Home Online catalogues True to Nature. Open-air Painting 1780-1870 45. Christian Ernst Bernhard Morgenstern Hamburg 1805 – 1867 Munich Waterfall in the River Traun, Upper Austria, 1826 The son of a miniaturist, the painter and printmaker Christian Morgenstern is considered a pioneer of early Realist painting in Germany. He began his training in Hamburg in the graphic workshop of the Suhr brothers, accompanying the panorama painter Cornelius Suhr (1781–1857) on journeys around Germany and Russia. He travelled and studied in Norway and at the Academy in Copenhagen in 1827-28, before settling permanently in Munich in 1829. Morgenstern travelled extensively around the Kingdom of Bavaria and in Upper Austria, producing detailed studies to inform his landscape paintings and etchings. For this oil sketch of a waterfall on the river Traun, he pulled up close to the motif to capture the rushing fall of water. As the location and date inscribed into the still-wet paint suggest, Morgenstern executed this sketch quickly. The water and rock-face in the foreground are brushed thinly over the paper, and the tree trunks in the background are notated with scratches in the paint. Nevertheless, he managed to evoke the explosive power of the water bursting over the cliff edge, the subtle haze of spray rising from the fall, and the complex tonalities of the churning mass – green and purple mixed in with white and grey.
The son of a miniaturist, the painter and printmaker Christian Morgenstern is considered a pioneer of early Realist painting in Germany. He began his training in Hamburg in the graphic workshop of the Suhr brothers, accompanying the panorama painter Cornelius Suhr (1781–1857) on journeys around Germany and Russia. He travelled and studied in Norway and at the Academy in Copenhagen in 1827-28, before settling permanently in Munich in 1829. Morgenstern travelled extensively around the Kingdom of Bavaria and in Upper Austria, producing detailed studies to inform his landscape paintings and etchings. For this oil sketch of a waterfall on the river Traun, he pulled up close to the motif to capture the rushing fall of water. As the location and date inscribed into the still-wet paint suggest, Morgenstern executed this sketch quickly. The water and rock-face in the foreground are brushed thinly over the paper, and the tree trunks in the background are notated with scratches in the paint. Nevertheless, he managed to evoke the explosive power of the water bursting over the cliff edge, the subtle haze of spray rising from the fall, and the complex tonalities of the churning mass – green and purple mixed in with white and grey.