Lot 275 | Otto Altenkirch | Lime Tree Avenue on the Eichberg in Niederrheinsberg

ALTENKIRCH, OTTO
1875 Ziesar - 1945 Siebenlehn

Title: Lime Tree Avenue on the Eichberg in Niederrheinsberg.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Measurement: 83,5 x 96cm.
Notation: Signed and dated lower left: Otto Altenkirch 43.
Frame: Framed.
Verso: Inscribed in pencil on the stretcher: "Eichberg Niederreinsberg / Otto Altenkirch Siebenlehn Dresden".

Literature:
M. Petrasch: Otto Altenkirch 1875-1945. Leben und Werk, Dresden 2005, p. 318, no. 1943-11-S without ill.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

The painter Otto Altenkirch was repeatedly drawn to this simple spot on the Eichberg in the Saxon village of Niederreinsberg. The artist, who trained in Berlin and Dresden under Eugen Bracht, painted this spot from one and the same perspective, entirely in the sense of a Paysage intime, the simple natural section of a "familiar landscape", as first represented in France by the Barbizon painters and then further developed in Impressionism. Altenkirch experimented with the effects of light in nature and created several series of paintings: By painting the same subject at different times of day, he captured a variety of moods created by changing light conditions. In our painting, the dazzling light of a cloudless summer day is shown outside at the edge of the forest. Using an impasto painting technique and a greatly reduced colour palette, Altenkirch concentrates on the reproduction of light and shade, or more precisely: of cold and warm green. Outside, it bathes the trees in a luminous yellow-green. In the forest, it casts a few spots of light onto the clayey ground of the shaded path and into the treetops. On the right, where the hill rises slightly, he captures various blue-green tones. His late Impressionist landscape painting is characterised by an honest observation of nature, which finds expression between a realistic view of what is seen and a modern dissolution of form.

We are grateful to Frank Petrasch, Dresden, who confirmed the catalogue raisonné number by means of a digital photograph, for his assistance in cataloguing the present work.