This beautiful early 20th-century oil painting by German artist Karl Heffner (1849-1925) depicts a flooded river under a pensive sky.
The turbulent British weather with its electrifying mood swings, rapid showers and unpredictability has often been the butt of numerous jokes by those sheltering in warmer abodes. Much like its inhabitants, the no-nonsense climate bustles with eccentricity - the damp chill of an October morning morphs into a radiant mid-afternoon and concludes with thunder.
European artists have traditionally tended to avoid it, preferring instead the promise of brighter, less erratic, environs on the continent. Pitching their easels in France, Germany, and Italy in a fervent light-obsessed pilgrimage. But Karl Heffner was altogether different, rather than join his artistic brethren, he crossed the Channel to tackle the wilds of the English countryside.
He’d travelled previously, including to Rome, but did so during the Winter when the conditions were less than stereotypical. Blue skies were absent from his vocabulary, they lacked drama, mood, and melancholy-tipped tonality. His palette was low-key, grey, earthy, with strips of glistening gold reserved for a drifting sun.
His interpretation of the British landscape was unusual, subdued, and at times desolate. Leafless trees stretch for passing clouds, their sinuous limbs scrabbling for light in a symphony of feathery brushwork. Figures stand silhouetted, bitten by a chill whipping across a wetland. Humans a mere fleck within nature’s tangled brush. The Norfolk Broads had never seemed so poetic.
Various exhibitions beckoned and two of his works ended up at the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A). It’s said that landscape painter Benjamin Williams Leader (1831-1923) was so enthralled that he changed his approach upon seeing them. Before long, the American critics took note and his success was solidified.
Today, Heffner totters on the edge of obscurity, lost to the record books and dusty archives of Victorian magazines. He’s rarely discussed when considering the evolution of 19th-century British landscape art, but also overlooked in Germany. His greatest legacy was capturing the quiet beauty that radiates between transient moments.
He trained in Munich under Adolf Stademann and Adolf Heinrich Lier. His works are held in numerous public collections including at the V&A in London.
Signed in the lower right and held within a splendid gilt frame.
Learn more about Karl Heffner in our directory.
Medium: Oil on canvas
Overall size: 23½” x 20½” / 59cm x 52cm
Year of creation: c. 1900
Labels & Inscriptions: Arthur Tooth & Sons Ltd, London, gallery label.
Provenance: With Arthur Tooth & Sons Ltd, London / Private collection, UK.
Condition: Assessed and approved by our conservator. Cleaned. Canvas relined. Frame restored.
Artist’s auction maximum: £20,700 for ‘The Thames River with a View onto Windsor Castle’, Oil on canvas, Christie’s, 19th Century European Paintings, Drawings, Watercolors and Sculpture, New York, 1993.
Our reference: BRV1842
