About the Work
In December 1831, Carl Morgenstern made his first drawing in the half-leather booklet with loops for slender pencils: he captured the trunk and branches of a weather-beaten fir tree with a pencil and then coloured it in subtle colours with a brush. Even before Morgenstern left for Munich in 1832 to study under the successful landscape painter Carl Rottmann, he recorded everything in this sketchbook that caught his eye: a hunt at Petterweil, a hunting party at Bonames, figure studies, variously dressed in traditional costume, conifers, but also such inconspicuous motifs as a house corner with large stones. There are also views of walks through the surroundings of Frankfurt, especially to Rödelheim and Hausen, and of the journey to Munich, with motifs near Bad Aibling, Lake Chiemsee, near Bad Reichenhall, Lake Starnberg near Seeshaupt and Iffeldorf. He also recorded relatively detailed compositional drafts for later paintings. On the sketchbook’s fourteenth page, he even included a drawing by his colleague Johann Gottlieb Prestel (1739‒1808), a well-known and respected painter of horses, who, like Morgenstern, was probably in Rödelheim in May 1832 (see the sketchbook Inv. SG 3078, Städel Museum).
For a full sketchbook description, please see “Research”.
