624 - Carl Wilhelm Christian Malchin

Carl Wilhelm Christian Malchin 1838 Kröpelin – 1923 Schwerin-Ostorf – “Rostock” – (1907) Oil on canvas. 34 x 67 cm. 49 x 83 cm (dimensions including frame). Signed and dated lower left: C. Malchin 1907. Signed, dated, and titled on the back of the stretcher: C. Malchin / 1907 / “Rostock.” Framed. Painted in 1907, this work depicts Rostock as seen from the Warnow River. The unusual panoramic format captures the full width of the Hanseatic city’s silhouette. Rising above the meadows and the river are St. Mary’s and St. Peter’s, the spire of which was destroyed in 1942. Beside them stand the smoking chimneys of the nascent industrial era. Thus, the painting serves as a valuable record of the city before the destruction of World War II. Malchin, one of the leading Mecklenburg landscape painters of his time, was originally a surveyor. He completed his training in Schwaan. There he met the Schwerin painters Otto Dörr and Eduard Ehrke, who were conducting on-site nature studies and inspired him to take up painting. Malchin is considered one of the pioneers of the later Schwaan artists’ colony. The Warnow landscape, which he came to know there, remained a constant theme in his work right up to his late period. His training as a surveyor is evident in the precise rendering of the topography. Here, Malchin combines this with a finely tuned, atmospheric play of light. The inscription “Rostock” on the back of the stretcher confirms the location and date.