Lot 1237 | "Im roten Rock"

DILL, OTTO
1884 Neustadt - 1957 Bad Dürkheim


Title: "Im roten Rock".
Four Riders on a Forest Trail.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Measurement: 40,5 x 50,5cm.
Notation: Signed lower right: Otto Dill.
Frame/Pedestal: Framed.
Verso:
On the stretcher and canvas signature stamp as well as artist label.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

In addition to desert and Bedouin scenes, as well as tiger images and bullfights, horse racing and polo matches are a popular subject in the oeuvre of the impressionist artist Otto Dill.
The present painting, however, shows a very unusual scene for Impressionism: the horses are not depicted from a retreating perspective within an atmospheric landscape, but the four riders, uniformed in red riding gowns, seem to gallop frontally on the viewer, drawing the viewer into the action. The strong complementary contrast between the green design of the forest in the background and the red of the clothing and the flight of the path to the centre of the image gives the scene an almost dramatically tense impression.
Works by the artist, who has travelled to North Africa, Italy, Spain and France, among other places, are today to be found in the Bavarian State Painting Collection, the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal and the Musée National d'Art Moderne (Centre Georges Pompidou) in Paris.