A small format makes a big impression – oil studies in Düsseldorf | free press

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For artists, they weren’t just a reservoir of ideas – today, oil studies by 19th-century painters are highly valued. The bestselling author Florian Illies is an expert on the small format.

A green treetop and a bright corner of the house – the small, more than 170-year-old picture by the painter Oswald Achenbach is rather unspectacular. But Florian Illies gets enthusiastic. “It’s almost the fulfillment of the oil study – the most casual thing there is,” enthuses the art historian, who is also known to many as a bestselling author (“Love in Times of Hate”, “1913 – The Summer of the Century”). You can’t really see the house or the sky in the landscape painter’s picture. However, the shadow play of the tree on the sunlit house wall is fascinating.

This “impression of the absolutely casual and inconspicuous” is something “that we may find in the photography of Wolfgang Tillmans, who also elevates the casual to a work of art,” says Illies (51). The fact that the easy-going Tillmans, who works in the world’s largest art museums and became famous for his photographs of Berlin’s subculture, is once compared to a painter from some of the 19th-century Düsseldorf schools that are considered stale, is probably new art-historical territory.

A kind of outdoor snapshot

Oil studies – in the first half of the 19th century, these were natural phenomena quickly painted on small-format cardboard or paper. Artists such as Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Carl Blechen and Arnold Böcklin painted them as a kind of outdoor snapshots in oil. Today people pull out their smartphones to capture the great sunset, the dramatic cloudy sky, the downpour, waves at the sea or play of light in the forest. 200 years ago it was the oil sketches painted in a few hours. Thousands of them hung unframed in studios and served as templates and a treasure trove of ideas for the commissioned paintings that were later painted according to strict artistic principles.

In contrast to these large works, however, the oil studies were spontaneous, fresh, colourful, almost abstract. For the first time this genre gets a big stage in Germany in Düsseldorf. Around 170 of these small formats by 75 artists can be seen in the Kunstpalast from Wednesday to May 7th. The exhibition “More Light. The Liberation of Nature” was curated by Illies and Anna Christina Schütz.

The artists went out into nature with small travel paint boxes. Even supposed trivialities like bad weather in all its shades of gray became an artistic category for her. The oil studies were only intended for private use and they were almost never signed. Nobody would have bought them anyway in the 19th century.

Only later made into a work of art

It’s very different these days. In the Kunstpalast, the oil studies are ennobled simply by the frames. “The shift is evident in the frames,” says Illies. “These weren’t works of art for the artists, they were working materials, a reservoir of ideas, a treasure trove of motifs, a diary. Only we, with our later viewing habits, turn them into works of art.”

In parallel with appreciation in the 21st century, material value is also increasing. While the commissioned paintings by landscape painters from the first half of the 19th century often do not fetch 10,000 euros, the small oil studies are traded for 20,000 to 30,000 euros.

“It’s like a snapshot,” says Kunstpalast director Felix Krämer. “The artists just didn’t think about the market at this point.” And up until about 20 years ago, hardly anyone was interested in the oil studies. “These were unfinished pictures.” Today, however, the studies are “much closer to our visual language,” says Krämer.

Surprisingly modern

Some sketches of modern abstract art are amazingly close. Böcklin’s “Pond with Water Lilies” could probably consist of an exhibition on color field painting. The flashy pink sunrise, which painter Salvatore Fergola dubbed “Aurora borealis,” would hardly stand out in a contemporary art exhibition. 175 years ago nobody would have taken the picture.

Illies has been involved in oil studies for 30 years. You have been with him since his studies. He has also made them better known in the art world in Germany. The assignment of the often unsigned sketches is a challenge. Like the anonymous kitchen picture with the text “My housekeeper’s kitchen in Rome”. 30 to 50 artists could be considered as authors. But that’s actually irrelevant. Illies cares about the details. He gets enthusiastic again: “Brilliant painting, the way the light sits on the pot.” (dpa)

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