Lot 1197 | Otto Ubbelohde | "Cloud Study"

UBBELOHDE, OTTO
1867 Marburg - 1922 Goßfelden/Lahntal

Title: "Cloud Study".
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Measurement: 60 x 74.5cm.
Frame: Framed.

Verso:
On the canvas confirming label by the artist's wife, Hanna Ubbelohde.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

Born in 1867, artist Otto Ubbelohde was the son of a professor of Roman law at the University of Marburg. He grew up in the Hessian city with the dream of training as a painter. After much hesitation on the part of his father, he finally received permission and began his training at the Grand Ducal Saxon Art School, from which he soon transferred to the Munich Art Academy, where he studied under Gabriel von Hackl, Wilhelm von Diez, and Ludwig von Löfftz. He also maintained contacts with the art colony in Dessau. In 1889, he worked in the circle of the newly founded Worpswede artists' colony, to which he returned once again in 1894/1895.
In addition to his internationally renowned illustrations and drawings, Otto Ubbelohde devoted himself with particular dedication to painting. This fall, we are able to present four of his paintings, which are often only known to connoisseurs.
In “Landscape with Wide Clouded Sky” (cat. 1198), Ubbelohde captures the gently rolling hills of his Hessian homeland under a dynamic, cloudy sky. The earth-toned foreground blends with the green-gray hilly landscape and the dark trees. Very similar in form and color to this work is the painting “Cloud Study” (cat. 1197), a cloudscape that spreads out over a large area of the vivid blue sky and is enlivened by the soft pink hues of the evening light. Clouds and vegetation alternate harmoniously on the horizon. The work “Hessian Hilly Landscape” (cat. 1199) from 1917 illustrates Otto Ubbelohde's Art Nouveau-influenced visual language, with which he depicts his homeland in gently rolling hills and white accents. In this painting, he reverses the formal composition of the landscape: while the sky dominates in the other two works, here the flower-filled, lush green landscape takes up most of the picture plane. “Garten in Grossfelden” (Garden in Grossfelden, cat. 1200) shows an autumnal garden in which an abandoned garden bench appears as the only sign of human presence. Surrounded by rich red and yellow tones of withered leaves, the blue sky opens up sporadically between the trees in the background.
With his unmistakable combination of deep-rooted attachment to his homeland and the stylistic sophistication of Art Nouveau, Otto Ubbelohde leaves behind an impressive testimony to his artistic work with these paintings.