Lot 1237 | Jakob Philipp Hackert | Johan Pasch's Summer House Near Stockholm

HACKERT, JAKOB PHILIPP
1737 Prenzlau - 1807 Florence

Title: Johan Pasch's Summer House Near Stockholm.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Mounting: Relined.
Measurement: 46,5 x 63cm.
Notation: Signed lower right: J.P. Hackert pinxit.
Frame: Framed.
Verso:
On the stretcher old Swedish inscription with details of the depiction and date 1764.

Literature:
C. Nordhoff / H. Reimer: Jakob Philipp Hackert 1737-1807. Verzeichnis seiner Werke, vol. II, no. 410.
Here with the provenance indication Collection Dr. Schwarz, Prenzlau, acquired presumably in the 1920s. This work is possibly identical with the painting that Prince Friedrich Adolf acquired in Stockholm in 1776.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

Landscape as a place of memory. Situated at the bend of a river, a hill covered with dense trees rises. Through the open door of a wooden fence in the valley, the path leads past isolated houses to an estate enthroned on the hill. In this wonderful landscape painting, Jacob Philipp Hackert takes the viewer to Roslagstull, Sweden, near Stockholm.
In 1762, the painter accompanied the Swedish government councillor Adolf Friedrich von Olthof to Sweden at his invitation. But although Hackert spent three full years abroad, which had a decisive influence on him, Swedish landscapes remain a rarity in the artist's oeuvre. The picture was probably painted after his return to Rügen in the autumn of 1764. The estate was the summer house of the Swedish court painter Johan Pasch, whom Hackert met during his journey. The special features of the grounds included a wooden pleasure house, an artificial grotto and a replica of a "fort", whose yellow flag Hackert let fly in the wind. Claudia Nordhoff suspects Johann Pasch to be among the "cavaliers" who are chatting animatedly in the foreground.
Jacob Philipp Hackert, who is now considered one of the great German painters of Classicism, gained an early reputation for precise and carefully executed drawings. Together with his brother, the artist travelled to Italy in 1768. The impressions he gathered in the surroundings outside Rome found their way into his work in numerous motifs. In 1786 Hackert was finally appointed court painter to the King of Naples, Ferdinand IV.
Far from a dreamily imagined depiction of nature, Hackert draws a detailed landscape portrait of the surroundings of Roslagstull, which he explored with his own eyes and recorded in his memory.