III. Water, Rocks, Coasts

30. Baron François Gérard Rome 1770 – 1837 Paris Known by his contemporaries as “the painter of kings and king of painters”, Baron Gérard achieved international renown as court portraitist to both the French Imperial family and the restored King Louis XVIII. A pupil of David, he executed some important history paintings, as well as decorations (…)
31. Heinrich Reinhold Gera 1788 – 1825 Rome A pioneer of German plein air landscape painting, Reinhold’s oil sketches were prized during his lifetime and collected by well-known figures such as the architect and painter Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who owned 12 of his studies. He settled in Rome in 1819, and set off on a journey to southern (…)
32. Carl Frederik Sørensen Besser, Samsø 1818 – 1879 Copenhagen Born on the Island of Samsø, the Danish marine painter Sørensen was the son of a merchant and skipper, and sailed from a very young age. He attended the Academy in Copenhagen between 1843-46, where he studied perspective under Eckersberg, and took part in the decoration of the Thorvaldsens (…)
33. Vilhelm Kyhn Copenhagen 1819 – 1903 Copenhagen Initially apprenticed to a copper engraver, Kyhn entered the Academy in Copenhagen in 1836 and trained under J.L. Lund (1777–1867) and Eckersberg, who encouraged him to work en plein air. Throughout his long career as a successful landscape painter, Kyhn would also play an important role as an (…)
34. Johan Christian Dahl Bergen 1788 – 1857 Dresden Dahl’s year-long Italian sojourn in 1820-21 was funded by a travel stipend from the Danish crown prince, Christian Frederik (1786–1848). He spent much of this time in the city of Naples and its surroundings, which presented the artist with a wealth of motifs for his plein air landscape oil (…)
35. Johan Christian Dahl Bergen 1788 – 1857 Dresden Dahl’s year-long Italian sojourn in 1820-21 was funded by a travel stipend from the Danish crown prince, Christian Frederik (1786–1848). He spent much of this time in the city of Naples and its surroundings, which presented the artist with a wealth of motifs for his plein air landscape oil (…)
36. Carl Maria Nikolaus Hummel Weimar 1821 – 1907 Weimar As the son of the famous composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837), a close friend of Goethe and Beethoven, Carl Hummel was brought up in a scholarly and culture-oriented environment and was able to devote himself to an artistic career without financial worries. He entered the Weimar School of (…)
37. Carl Wilhelm Götzloff Dresden 1799 – 1866 Naples Götzloff trained at the Academy in his native Dresden between 1814-21, studying under Caspar David Friedrich and Johan Christian Dahl. He travelled to Rome on a scholarship in 1821, and would spend the rest of his life in Italy, undertaking numerous sketching excursions throughout the country. (…)
38. Giovanni Battista Camuccini Rome 1819 – 1904 Rome Born into a privileged artistic milieu, Giovanni Battista Camuccini was the son of one of the leading neoclassical history painters in Rome, Vincenzo Camuccini (1771–1844). He trained at the Academy in Bologna, and was encouraged to paint en plein air by the landscapist Giambattista Bassi (…)
39. Martinus Rørbye Drammen 1803 – 1848 Copenhagen Born in Norway, Rørbye began his studies at the Academy in Copenhagen in 1820 as a pupil of C.A. Lorentzen (1749–1828), and from 1825 took private lessons from Eckersberg. He travelled extensively throughout Europe, venturing as far as Athens and Constantinople, and was among the first painters (…)
40. Jean-Baptiste Adolphe Gibert Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe 1803 – 1883 Nice Born in Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe, Gibert moved to Paris in 1821 to study with Guillon-Lethière (1760–1832), a fellow artist from the Antilles, and entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1825. He won the Prix de Rome for historical landscape in 1829, arriving at the Villa Medici in January 1830. (…)
41. Louise-Joséphine Sarazin de Belmont Versailles 1790 – 1870 Paris Sarazin de Belmont first travelled to Italy in 1824, staying for two years, and returned in 1841, painting up and down the peninsula for over two decades. She funded her lifestyle as a travelling artist by organising solo auctions of her works, held in Paris in 1829, 1839, and 1859 – the first (…)
42. Joseph-Désiré Court Rouen 1797 – 1865 Rouen A descendant on his mother’s side of the portrait painter Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659–1743), Joseph-Désiré Court studied under Baron Gros at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Like his teacher, he achieved recognition as both a history painter and a portraitist. He won the Prix de Rome for history (…)
43. Alexandre Calame Vevey 1810 – 1864 Menton Alongside his teacher François Diday (cat. 22), Alexandre Calame is considered one of Switzerland’s leading landscape painters, and was best known for his dramatic paintings of the Swiss Alps. These alpine views followed a kind of formula of sharp-angled snowy peaks and tall pines, but they were (…)
44. Vilhelm Kyhn Copenhagen 1819 – 1903 Copenhagen After receiving a travel grant from the Academy, Kyhn left Denmark in the spring of 1850 and travelled through Holland, Belgium, France and Italy, before returning home via Germany in 1851. Though later in life he would become a vocal critic of young artist’s study trips to Paris and what he (…)
