Country Road, 1922

The painting Country Road, dated 1922, is a cantilena in green. Herbert Boeckl (1894–1966) paints a summer landscape in pastose colors, combining a variation of green and blue shades with a little ocher. The horizontal picture captures a lightly bending country road. In the background we can see lush, rampantly growing vegetation and a mountain range on the horizon. The high tree with its mighty crown rising up in the left half of the painting is counterbalanced by a sketchy dead tree in the composition. Boeckl’s blotchy style of painting hardly allows us to view any details with comprehension. The painter dissolved the shapes of the plants in patches of color. He reduced both the construction of perspective and the difference between figure and ground for the sake of a planar design. The renowned collector Heinrich Benesch (1862–1947) was the first owner of this painting. Benesch’s son Otto (1896–1964) was the first scholar to acknowledge the importance of Boeckle’s oeuvre in art history.

Text Leopold Museum