Lot 1274 | Otto Grashof | Chilean Mountain Landscape near Milipilla

GRASHOF, OTTO
1812 Prenzlau - 1876 Cologne

Title: Chilean Mountain Landscape near Milipilla.
Date: 1854.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Measurement: 41 x 68,5cm.
Notation: Signed and dated lower right: Otto Grashof / Chile Oct. 1854.
Frame: Framed.

On the reverse:
Inscribed on the canvas by the artist: "Motiv bei Milipilla / zwischen Valparaiso und Santiago de / Chile / Nov. 1854 OG (lig.)".
On the stretcher exhibition label "Valparaiso en la Pintura", Valparaiso 1970 with indication of the owner Dr. Ramon Almeida.

Literature:
R. Löschner: Otto Grashof. Die Reisen des Malers in Argentinien, Uruguay, Chile und Brasilien 1852-1857, Berlin 1987, ill. p. 304, no. 563.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

From the collection of a descendant of the painter Otto Grashof, we are able to offer a series of very different works by the artist, documenting the various stages of his very eventful and well-travelled life. The series points from his early beginnings as a student in Berlin to examples of the mature painter in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Valparaíso, Chile. It shows works that were important for his development, such as his graduation work at the academy and, with the portrait of his mother, very personal pieces; also works with which he recommended himself to royalty in Russia or Berlin and representative commissioned works by his patrons in South America. In addition, there are also works from his sketchbooks, in which he processed his impressions from abroad and recorded individual motifs for later oil paintings.

For Otto Grashof's life was extraordinary for the time. A native of Cologne, he studied at the Düsseldorf Academy at a very early age, while still at grammar school, and graduated as a master student of Shadow with the painting after a Romantic poem, dated 1836. Just as he changed places during his studies in order to become acquainted with other artistic tendencies, Grashof also shifted his centre of life several times during his life as a painter. In 1838-45 he lived successfully in Russia; in 1852-57 he explored South America. Especially the genesis of the works of these years can be traced very well through the lively correspondence with his family in Cologne, in which he describes his impressions. Grashof belonged to the circle of artists and naturalists in the tradition of Alexander von Humboldt, and was even awarded the honorary title "Imperial Russian and Brazilian Court Painter". His painting combines the documentary realism of an explorer with the richness of detail of the Biedermeier narrator.