Johann Caspar (Kaspar) Schneider (1753 Mainz - 1839 ibid.) Large landscape with a view of the confluence of the Rhine and Main rivers near Mainz Large panoramic landscape, slightly idealised despite its closeness to reality in order to enhance its grandeur. For his impressive masterpiece, Schneider chose a view from an elevated vantage point on the Mainz side, looking east. In the middle ground on the left he shows the village of Kostheim, on the right Gustavsburg, and in the centre of the background, on a slightly idealised, raised hill above, the then still small village of Hochheim am Main. In the lower left foreground, Schneider completed the composition with a few houses in a corner neighbourhood of Mainz and part of the city fortifications. The veduta is enlivened by numerous figures in the foreground, including a strolling, elegant family, several washerwomen, various residents and skippers in small rowing boats and ships. The painting was probably created around 1785-1790, before the siege of Mainz in 1793 with its catastrophic destruction. The portrait, landscape and veduta painter, who lived and worked in Mainz for most of his life, received his artistic training from Franz Joseph Ignaz Anton Heideloff at the court of Archbishop Friedrich Karl Joseph Reichsgraf von Erthal (1719 - 1802, reigned from 1774), the art-loving Elector of Mainz, who loved both splendour and science. Within a few years, he gained the recognition of the court, the nobility and the aspiring bourgeoisie. In 1779, Schneider initially set up his own business as a portrait painter, but around 1785 he turned to landscapes of the Rhine and Main as well as vedutas of Mainz and the surrounding area as his main subject. During the French occupation, his clients in Mainz were joined by French patrons, including members of the French imperial family. The motif and the large, representative format of the present painting suggest that it was commissioned by a high-ranking or wealthy Mainz personality such as the Elector or the art collector, cathedral canon and landscape painter Franz Ludwig Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt (1753 - 1841). Schneider also influenced Kesselstatt in his own paintings and when Johann Wolfgang von Goethe visited the Rhine and Main region together with his friend Sulpiz Boisserée in 1814/15, he was also delighted by Schneider's paintings in Kesselstatt's collection. Oil on canvas; 74 cm x 171 cm. Frame. Provenance: Dissolution of an important German private collection - part II, acquired in the auction at Van Ham, Cologne, 26.3.1993, lot 968. References/Exhibitions: Exhib. cat. "Arcadia on the Middle Rhine. Caspar und Georg Schneider", ed. by Sabine Mertens, Mainz 1998, p. 114, cat. no. 29 (with illus.); exhibition "Rheinromantik. Art and Nature", Museum Wiesbaden 2013, no. 141. Oil on canvas.