45. Christian Ernst Bernhard Morgenstern Hamburg 1805 – 1867 Munich 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 (…)
46. Abraham Teerlink Dordrecht 1776 – 1857 Rome Abraham Teerlink first trained in his native Dordrecht under Michiel Versteeg (1756–1843) and Arie Lamme (1748–1801), who encouraged him to paint copies of landscapes after Dutch seventeenth-century masters. In 1807, a travel stipend from Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland, enabled him to make a (…)
47. Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidauld Carpentras 1758 – 1846 Montmorency As the first landscapist to be elected to the Institut de France, Bidauld was crucial in establishing landscape painting as a legitimate and ambitious academic genre. During the five years he spent in Rome (1785-90), he regularly travelled into the countryside to paint and helped lay the (…)
48. Auguste Bonheur Bordeaux 1824 – 1884 Bellevue, Seine-et-Oise Like his renowned elder sister Rosa (cat. 125), Auguste Bonheur learned the rudiments of his art from their father Raymond (1796–1849). Auguste and Rosa sometimes collaborated on paintings, and co-signed oil studies attest that brother and sister went on painting trips together to remote (…)
49. Théodore Gudin Paris 1802 – 1880 Boulogne-sur-Seine “To paint the sea, one must have sailed.” Théodore Gudin, the first peintre de la Marine appointed by King Louis Philippe, suited his actions to his words. After briefly attending the French Naval Academy, he abandoned his studies and sailed in the United States Navy for three years. He became a (…)
50. Théodore Gudin Paris 1802 – 1880 Boulogne-sur-Seine “To paint the sea, one must have sailed.” Théodore Gudin, the first peintre de la Marine appointed by King Louis Philippe, suited his actions to his words. After briefly attending the French Naval Academy, he abandoned his studies and sailed in the United States Navy for three years. He became a (…)
51. Eugène Isabey Paris 1803 – 1886 Montévrain, Seine-et-Marne The son of the celebrated miniaturist Jean-Baptiste Isabey (1767–1855), Eugène Isabey was reluctant to follow in his father’s footsteps and initially wanted to be a sailor. Throughout his long and successful career as a painter, lithographer and watercolourist, Isabey worked with a diverse range (…)
52. Richard Parkes Bonington Arnold, Nottinghamshire 1802 – 1828 London Despite his untimely death from tuberculosis a month short of his twenty-sixth birthday, Bonington produced a remarkable body of work and became one of the most influential landscape painters of the Romantic period. His family migrated to Calais in 1817, where he took lessons from Louis Francia (…)
53. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Albi 1864 – 1901 Saint-André-du-Bois At first glance, one would not think of attributing this painting to Toulouse-Lautrec. Landscapes are rare in his oeuvre and, according to his life-long friend and biographer Maurice Joyant (1864–1930), in 1896 he displayed his disdain for the genre by exclaiming: “Only the human figure exists; (…)
54. Johan Carl Neumann Copenhagen 1833 – 1891 Copenhagen Few biographical details are known for this Scandinavian painter of luminous landscapes. He attended the Academy in Copenhagen, but was predominantly self-taught as a painter of marines and naval battles. His first voyage abroad was to England in 1857-58, and he travelled widely throughout his (…)
55. Odilon Redon Bordeaux 1840 – 1916 Paris Writing in his diary in May 1868, Redon pondered on the value of what he called the étude naïve – fragmentary studies created for their own sake, without a final picture in mind (as opposed to the étude qui fait tableau). These studies, where one “forgets what one knows with the desire to (…)
56. Eugène Isabey Paris 1803 – 1886 Montévrain, Seine-et-Marne Inscribed at the lower left, Cran aux Œufs is a beach about 30 km west of Calais. The untamed beauty of the Normandy coast was particularly appealing to painters of Romantic landscapes, and the region had been a rendezvous spot for artists from both sides of the English Channel since the late (…)
57. Carl Blechen Cottbus 1798 – 1840 Berlin Carl Blechen is considered the most important German painter of landscape oil sketches of the early nineteenth century. After modest beginnings working in a bank, Blechen joined the Academy in Berlin in 1822. In the summer of 1823, he went on a study trip to Dresden, where his encounters with (…)
58. Louise-Joséphine Sarazin de Belmont Versailles 1790 – 1870 Paris Sarazin de Belmont’s talent, described by a contemporary as “male sometimes to the point of harshness”, was widely recognised during her lifetime. Highly appreciated by her masculine counterparts, most notably Baron Gros and Ingres, she was also encouraged by powerful women during the First (…)
59. Anonymous French, 19^th century Although its bright pink and yellow colours are rather unusual, an inscription on the back of this anonymous study identifies the motif as La Roche qui pleure – a rock-face whose constantly dripping water was believed to have the ability to cure eye ailments. It is located in the Franchard (…)
60. Caspar Wolf Muri, Aargau 1735 – 1783 Heidelberg From modest origins as the son of a carpenter in northern Switzerland, Caspar Wolf became the country’s foremost landscape painter of the eighteenth century, and is considered a precursor of Alpine painting. He began his artistic career working on decorations for the monastery in Muri, then (…)