Forest Path, c. 1915

Almost as if Hans Böhler (1884–1961) had laid the light of a full-moon night over the clearing in the forest like a veil, the trees and bushes in his 1915 oil painting Forest Path are radiant with a mystically subdued glow from within. The interlocking green treetops are almost entirely freed of their objectual reality, longitudinally cut through by slender near-black tree trunks. Pleasantly dusky, the forest path invites stepping out into the clearing like in a dream. The path creates an impression of spatial depth cut short by the ornamental patchwork of interlaced tree foliage. This work, as well as many others from this time, shows Böhler’s sense of compositional order, inspired by works of his fellow artist Egon Schiele (1890–1918).

RR, 2021