Lot 1339 | Eugen Bracht | "Hochmoor am Wittebeke bei Bispingen"

BRACHT, EUGEN
1842 Morges - 1921 Darmstadt

Title: "Hochmoor am Wittebeke bei Bispingen".
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Measurement: 86 x 138cm.
Notation: Signed and dated lower right: Eugen Bracht 1906.
Frame: Framed.

Verso:
Inscribed and numbered on the stretcher (637).

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

A magical glow emanates from the heather-covered mountain cone that rises gently yet powerfully above the high moor. Rich in contrast, it stands out from its surroundings between the dusky, faint blue firmament and the light brown reeds. A sand dune in front of it reinforces this effect. Neither a path leads there, nor does one lead away from this place. Sublime silence lies over everything, the scenery seems motionless and one is inclined to hold one's breath - only in the foreground does the water draw circles, their origin uncertain. Above it, like small sparkling gems, sit the blossoms of the reed grass on narrow spars. Eugen Bracht, one of the most important German landscape painters of his time, creates a setting of unearthly beauty here. Over a period of almost six decades, the artist, who first joined the Düsseldorf Malkasten and later became close to Impressionism in the Berlin art scene, devoted himself almost exclusively to the many facets of nature. From the mid-1870s onwards, he was preoccupied with the landscape type of the heath. From then on, this formed an important core of his work and testified to a lasting fascination of both the artist and his audience for the unique area around Lüneburg. The high moorland near Bispingen - a mysterious place of seemingly endless expanses of peat and since time immemorial the spectre of man - fuelled Bracht's interest in the mystical dimensions of life. In the twilight zone between water and land, between life and death, the moor conveys a unique connection between nature and the human imagination. Stylistically, Bracht's symbolically charged, atmospherically permeated landscape in the present painting marks a tense transition from naturalistic to French Impressionist painting.

We thank Manfred Großkinsky, Karlsruhe, who confirmed the attribution with a high-resolution digital high-resolution digital photograph, for his kind support.
Großkinsky refers to a later and somewhat smaller version of the painting from 1910, which is now kept in the Städtische Kunstsammlung Darmstadt. From Bracht's records it appears that the large-format painting offered here remained in the artist's wider family and was signed by "Wittebeke b. Bispingen mit röhrendem Hirsch".