Landscapes of Melancholy - German Art Nouveau Landscape Illustrations

Years back I stumbled upon an article comparing the art of the Romantic period in France and Germany. The author concluded that the French Romantic art tended to celebrate the "savoir vivre" while the German Romanticists revelled in the "savoir mourir". This idea (though not to be generalised) is rather intriguing.

Taking a look at the German landscape art of the late 19th and early 20th century, the "savoir mourir" is still a valid aspect of its multiple facets. Be it Arnold Böcklin with his variants of the "Isle of the Dead" or Walter Leistikow with his landscape paintings of the Mark Brandenburg, their landscape is distinctively melancholy in its atmosphere. They are landscapes that don't want to portray a specific landscape as much as they want to evoke a certain sentiment for the audience to associate and feel while viewing their artwork.

Same goes for the works of the two Art Nouveau artists, Hermann Hirzel and Georg Jahn, and their landscape illustrations for the magazine "Teuerdank" (published 1901-03 by Fischer & Franke in Berlin and Düsseldorf). - Hirzel's landscapes, entitled "Stimmungen" ("Moods"), are not serene at all. They show a quiescent world with an air of loneliness, of melancholy. They are beautiful, but sad, and this even though the artist did not paint his landscape in gloomy colours. It's the motifs and their "Inszenierung".











































Georg Jahn's views of the coast and sea are equally un-lively: showing a barren land, buffeted by wind and waves. It's not a welcoming or forgiving landscape. It existed long before men travelled it, and will exist long after the extinction of mankind it. It's the old idea of death, of a Memento Mori that is part of the landscapes' inherent moods. It's the "savoir mourir" that becomes apparent in these works, the decision of the artists not to draw a landscape evoking happiness but a sad longing.

Clarkson Stanfield - "Staging" Landscape

In 19th century Europe landscape painting was highly en vogue, and travelling through Europe - especially to Italy - was seen as substantial to the education of every artist who strived for a successful career. Soon, other European countries and landscapes were added to the "must see"-list of every educated traveller, and with each of these countries and landscapes there were certain view points connected: The touristic "discovery" of the Rhine coincided with the "discovery" of the medieval castles and ruins, and so ruins of medieval castles are often part of paintings that depict scenes near the river Rhine.
































Most of the travelling artists did not paint every motif they saw, but selected motifs that corresponded to the contemporary landscape concepts of the picturesque and the sublime. They thusly helped to cement certain stereotypes that are still present in our modern-day perception of these landscapes. And even back then, the eye of the travelling observer was thusly schooled, was trained to see nature as a landscape composed after certain standards. The rich bourgeoisie saw Italy as modelled after Lorrain's and Poussin's landscape paintings.
The tourist who wanted to be reminded of the "highlights" of his travels when he was back home became the new customer for the travelling artist. To him the arist sold his pictures on site or back home. This market was exploited rather quickly by publishers who provided the interested buyer with albums and illustrated books.

In this context, Clarkson Frederick Stanfield (Dec 3, 1793 – May 18, 1867), an acclaimed English marine painter, was sent by his publisher to continental Europe to draw landscape motifs of the Moselle, the Rhine and other popular regions, that were later to be published in different albums. His "Sketches on the Moselle, the Rhine and the Meuse" were published in 1838 by Hodgson & Graves in London. They show a landscape that is highly "inszeniert": the landscape is orchestrated to a picturesque vision of an idyllic country. Influenced by the Dutch landscape paintings and stage scenery the artist, Stanfield, who worked for different theatres throughout his career, created a vision of the Rhine regions that is hardly realistic but all the more poetic. He "dramatized" the landscape and made it to a fairy tale.

Consequently, the landscapes Victor Paul Mohn (1842-1911), a German landscape painter, drew for his fairy tale illustrations are not too different from Stanfield's landscapes:















The 19th century perception of landscape tended to idealize in a way that let fiction and reality blur together. No wonder that the late 20th century started to discuss the complexities of landscape perception.