FERDINAND GEORG WALDMÜLLER (Vienna 1793-1865 Helmstreitmühle) A beech tree near Ischl. 1831. Oil on wood. Signed and dated lower centre: Waldmüller 1831. 31.5 × 25.5 cm. Provenance: - Auction Salon Löscher, Vienna, 11-13 May 1863, lot 29, as "Parthie bei Ischl". - Kunsthandlung Alois Leykum, Vienna (label on verso). - Friedrich Jakob Gsell Collection, Vienna (labelled on verso). - Auction Georg Plach, Vienna, sale estate of F. J. Gsell, 14 March 1872, lot 386, as "Karolinensitz bei Ischl". - Auction Dorotheum, Vienna, 1924, lot 96. - Hans Bühler-Volkart Collection, 1942 (labelled on verso). - Swiss private property. Exhibitions: - Vienna 1832, Academy Exhibition, no. 252. - Vienna 1865, Österreichischer Kunstverein, no. 4, as "Naturstudie aus Oberösterreich". - Winterthur 1942, Der Winterthurer Privatbesitz I, Kunstmuseum Winterthur, 5.9.-1.11.1942, no. 289 (label on verso). - Salzburg 1953, Waldmüller exhibition, Residenzgalerie, 15 June-15 September 1953 (label on verso). Literature: - Heinrich Schwarz: Salzburg und das Salzkammergut: Eine künstlerische Entdeckung der Stadt und der Landschaft in Bildern des 19. Jahrhunderts, Salzburg 1977, ill. 200. - Rupert Feuchtmüller: Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, 1793-1865. Life - Writings - Works. Ed. by the Österreichische Galerie in Vienna, 1996, p. 448, no. 310 (as Eine Buche bey Ischl, with illus.). "Nature is so rich, so manifold and inexhaustible that it requires nothing more than the eye of a talented artist to discover this treasure, to exploit this abundance." With these words, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller reflects his motivation for the extraordinary depictions of nature in his paintings, which characterised the work of probably the best-known Austrian painter of the Biedermeier period, particularly at the beginning of the 1830s. The painting on offer here, "Eine Buche bei Ischl", which is dated 1831, exemplifies this important episode in Waldmüller's artistic oeuvre, in which he clearly distanced himself from the sometimes archaising view of nature in the academic landscape painting of his contemporaries with his landscape depictions. At the beginning of the 1830s, the artist often drew his depictions of nature from the then little-explored Austrian Alpine foothills, the Salzkammergut, as in the present painting. Typical of the artist's Salzkammergut landscapes are close-up sections of forest that leave little of the sky visible and completely prevent a view into the distance. And so the present painting also presents itself as a view into the forest interior, which is dominated by the gnarled beech tree placed in the centre of the picture. Waldmüller's fine brushstroke models the physiognomy of the old tree in a colourful and vivid manner and reproduces the feel of its wood and bark with virtuoso looseness. Sunlight and the blue of the sky break through the weave of its thick branches and the dense canopy of leaves of the surrounding vegetation of the mixed forest, creating a lively interplay of light and shadow inside the forest. This gives Waldmüller's painting an attractive colourfulness, which can also be found in the small, at first glance rather inconspicuous colourful flowers in the foreground. The single small figure, whose diminutive size contrasts with the mighty beech tree that dominates the picture, makes its way through Waldmüller's painting on the impassable forest path in the right-hand half of the picture, emphasising his artistic idea of an overwhelming sense of nature and alluding, as it were, to the motif of forest solitude, which was widespread in literature and art in the 19th century. In the present painting, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller shows us nature at the time of its richest unfolding and is able to aptly depict the vitality of the forest. Waldmüller's Buche bei Ischl is a light-painting formulation of the artist's experience of nature, which bears witness to his positivist-realist attitude and encourages us to immerse ourselves in nature, savour it and discover its inexhaustible treasures.