Catalogue 2010 - daxer & marschall

CARL FRIEDRICH LESSING
A Grove of Oak Trees
Carl Friedrich Lessing
(Breslau 1808 - 1880 Karlsruhe)
A Grove of Oak Trees, c. 1835-8
Oil on canvas
Signed with the initials lower left
C F L
32 x 37 cm
Provenance:
Josef Neckermann collection, uSA
28
In 1827 Carl Friedrich Lessing and the painter Johann Wilhelm Schirmer (1807-63) founded the
‘Landschaftlicher Komponierverein’ 1 , a group of artists dedicated to landscape painting. This
followed the example of the history painters. In his memoirs Schirmer writes: Our lively interest
in landscape painting moved us to form an association with the objective of producing a design for
a landscape composition on an approximately two-weekly basis. 2 This move, combining strong
overtones of Romanticism with close scientific study of nature, led to the birth of the Düsseldorf
School of Landscape Painting. The School was influential outside Germany and in Scandinavia and
the united States, particularly in the 1830s and 1840s.
Lessing remained faithful to the motifs of his native surroundings – unlike many of his
colleagues who looked to Italy for inspiration. His depictions of the landscapes of the Eifel, Spessart,
Harz Mountains and the Düsseldorf region brought him significant recognition. In August 1836
he visited the Solling, a range of hills to the east of Düsseldorf and gave an enthusiastic account of
the natural beauty and solitude of the area, praising its ‘ancient trees’. He produced a corpus of
drawings 3 on this visit that served as preparatory studies for a number of paintings, among them
The Thousand-Year Oak, executed in 1836. 4 It is very probable that he drew on this group of drawings
when working on the present painting.
Lessing’s work combines highly detailed observation of nature and effects of light with a
tendency to Romantic hyperbole. A similar Romantic interpretation of landscape can be found in
the Prater landscapes of Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller.
Lessing had broken off his studies at the Bauakademie in Berlin to enrol at the Academy of
Arts. He completed his studies in 1823 and began to focus on landscape painting. He achieved his
first public success at the academy exhibition in Berlin in 1826 with his Churchyard with Gravestones
and Ruins. In the autumn of the same year he and fellow-painters Julius Hübner, Carl Sohn and
Eduard Hildebrandt moved to Düsseldorf, following in the steps of Lessing’s professor, Wilhelm von
Schadow (1788-1862), the newly-appointed director of the Düsseldorf Academy. under Schadow’s
direction the Academy adopted landscape painting as an academic discipline. In 1839 Schirmer
took over from Schadow as director of the Academy. Both Lessing and Schirmer are today regarded
as leading representatives of the Düsseldorf School of Landscape Painting.
1. Martina Sitt, ‘Von einem der Auszog, …(der) aber von der Geschichte eingeholt wurde - C. F. Lessing - eine Einführung’, in Carl
Friedrich Lessing. Romantiker und Rebell, exhib. cat., Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, 14.5.-30.7.2000, and Landesmuseum Oldenburg,
Augusteum, 24.8.-22.10.2000, Bremen 2000, p. 14.
2. Der Landschaft mit lebendigem Interesse zugewandt, beschlossen wir unter uns einen Verein zu bilden, wonach wir uns verpflichteten, etwa alle 14 Tage
eine Komposition in Zeichnung vorzulegen: Paul Kauhausen, Die Lebenserinnerungen des Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, Krefeld 1956, p. 60.
3. See Vera Leuschner, Carl Friedrich Lessing 1808-80. Die Handzeichnungen, Cologne 1982, II, pp. 1004-5, L65-70.
4. Graf Raczynski collection, Poznan, and replica executed in 1837, Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt.