1318 - Heinrich Bürkel (1802 Pirmasens – 1869 Munich)

Heinrich Bürkel (1802 Pirmasens – 1869 Munich) Pasture with a Shepherd near Garmisch A finely painted, richly detailed, atmospheric, and cheerfully summery landscape, probably from around 1845–1850. In the foreground on the right side of the painting, an old shepherd sits under a simple shelter with a wooden roof, preparing food over a campfire using a long-handled pan; in the background, a village with a church lies below a towering mountain range, presumably the Wetterstein Mountains with the Zugspitze. A depiction of rural life characteristic of Bürkel, typical in both subject matter and style, distinguished by its loving rendering of topographical details as well as the figures and animals bathed in the warm sunlight. Bürkel, who made a name for himself primarily in the genre of so-called “genre landscapes,” became a founding member of the Munich Art Association in 1824. Bürkel’s main subjects were peasant scenes from folk life, which he set in rural environments in Upper Bavaria and Italy. He traveled to Italy a total of four times (1827, 1830, 1837, and 1853)—visiting Rome, Tivoli, the Campagna, and Venice, among other places—and sometimes stayed there for up to two years; other study trips took him to Tyrol (including Rattenberg), the Munich area, through the Bavarian Pre-Alps and Upper Bavaria: to Lake Tegernsee and Lake Starnberg, to the Benediktenwand near Benediktbeuern, into the Inn Valley, to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Ramsau near Berchtesgaden, to the Zugspitze, etc.; exhibitions in Munich, Dresden, and Berlin, as well as the World’s Fairs in London in 1862 and Paris in 1867, made him widely known and internationally sought after. Oil on canvas, lined; signed lower right (“H” and “B” ligated). 34 cm x 51.5 cm. Framed. See also/Lit.: Hans-Peter Bühler and Albrecht Krückl: “Heinrich Bürkel. With a Catalog Raisonné of the Paintings,” Munich 1989, nos. 328–30 (other versions). Oil on canvas, relined. Signed.