Ernst Ferdinand Oehme
Today we continue our special month with the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden's collection with this beautiful landscape. Enjoy!
The sails of two ships on the Elbe stand out sharply against the dramatically moving cloudy sky, one in shadow, the other in light. They form a row that ends in the tower of the Kaditz church. Although relatively small, it forms the center of the composition and shines all the more as a dark cloud formation slants upwards above it. To the left and right of it, the sky opens upwards on the one hand and into the distance on the other, lightly veiled by veils of rain. From the left, the wind rushes into the picture, which Oehme shows through the white spray on the waves, which stretches across the surface like a filigree net and finds a counterpart in the effort to capture every single leaf of the storm-lashed willows. Oehme adds dynamism to the composition by contrasting the general movement to the right with a maneuver of the second boat, which is reaching with the wind on its starboard quarter, which causes its sail to billow to the left.
The painting clearly shows how much the artist increasingly detached himself from his models and teachers Caspar David Friedrich and Johan Christian Dahl in the second half of the 1830s. Although it still has the expansiveness of Friedrich and the painterly movement that Dahl sought, especially in his cloud studies, its colorism betrays the new influence of the Düsseldorf School of Painting. Even if Ernst Ferdinand Oehme had already sought more narrative moments in the spectrum of Dresden landscape painting than Friedrich, for example, and found partly effective solutions in his light moods, the encounter with Düsseldorf history painting is still recognizable.
P.S. Today is also a special day for another reason, we continue our promo on DailyArt Courses, and we're giving you a 25% discount on all our online courses on this occasion! :)
P.P.S. Caspar David Friedrich was a master in creating a romantic (sometimes even creepy) atmosphere in his paintings. Discover six of his unique paintings!