Lot 1153 | Eugen Bracht | "Ruine einer Wallfahrtskapelle bei Varigotti, Riviera di Ponente"

BRACHT, EUGEN
1842 Morges - 1921 Darmstadt

Title: "Ruine einer Wallfahrtskapelle bei Varigotti, Riviera di Ponente".
Date: 1892.
Technique: Oil on card.
Measurement: 54,5 x 42cm.
Notation: Subsequently (?) signed lower left: "Eugen Bracht".
Frame: Framed.
Verso:
Inscribed on the card by the artist's hand.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany for at least 3 generations.

We are grateful to Manfred Großkinsky, Karlsruhe, for confirming the attribution on the basis of a high-resolution digital photograph and for the kind support.

Two very different works of the landscape painter Eugen Bracht are for auction under the lot numbers 1152 and 1153 that indicate in their own way the artist's personal characteristic painting style and its development. With the stations in Karlsruhe, Düsseldorf, Berlin, Dresden and eventually Darmstadt, Bracht shows the advancing of landscape painting from the realist view to the Impressionism. For the turn to this liberal style Eugen Bracht was a significant driving force during his years in Berlin from 1882 on - altough he was still closely connected to his colleagues at the Preußische Akademie and he did not join the Berliner Secession in 1892. To free himself from the firm structure, however, he finally left the capital's art scene after the turn of the century and took over a master studio at the the Dresden Kusntakademie. With his departure from his teaching activities he was drawn to the 'Mathildenhöhe' in Darmstadt, where he took over house of the painter Hans Christiansen in the artists' colony there.

While his work with the chapel at the Riviera was created as an oil study in the course of one of his frequent excursions with students on site and thereby reflects the spontaneity and power of plein-air painting, the sächsische Landschaft that was created later conveys a distinctly different impression. From bird's-eye view the painter is looking widely into the landscape of the trough and portrays it and the fortified walls of Rochlitz Castle. This painting that was created at the atelier in his late years refers to a previous work and is composed accordingly and came into existence less freely - however, it still stands with its Impressionist choice of colours in the tradition of his earlier works.