RKD STUDIES

The newly awakening landscape painting had much to thank the Dutch example for, although it was mainly the pleasing little paintings of the Italianate landscapists, to which people confined themselves. The artists of the 18th century were not so realistic yet, that they would trade the sunny shepherd’s paintings of a Berchem for a gloomy Ruisdael. There are no important talents to be mentioned. Carl Sylva Dubois (1668-1753) [1] and Georg Wenceslaus von Knobelsdorf (1699-1753) [2] worked together with Pesne. Dubois was even an immigrant Fleming, who however is artistically nearer to Frederik de Moucheron than to Jacques d’Artois.¹

1
Carl Sylva Dubois
Extensive river landscape with mountainous border, c. 1745
Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, inv./cat.nr. 1049

Above all, Jacob Philipp Hackert (1737-1807), deserves attention.² That is, the early Hackert, because his classicistic, Italianate vedute betray no Dutch training whatsoever. In Berlin he learned mainly through the copying of old Dutch landscape paintings from the collection of James Tribel. When he became friends with Johann Georg Wille (1715-1808) in Paris, he made no secret of his veneration for the Dutch. He even possessed a small collection of paintings with Dutch originals and copies made by himself. During his stay in the South he acquired – naturally – many Italian works, especially from the Naples school. The small paintings from his time in Berlin are by no means masterpieces: they show reminiscences of his namesake Jan Hackaert, of Frederik de Moucheron, Klaes Molenaer and other minor masters [3-4].

2
Georg Wenceslaus von Knobelsdorff
A pair of lovers in a park, dated 1744
Dessau (Dessau-Roßlau), Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie - Schloss Georgium

The Parisian paintings become somewhat more lively – especially under the influence of Claude Joseph Vernet [5-7]. It was only in Italy that his style was to be definitely formulated, but neither he nor we would like to deny, that the Dutch masters gave him a ‘healthy foundation’ for his career.³

5
Jacob Philipp Hackert
View of the Goldfish Pond in the Berlin Zoo 'Tiergarten', c. 1761
Private collection

6
Jacob Philipp Hackert
View of Château Gaillard in Les Andelys on the river Seine, dated 1767

7
Jacob Philipp Hackert
View of a ruined castle on the river Seine with an elegant company, dated 1767

Minor masters, who never made it to Italy, clung longer to the Dutch ruin style, which sometimes formed a start to the topographical appreciation of their homeland, as is the case with Johann Georg Rosenberg (1739-1808) [8-9].⁴ In the landscapes of Johann Sebastian Bach (1748-1778) this style comes near to its classical origin of Claude Lorraine [10-12].⁵

The etchers of the ‘Sturm und Drang’ like Carl Wilhelm Kolbe I (1757-1835) look to the Dutch for support in their enthusiasm for nature. The pleasing Anthonie Waterloo was much revered at this time [13-15].⁶ By the end of the century realism was taken seriously: Rosenberg is said to have painted already cattle pieces in the manner of Paulus Potter and Philips Wouwerman and Carl Schulz (1796-1866) for instance went one step further, from a Wouwerman-like landscape to real, actual naturalistic pictures with soldiers [16-17].

Peter Ludwig Lütke (1759-1831), the teacher of Karl Blechen (1798-1840) (who himself cast off the old master style of painting), imitated Ruisdael and Hobbema [18-19]. ‘Mr. Lütke is our Ruisdael’ it says in a newspaper article of 1826.⁷