Mill Under Evening Sky, c. 1916

In Mill Under Evening Sky, Robert Russ (1847–1922) falls back on a motif from his early creative years: but unlike in Mill in South Tyrol of around 1875, the pictorial elements are welded into one consistent atmospheric whole by the warm light of the setting sun in this late work, which presumably dates from 1916. The time of day as well as the old mill in a state of decay can be interpreted as metaphors of transience. Russ takes up a motif of Romanticism here, but renounces its meaning. The subject serves him to depict the effect of light on surfaces in his unmistakably distinctive painting style. The works from the later creative career of the artist, who had still received important official commissions in the late 19th century, like the decoration of the Natural History and Art History Museum and the Burgtheater, were no longer to the tastes of the era and hardly ever seen in exhibitions.

AGW, 2021