Home Online catalogues True to Nature. Open-air Painting 1780-1870 79. Johann Martin von Rohden Kassel 1778 – 1868 Rome View of Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli, the Tiber Valley and the Sabine Hills in the Distance, before 1810 Von Rohden studied at the Academy in Kassel, and was only seventeen when he first went to Rome. He returned in 1802 and would spend most of his life in Italy where he was instrumental in the creation of the German Academy in Rome and among the first Germans to paint out-of-doors. This view of the overgrown ruins of Hadrian’s Villa is seen from a slightly elevated position and bathed in a warm evening light. The low horizon leaves a lot of space for the cloudless sky and emphasizes the vastness of the barren landscape. Intentionally unfinished landscape studies are not uncommon, and may have been used as pedagogical tools for deconstructing the plein air technique. In the case of this view however, the foreground is omitted because it did not figure in the final composition the artist had in mind. Von Rohden always prepared his large-scale paintings carefully and a meticulous drawing preserved in Berlin shows an almost identical section of the landscape. Both drawing and oil sketch were used to realize a painting now in Weimar,1 in which the painter completed the composition with a repoussoir and staffage more in line with the Neoclassical tradition. 1https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Weimar,_Schlossmuseum,_Johann_Martin_von_Rohden,_Campagnalandschaft.JPG.
Von Rohden studied at the Academy in Kassel, and was only seventeen when he first went to Rome. He returned in 1802 and would spend most of his life in Italy where he was instrumental in the creation of the German Academy in Rome and among the first Germans to paint out-of-doors. This view of the overgrown ruins of Hadrian’s Villa is seen from a slightly elevated position and bathed in a warm evening light. The low horizon leaves a lot of space for the cloudless sky and emphasizes the vastness of the barren landscape. Intentionally unfinished landscape studies are not uncommon, and may have been used as pedagogical tools for deconstructing the plein air technique. In the case of this view however, the foreground is omitted because it did not figure in the final composition the artist had in mind. Von Rohden always prepared his large-scale paintings carefully and a meticulous drawing preserved in Berlin shows an almost identical section of the landscape. Both drawing and oil sketch were used to realize a painting now in Weimar,1 in which the painter completed the composition with a repoussoir and staffage more in line with the Neoclassical tradition. 1https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Weimar,_Schlossmuseum,_Johann_Martin_von_Rohden,_Campagnalandschaft.JPG.