Old Tree, c. 1840

Old trees with bald patches represent repeated pictorial motifs in the oeuvre of the Biedermeier painter Friedrich Gauermann (1807–1862). From the late 1830s, his paintings often featured spruces with ramified leafless trunks. Rather than being rendered as a solitary tree or as part of a genre scene, the conifer in the present oil sketch was depicted in the context of a forest, shown to the beholder up close. The study furnishes a clear and simple rendering of nature which illustrates the artist’s love of detail. At the same time, Gauermann’s work conveys to us an atmospheric nature experience.

AGW, 2023