About the Work
The portrait sketchbook documents the second half of a several week long journey which the 28-year-old Friedrich Metz undertook in autumn 1848. After wandering through Saxony and Bavaria, he reached the Wetterstein Mountains near Austria in September (for the first stages of this journey see Inv. SG 2753, Städel Museum). There he made the first landscape sketch in this book (sheet 1 verso), before he continued his journey on the Tyrolean side of the Wetterstein mountains: he probably went from Seefeld to Innsbruck, from there to South Tyrol and Trento, with stops in Brixen in the Eisack valley, in Castelrotto and Siusi in the Sciliar region, and in Bolzano. He captured the valley and mountain landscapes seen on this route – the river plains of Eisack and Talfer as well as the mountains of the Dolomites and the Sarntal Alps – mainly in landscape format, whereby he was just as interested in completely untouched landscapes as in those with villages, farms, monasteries or castles. The book’s second half contains some landscape and architectural views of Trento and its surroundings.
In this sketchbook, Metz quickly sketched numerous views of the landscape and the city, and he occasionally also made close-up studies of trees. Above all, however, one motif returns in variations: the shepherd lying on the ground in the open air, presumably sleeping, usually with his flock. As can be observed in many of his later sketchbooks, Metz opened the pages rather randomly – as the changing dates reveal – to put his impressions down on paper, presumably while still standing.
For a full sketchbook description, please see “Research”.
