EDMUND FRIEDRICH KANOLDT
(Großrudestedt 1845-1904 Bad Nauheim)
Sunlit Pathway at Torbole, 1876
oil on paper, laid down on cardboard, 35 x 36.5 cm inscribed and dated lower right: Torbole / 27.7.76
Provenance:
private collection, Germany
(SOLD)
The striking play of light and shade on the white walls and pathway outside an olive grove in Torbole attracted Edmund Kanoldt’s attention. The artist noted the place and exact date on the lower right of this striking study accounting for his stay in the small village on Lago di Garda on July 27 in 1876. Pinhole marks at all corners indicate how the paper was fixed on a support.
Torbole is located north of Lago di Garda in northern Italy. It is en route for those traveling from Germany to Italy. Kanoldt visited Torbole several times on his way south. Although he painted Sunlit Pathway at Torbole directly from nature, he does not display its elements as realistically as possible. His general tendency to idealize subject matter transpires in his summary approach to this particular motif allowing him to create a refined overall impression of the site in question. Kanoldt and several of his contemporaries lived and worked in Italy for longer periods of time and aspired to translate the beauty of its nature and myths in paint. They were known as the Deutsch- Römer and including, amongst others, Anselm Feuerbach and Arnold Böcklin. They were known for renderings of mythological creatures in idealized landscape settings inspired by the Italian countryside that captured that spirit of a place. Working en plein air and thus experiencing nature enabled artists to translate the essence of places into paint as well as to study atmospheric elements specific to the south. Sunlit Pathway at Torbole is a perfect example of how an artist could achieve both in the same work.
Emil Lugo, Edmund Kanoldt und Emil Lugo, im Freien malend, 1880, oil on board, 18.6 x 29.7 cm, Staatlichen Kunsthalle Karlsruhe inv. no. 2308.