1350 - Carl Morgenstern

Carl Morgenstern Cliff vegetation on Capri Oil on paper, mounted on panel. 40.5 x 26 cm. Certificate Inge Eichler, 16.1.1998. Provenance From the estate of the artist. - Private collection, Germany. - Grisebach, Berlin, 27.11.2013. - Private collection, Netherlands. Exhibitions Carl Morgenstern und die Landschaftsmalerei seiner Zeit, Museum Giersch, Frankfurt a. M, 25.9. 2011.- 29.1.2012. Literature I. Eichler: Carl Morgenstern unter besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner frühen Schaffensphase um 1826-1846, in: Kunst in Hessen und am Mittelrhein, 15/16, Darmstadt 1976.- Exhib.-Cat.: Carl Morgenstern und die Landschaftsmalerei seiner Zeit, Frankfurt am Main, 2012, no. 78, p. 88, ill.159, (as "Opuntien am Hang auf Capri", 1835). This unusual composition by the Frankfurt-born painter Christian Morgenstern was evidently painted from life in 1835 during an extended stay on Capri. It is striking for its unusual composition: the artist’s gaze – and, by extension, that of the viewer – is directed upwards along a steep rock face towards a high plateau, on which the remains of a building can be made out. Painted with swift brushstrokes, Morgenstern captures the sparse vegetation and the rock, which reflect the glaring daylight. He depicts the cacti and grasses hanging from the cliffs with precision and clarity. However, it is probably not the flora that interests him most. Rather, he uses it to emphasise the general atmosphere of the southern coast – the sense of steepness, of light, and of scorching, dry heat. With these apparently spontaneous studies, created en plein air, Christian Morgenstern can certainly be regarded as one of the German pioneers of ‘plein air’-painting.