Oil Painting, 'Landscape with Canal and Château', Scandinavian or German School, First Quarter of the 19th century

A landscape with a canal crossed by a low bridge and a white turreted château in the background. A boat and horse-drawn carts transport supplies and a long low building visible on the ridge at upper right

Bequeathed by John M. Parsons

Bequeathed by John M. Parsons, 1870

Historical significance: An attribution to a Scandinavian or German painter in the circle of Johan Christian Dahl (1788-1857) was suggested, based on photographs only, by Ursula J.A. de Goede-Broug (verbal communication) in February 2010. A Norwegian painter, Dahl travelled in Italy before settling in Dresden in 1823 where he taught, as a professor at the Dresden Academy, from 1824. A friend of Caspar David Friedrich, whose Romanticism he shared, his work was greatly admired by Goethe. His landscape paintings combine natural observation and imaginative composition and often include dramatic effects of light and perspective, as in Birch Tree in Storm (1849; Bergen, Billedgal.). Dahl was greatly inspired by Dutch landscape painters of the 17th century. 562-1870 exhibits the flat, dry style of Dahl's paintings which were inspired in subject matter by earlier Dutch works by Ruisdael and Berchem. The turretted castle in the background shares general characteristics with sixteenth-century châteaux in Denmark, Germany and France but is likely an artistic invention.




In 1823 the Norwegian landscape painter Johann Christian Dahl moved into a flat in Caspar David Friedrich’s house in Dresden, and for some time the two painters worked and exhibited together. The close friendship with Dahl probably contributed to a new openness and willingness to experiment, which also extended his range of colours. However, the more naturalistic approach to landscape prompted by Dahl was invariably supplemented by symbolic meaning in Friedrich’s paintings, incorporating such ideas as the transience of life, death and rebirth.

Landscape art was much esteemed in the eighteenth century. Particularly in England, France, Italy and Germany and the interest remained strong through the nineteenth century, as discussed for example, in John Ruskin's Modern Painters (1843). In Germany, Caspar David Friedrich, who also studied in Copenhagen, laid ground for the Romantic movement and became its leading proponent. Romantic artists were fascinated by nature they interpreted as a mirror of the mind. They investigated human nature and personality, the folk culture, the national and ethnic origins, the medieval era, the exotic, the remote, the mysterious and the occult.

An attribution to a Scandinavian or German painter in the circle of Johan Christian Dahl was suggested by Ursula J.A. de Goede-Broug, while a German attribution was suggested by Dr. Jacek Tylicki (both verbal communication, based on photographs only) in February 2010. A now illegible signature, described as 'Schmidt' in the 1893 is untenable. Kauffmann (1973) suggested that the style and the nature of the landscape indicated a Dutch origin.

A landscape with a canal crossed by a low bridge and a white turreted château in the background. A boat and horse-drawn carts transport supplies and a long low building visible on the ridge at upper right. An attribution to a Scandinavian or German painter in the circle of Johan Christian Dahl (1788-1857) was suggested, based on photographs only, by Ursula J.A. de Goede-Broug (verbal communication) in February 2010. A Norwegian painter, Dahl travelled in Italy before settling in Dresden in 1823 where he taught, as a professor at the Dresden Academy, from 1824. A friend of Caspar David Friedrich, whose Romanticism he shared, his work was greatly admired by Goethe. His landscape paintings combine natural observation and imaginative composition and often include dramatic effects of light and perspective. Dahl was greatly inspired by Dutch landscape painters of the 17th century. 562-1870 exhibits the flat, dry style of Dahl's paintings which were inspired in subject matter by earlier Dutch works by Ruisdael and Berchem. The turreted castle in the background is likely an artistic invention.

562-1870