Niels Fredrik Martin Rohde

The present work is a plein-air study Executed on Rohdes´s journey south from Munich to Rome in 1842. Rohde only remained in Italy for one year before returning to Copenhagen.
Niels Frederik Martin Rohde studied landscape painting at the Royal Danish Academy of Art in Copenhagen under J. L. Lund und Christen Købke from 1830 to 1834. In 1840, Rohde left Copenhagen for Munich. His sojourn in the city was to have a formative influence on his work. The cross-fertilization of ideas among artists working in Munich at the time was intense, particularly in the context of the interaction between Munich-based artists and artists from northGermany and Scandinavia. Leading northerners working in Munich included Louis Gurlitt and Christian Ernst Bernhard Morgenstern, who both trained in Hamburg and Copenhagen. The Dresden painter Christian Ezdorf, and, oddly, the Bavarian artist Eduard Schleich were also members of the circle, as were painters who were only briefly in Munich, like the Norwegian Thomas Fearnley. Painting in Munich saw a gradual turning away from idealized landscape in favour of a form of naturalism embedded in the direct observation of nature. An important Munich exponent of this was the painter Johann Georg von Dillis. He had pursued this innovative approach, initially almost alone, since 1820. The plein-air study, executed before nature, was all-important and the objective an accurate depiction of specific momentary light conditions. The motifs were painted in rapid, fluid brushstrokes. This enabled the artist to capture fleeting effects of light and give greater emphasis to the painterly qualities of the subject rather than to its graphic elements.