Karl Roux
(Heidelberg 1826 - 1894 Mannheim)

The Fischerschlösschen in Ebenhausen
1877

Oil on canvas
52 x 88 cm

Signed and dated lower right Roux 1877

Provenance:
Georg Schäfer collection, Schweinfurt

Karl Roux studied under his father, the Heidelberg painter Jakob Wilhelm Roux. He enrolled at the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts under Carl Hübner in 1844. In late May 1848 he visited Freiburg with a fellow student, his cousin Anselm Feuerbach (1829-80). The armed uprising in Baden in the spring of 1848[1]. threatened to involve the two artists in military service, so they travelled on to Munich. They shared a studio,[2] working with the painter Karl Rahl. They travelled to Antwerp in 1850 and in October of the same year enrolled at the Antwerp Academy.[3] Study trips to Paris in the early 1850s followed.[4] Roux settled in Karlsruhe in 1855, taking up a post at the Academy under the directorship of Johann Wilhelm Schirmer. He left his post at the Karlsruhe Academy in 1867 and moved to Munich. He taught at the Munich Academy from 1868 to 1881. He was appointed Director of the Großherzogliche Gemäldegalerie in Mannheim in 1882.[5]

Roux's preferred motifs in his Munich years were views of the city, the landscapes of the surrounding countryside and the foothills of the Alps. This painting is a fine example of his Munich period and dates from 1877. It depicts a mansion built in 1842 in elaborate historicist style by the architect Johann Moninger for his wealthy patron, Gottfried Fischer. The mansion lies at an elevated position above the Isar valley in Ebenhausen, a village south of Munich.[6] Moninger's intention was to unite the traditional gable motifs of local architecture with cautiously applied neo-Gothic prescriptions of English architecture designed to achieve 'picturesque variety'.[7] A lengthy succession of owners were to follow Fischer's death in 1866. His widow continued to live in the mansion until it passed to his son Albert in 1880. In 1887, Albert Fischer sold it to Otto Graf von Rambaldi. It was later sold to Apollo Geiger and refurbished by Franz Rank in 1909. Geiger's heirs sold it to Elisabeth von Pidoll. It was then sold to a racing stable owner named Kraus who in turn sold it to Generaldirektor Black in 1960.[8]

The right half of the painting is dominated by the neo-Gothic silhouette of the mansion with its saddleback roof and stepped gables flanked by a high, crenellated, castlelike tower. Two wings at right angles to the main building form a cour d'honneur. The left half of the painting shows an expansive stretch of parkland. In the foreground towards the centre, two children - the son and daughter of the owner - are depicted gathering flowers. In the middle distance is the deep cleft of the Isar valley with a glint of the river. In the background is a silhouette of the Bavarian alps as seen from Ebenhausen on a clear summer's day.

[4] See Ecker, op. cit., p.32 and p.37: I [Feuerbach] am determined to go to Paris before the end of March, Roux is to go with me.

[5] For details of Roux's biography, see Siegfried Wichmann, Münchner Landschaftsmaler im 19. Jahrhundert. Meister - Schüler - Themen, Weyarn 1996, p. 268.- Helmut Börsch-Supan, Die Deutsche Malerei von Anton Graff bis Hans von Marees 1760-1870, Munich 1988, p.61, p.542 and p.543.- Bruckmanns Lexikon der Münchner Kunst: Münchner Maler im 19. Jahrhundert, III, pp.399-401.

[6] See Georg Paula and Timm Weski, 'Landkreis München' in Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege (ed.): Denkmäler in Bayern - Kreisfreie Städte und Landkreise, I, 17, Munich 1997, pp.278-9.

[7] Andreas Ley, Die Villa als Burg: ein Beitrag zur historischen Architektur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts im südlichen Bayern, Diss., Munich 1978, p.69.

[8] Petra Niedziella, 'Das Fischerschlössl: romantische Burg im Isartal', in Arx, XV, 1 (1993), pp.234-7.