Gustaf Wilhelm Palm
(Härlöv 1810 - 1890 Stockholm)

Santi Giovanni e Paolo Seen from the Palatine Hill, with the Colli Albani
1851

Oil on canvas
Dated and inscribed at the left Roma 1851

38.2 x 53.2 cm

Provenance:
Strokirch collection, Sweden, 1853
Rosa Norström, Stockholm, 1934

Literature:
G. Lindgren, Landskapsmalaren Gustaf Wilhelm Palm 1810-1890, Katalog över G. W. Palms oljemalingar, Stockholm, Akademisk avhandling, 1933, p.289, no. 206

Exhibited:
Stockholm Academy of Art, 1853, no. 105

This very fine, small painting was executed in the final year of Gustaf Wilhelm Palm's sojourn in Rome. The atmosphere of a late afternoon in summer is captured with masterly skill. Palm's sensitive response to the changing effects of light in the southern landscape has its origin in the numerous plein-air sketches he produced in Rome and the surrounding countryside. His interpretation of the motif has a vitality and immediacy that can only derive from direct study of the subject. This immediacy is not conveyed by the works he was later to produce on his return to Sweden.

Palm has chosen a viewpoint on the Palatine Hill. Before him, to the right, are the ruins of an ancient Roman imperial palace. The viewer's eye is led towards the apse of one of Rome's most important early-Christian monuments, the basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paolo. Behind it, in the far distance, is the hazy outline of the Colli Albani.

Palm amused himself by representing his name in pictorial form. He frequently signed his paintings with a small palm tree set beside the date. Occasionally he used a prominently placed palm tree to establish his identity. This is the case in the present painting.

Palm is undoubtedly Swedens's foremost classical landscape painter.[1] He studied under the painter Carl Johan Fahlcrantz at the Stockholm Academy. In 1837 he travelled to Berlin and Vienna. He was influenced by the landscapes of Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller and the work of Jacob and Rudolf von Alt. In 1840, he spent the winter in Venice where he met the painter Friedrich Nerly and began to paint Venetian views. In 1841 he arrived in Rome and spent ten years in the city.[2] While Palm regarded Claude and Poussin as the leading proponents of the classical landscape, he was strongly influenced by what might be termed the 'Germano-Roman' tradition established by the numerous German painters working in Rome in the first half of the nineteenth century. Leading exponents were Joseph Anton Koch and Johann Christian Reinhart.

Palm's oeuvre can be divided into two distinctive groups: the studio paintings and the unusually large, finished oil studies executed en plein air. Today, these are regarded as his chief artistic achievement. He used the oil studies he made in Rome and its surrounding villages - Tivoli, Ariccia, Civitella and Genzano - as material for his studio paintings. His works attracted strong collecting interest as early as 1853 when they were exhibited in Stockholm.