RKD STUDIES

The Dutch breeding ground was reflected most fortunately in landscape painting, where Dutch art became the stepping stone to the new realism. Since the 17th century a number of Dutch-trained landscapists, like Christoph Ludwig Agricola (1665-1724), Joachim Franz Beich (1665-1748) and others, had provided a tradition in the sense of the Dutch Italianate trend.

The younger artists, of whom we are about to speak, did not look for their examples in this group. Let us ignore the very weak talent of Magnus Prasch or Brasch (1731-1787), who was trained by Peter Jacob Horemans in Munich and who made incredibly bad hunting paintings [1], and begin the line of the younger generation with Ferdinand Kobell, who, although he was active in Munich only since 1794, deserves to be mentioned first.

Ferdinand Kobell (1740-1799)¹ came from Mannheim, where he visited the Academy and soon won the special privilege ‘to qualify for studying Nature in his Highness’s cabinets of paintings through the elaboration of the cabinet paintings there’.² These ‘cabinet paintings’ were Dutch landscapes and even when it is awkwardly expressed in the chancellery phrasing of the time, one sees and hears clearly why those little Dutch paintings were considered useful. In 1768 he went to Johann Georg Wille in Paris, whose teaching was based on the same principles. As a landscapist in the service of Mannheim he painted many Dutch conceived, decorative paintings over the next years. Jan Both, Nicolaes Berchem and Jan Wijnants are essentially his examples [2-5].³ He also received commissions to make paintings ‘as a substitute for the Dutch masters’.⁴

1
Magnus Prasch
Resting huntsman in a forest landscape

2
Ferdinand Kobell
Mountain landscape with waterfall, dated 1779
Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, inv./cat.nr. 1111

3
Ferdinand Kobell
Winter landscape with two horsemen, dated 1777
Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, inv./cat.nr. 1111

When he came to Munich, he described the Tegernsee thus: ‘the whole area consists of some Ruisdael, some Wagner and endless Waterloo’. He recommended his son to go to Pasing, ‘where Wouwerman cottages are’.⁵ Although he saw nature with the eyes of the Dutch masters, he did not render it schematically; in this he is decidedly superior to the Schütz family.

His younger brother Franz Kobell is first and foremost a bold draughtsman, who didn’t seek his examples from the Dutch masters though. For our study Wilhelm von Kobell (1766-1855) is the most interesting artist.⁶ He too grew up with the Dutch landscape paintings in Mannheim, that would help him to find a style [6]. In those days he made many aquatint sheets after Nicolaes Berchem, Jan Both, Dirk van Bergen, Johannes Lingelbach, Willem Romeyn, Johann Heinrich Roos, Adriaen van de Velde, Philips Wouwerman [7] and others. His own pictures lie midway between Adriaen van de Velde [8],⁷ Johann Heinrich Roos and Willem Romeyn.

6
Wilhelm von Kobell
Resting travellers near a forest, dated 1791

That didn’t change much when he settled in Munich in 1793, where he had again several assignments for aquatint sheets after Dutch landscapes. In his own watercolours he very soon liberated himself from the Dutch example.⁸ In the paintings he produced after 1800 he held himself not so much to the Italianate Dutch artists, but to Paulus Potter [9-10], Jacob van Ruisdael and Allart van Everdingen.⁹ The first two provided him with access to simple, realistically captured nature, which can be seen in his late pictures. By that time he had lost completely the sunny and atmospheric aspect of Dutch painting, especially that of the Both-Berchem group.

His last battle scenes are of a brittle, almost dry factuality, although not altogether without atmosphere [11]. We look in vain for the painterly melee and the gunsmoke of Wouwerman’s skirmishes. That he made a significant effort to study nature, is made clear by the series of late animal etchings, which were based on meticulous drawings. Nowadays it seems odd to us, that the artist of those days had to take a detour over the Dutch masters to arrive at a simple, almost arid realistic landscape. The careers of the Kobells also demonstrate very well, that the road from Nicolaes Berchem and Jan Both, the most popular artists in the 18th century, led to Jacob van Ruisdael and Paulus Potter, before ‘Nature itself’ was reached.

9
Wilhelm von Kobell
Shepherd with herd in a hilly landscape, dated 1800
Kassel, Neue Galerie (Kassel)

10
Wilhelm von Kobell
Two cows lying in a meadow, c. 1800-1808
Donaueschingen, private collection Hubert Lamey

Johann Georg Dillis (1759-1841) formed his style under the direction of the brothers Kobell [12-14].¹⁰ It seems to have been easier for him to abandon the Dutch scheme and to face the Bavarian mountain landscape independently.

Carl Kuntz (1770-1830) and Max Joseph Wagenbauer (1774/5-1825) began directly with Paulus Potter. Carl Kuntz from Baden never really got away from this example [15-16],¹¹ Wagenbauer however developed a Bavarian genre picture from it, which has its own appeal [17].¹² Apart from animal pieces [18-20] he created some panorama landscapes, that resembled good and strong Dutch models, such as Guillam Du Bois and Philips Koninck [21].

17
Max Josef Wagenbauer
View of the valley of the Isar at Ebenhausen, between 1812-1814
Munich, Neue Pinakothek, inv./cat.nr. 9156

As in Mannheim, also in Munich, the Electoral collection played a certain role in the education of young artists. The above-mentioned Johann Jacob Dorner was director of the gallery for some years. He strove to put the paintings into order and hang them according to his idea of quality: at the top the never dethroned Rafael, followed by Balthasar Denner, Albrecht Dürer and Abraham Mignon! In this way it went up and down from Rubens and Van Dyck to Nicolaes Veerendael, from Nicholas Poussin to Caspar Netscher and further to Murillo. Johann Georg Dillis, who knew a bit more about the desires of the museum public, arranged the artworks according to painting schools. Johann Christian von Mannlich (17141-1822), who had a great influence on visual artists, acquired in 1803 a Paulus Potter from Kassel [22], which by the way had already been copied there by Wilhelm Tischbein,¹³ in exchange for a Mater Dolorosa by the then highly esteemed Jusepe Ribera [23]. With this action he brought to Munich what the young landscapists needed.¹⁴

The next generation, born in the 1780s and 1790s, hardly needed the old Dutch masters. Peter von Hess (1792-1871) and Albrecht Adam (1786-1862) belong to this generation.¹⁵ In the absence of another teacher, Von Hess seems to have formed himself after the Dutch genre painters and Albrecht Adam trained himself in copying paintings by Philips Wouwerman [24-26]. However, both artists succeeded in the transition to the real genre painting à la mode and healthy naturalism; no trace of Wouwermans can be seen in their pictures anymore [27].

22
Paulus Potter
Peasant family with cattle, dated 1646
Munich, Alte Pinakothek, inv./cat.nr. 565

23
Jusepe de Ribera
Mater Dolorosa, 1638
Kassel, Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel, inv./cat.nr. GK 590