Habl, River Landscape with Ducks in Flight above the Reed Bank, dated 1959 (1888 Egeln to 1964 Hamburg), watercolour over pencil underdrawing on board, mounted on a support, signed and dated in pencil at lower right Habl 59. Above a blue-washed expanse of water two ducks rise into flight before a pale sky; the bank is fringed with broad ochre-yellow bands of reed, to left and right a bare bush with a dark rootstock in the foreground, behind them a blue-violet line of trees and low hills. The colour applied thinly and fluidly, the white of the paper left to serve as light. Good condition commensurate with age, edge damage from gummed tape, light-stained, image 38.5x53 cm (HxW), mount, overall 48x62 cm (HxW). Water, reeds and waterfowl are a recurring theme in Habl's late work and follow on from the coastal and beach pictures with which he became known in Hamburg; his watercolour Strand bei St. Peter-Ording was made in the same year, 1959. From 1919 the painter belonged to the Hamburgische Künstlerschaft and to the Hamburg artists' association of 1832 and exhibited regularly at the Galerie Commeter. His estate, comprising some ninety watercolours and about two hundred drawings, was auctioned at Ketterer Kunst in Munich in 2004. A sheet for admirers of Impressionist depictions of nature.