About the Work
In 1847, Ludwig Metz travelled to the Bavarian Alps. With a pencil and mostly in landscape format, he drew mountain and valley landscapes near Füssen and Berchtesgaden. Details on locations are comparatively rare, so that a further determination of what was depicted could only be made by the shape of the peaks. Occasionally, an interest in the changing cloud formations is shown, which was seldom considered in his other sketchbooks. A slender tree often leads the way into the landscape, a well-established means of directing the viewer’s gaze in landscape painting, but it does sometimes give the impression of composed landscapes to Ludwig Metz’s impressions of nature sketched here.
The sheets enclosed with the sketchbook were created in a different context: except for one, these sheets are still stapled, most probably the remains of an otherwise unpreserved sketchbook that accompanied the artist on journeys through Italy and Croatia between 1874 and 1879. According to the dates and locations, Ludwig Metz must have travelled via Italy (Spoleto, Subiaco; Amrino, Gorizia) to the Croatian coast (Poreč, Rovinj, Šibenik, Solin, Split), where he mainly captured landscapes with outlined buildings in pencil.
For a full sketchbook description, please see “Research”.
