Oil painting, 'River, with Moonlight Effect', Karl Adloff, 1859

A moon light sea view with a female figure walking on a path on the left foreground and, on the right, male figures on rowing boats steady on a calm river; a bright moon is depicted in the centre above the spire of a church, in the foreground under a large cloudy sky are houses and wind mills.

Bequeathed by John M. Parsons

Bequeathed by John M. Parsons, 1870
John Meeson Parsons (1798-1870), art collector, was born in Newport, Shropshire. He later settled in London, and became a member of the stock exchange. His interest in railways led to his election as an associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1839, and he was director or chairman of two railway companies between 1843 and 1848. Much of his time however was spent collecting pictures and works of art. In his will he offered his collection of mostly German and Dutch schools to the National Gallery (which selected only three works) and to the Department of Science and Art at South Kensington, later the Victoria and Albert Museum. The South Kensington Museum acquired ninety-two oil paintings and forty-seven watercolours. A number of engravings were also left to the British Museum.

Historical significance: This painting is characteristic of Adloff's output of landscapes and seascapes with figures. The play of light and reflections on the water is characteristic of his art and reminiscent of such Dutch masters of the 17th century as Jan van Goyen (1596-1656).
His highly detailed and refined brushwork is however typical of the post-Romantic imagery still en vogue in the second half of the 19th century. Adloff was sometimes accused of lacking a distinctive style but this is a common trend to most of the landscape painters of the second half of the 19th century.
Comparable compositions include Moon Night at Zuiderzee, dated 1860, sold Bolland & Marotz, Bremen (Germany), 29 Jun 2002, lot 613.

Karl Adloff (1819-1853) was born and died in Düsseldorf, where he seems to have spent his entire life. He specialised in landscape paintings, especially in sea-views. Unfortunately, very little is known of his life.

This painting is a fine example of Adloff's output which essentially includes landscape paintings and sea-views in which his depiction of light infuses the compositions with a sense of calm. This work, which depicts a sea view with figures with moonlight effect, was clearly inspired by the oeuvre of the Dutch painter Aert van der Neer who together with a few colleagues in Amsterdam and Haarlem developed the new genre of nocturne landscapes. Such paintings in particular and 17th-century Dutch compositions in general aroused a new interest in the 19th century, especially in Germany and Austria where artists produced similar scenes in a very neat and highly detailed finish, which contrasts with the broad manner of their predecessors.

518-1870