Lot 1252 | Summer Landscape

CLARENBACH, MAX
1880 Neuss - 1952 Wittlaer/ Düsseldorf


Title: Summer Landscape.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Measurement: 70,5 x 90,5cm.
Notation: Signed lower right: M. Clarenbach.
Frame/Pedestal: Framed.
Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

Max Clarenbach is one of the most important and significant figures of the later generation of the Düsseldorf School of Painting and the Rhenish art scene at the beginning of the 20th century. He received the inspiration for his characteristic lake, river and harbour views from his teacher Eugen Dücker (1841-1916), whose class for landscape painting Clarenbach attended from 1897. Later, in 1917, he was to succeed the professor who had such an influence on him. At the age of thirteen, the talented Max Clarenbach began his studies at the Düsseldorf Academy, initially with Heinrich Lauenstein (1835-1910) and Arthur Kampf (1864-1950), at Andreas Achenbach's intercession. The academy was one of the most important internationally recognised artistic training centres: Between 1819 and 1918, a large number of still important artists emerged from the so-called Düsseldorf School of Painting. Max Clarenbach is undoubtedly one of the main representatives of the Düsseldorf School of Painting.
Today Clarenbach is mainly and somewhat one-sidedly associated with his atmospheric, melancholy winter landscapes, which often depict the Lower Rhine in the foreground without any figurative staffage. That his oeuvre is more diverse, however, is attested to by the paintings that VAN HAM is able to offer in this auction.
Lot 1252, for example, shows a hilly meadow landscape in delicate shades of green and blue. In the Impressionist manner, Clarenbach places the brushstrokes on the canvas in waves or in small vertical strokes, creating an atmospheric summer landscape that - like his characteristic depictions of the winter landscape - exudes a tranquillity all of its own. At the same time, the influences of the open-air painting of the French Impressionists, with whom Clarenbach grappled and worked intensively in the first two decades of the 20th century, become clear here.
A completely different painting, not to be located in his homeland of the Lower Rhine, is offered under lot 1253. Signed by the artist on the lower left, dated and with a place name, the work shows a beach scene on the North Frisian island of Föhr. From a tradition in the secondary literature we know that Clarenbach found the southern weather "simply sunny and beautiful", but that he was interested in the rainy, windy weather - his numerous landscapes in toned, grey colours testify to this. Clarenbach's depictions focus particularly on the seasons, especially winter landscapes, but we also find autumn, summer and even spring landscapes in his oeuvre. The rough coastal atmosphere of the present painting, however, gives no indication of a particular season; rather, it conveys the feeling of the changeable North Sea climate.
The painting "Morgennebel" (lot 1254) is also extraordinarily atmospheric, but executed in a completely different way in its composition, colourfulness and depiction. Here we find ourselves again in the artist's Rhenish homeland. The characteristically asymmetrical composition takes us to the landscape shrouded in mist in the early hours of the morning. The composition and the earthy colour palette are reminiscent of the Barbizon School, whose influence appears again and again in Clarenbach's work, along with that of the Hague School and the French Impressionists. On the other hand, the figure on the right-hand side of the picture, which stands out due to the chiaroscuro contrast and moves towards the house, is a stylistic device that is rarely found in Clarenbach's works.