Karl Julius von Leypold
(1806 Dresden - Niederlößnitz 1874)

Evening Glow on the Baltic Coast, 1839

Oil on canvas
Signed lower right with the initials KvL
Dated lower left 1839

29 x 41 cm

Carl Julius von Leypold enrolled at the Dresden Academy in 1822 and combined his studies with work in the studio of Johan Christian Dahl. Unlike Dahl, whose oil sketches after nature are remarkable for their rapid, virtuoso brushwork, Leypold emphasized the minute details of observed reality with extraordinary precision of touch. By 1826, his work had begun to reflect the influence of Caspar David Friedrich. The haunting melancholy of some of Leypold's early landscapes once led early generations of art historians to attribute them to Friedrich himself. The masterly handling of the leafless willows in Leypold's painting titled Trees in the Moonlight shows how deeply he was inspired by his study of Friedrich's work. The painting, executed in 1824, is now in the collection of the Wallraf Richartz Museum in Cologne.

Leypold began to exhibit at the Dresden Academy in 1826 and his work was immediately popular. His painting titled Interior of an Ancient City Wall was purchased by the Sächsischer Kunstverein. He went on to develop his own style in the 1830s and with his command of meticulous attention to detail achieved widespread critical acclaim. Friedrich praised his exceptional talent and the outstanding quality of his paintings, even calling them ‘masterpieces'. This is documented in Friedrich's treatise Remarks upon the examination of a collection of paintings by artists for the most part living or recently deceased [1] (1829-30) [2]. In 1857, Leypold was made an honorary member of the Dresden Academy. His oeuvre is small and his works rarely appear on the market.

The present painting was rediscovered only very recently. It depicts a fisherman seated at the waterside smoking a pipe in reflective mood and gazing at the distant glow of the setting sun over the water. Behind him, his nets have been hung out to dry. In the foreground a single-masted boat and beside it, a rowing boat are moored. In the background is the silhouette of a typical Hanseatic port with the striking, high gables of a warehouse set against the evening sky. Light gleams from isolated windows, smoke rises from chimneys and at the centre of the image in the distance are the clearly defined, tapering profiles of the masts of large sailing ships.

Dr. Birgit Verwiebe, curator at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, has examined the painting and confirms the attribution to Leypold.

1) Äußerungen bei Betrachtung einer Sammlung von Gemälden von größtenteils noch lebenden und unlängst verstorbenen Künstlern, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, inv. no. Ca 49 u.
2)For a discussion of Leypold's response to the paintings of Dahl and Friedrich and a tribute to his work, see Hans Joachim Neidhardt, Die Malerei der Romantik in Dresden, Leipzig 1976, p.170 ff (with illus.).
Werner Sumowski, ‘Caspar David Friedrich und Carl Julius von Leypold', in Pantheon XXIX, Munich 1971, pp.497-504.