Robert Zünd
(1827 - Luzern - 1909)

Tree Uprooted in a Storm, 1850

Oil on paper, laid down on artist's board
Dated lower right 27. Aug. 50.

35.3 x 51 cm

An inscription on the verso written in the hand of Hedwig Hess Naeder (granddaughter of the artist) confirms the authenticity of the painting. An additional authentication by Dr. Theophil Deucher (Zurich) is dated 26 June 1962

Provenance: Lucerne, Galerie Fischer, auction sale, June 1958, lot 3152;
Kunsthandel Julius Gugger, Basel, 1961

This oil study is an early work by Robert Zünd. The study depicts a large deciduous tree freshly uprooted in a storm. The tree lies with its crown to the left, spreadeagled across a stream, its massive form filling the entire breadth of the image. Clinging to its roots are damp clods of earth and tufts of grass. In rapid brushstrokes Zünd has captured the surging motion of the stream in the foreground which is on the verge of overflowing its banks. Flanking it are dense carpets of long grass. The stream depicted is very probably the Würzenbach in Lucerne.[1] In the background are the dark silhouettes of trees thick with foliage set against a leaden sky. Touches of bright russet highlight where branches have been snapped off. The looming darkness provides a dramatic backdrop. The tree is starkly lit by rays of sunlight breaking through the storm clouds and intensifying the rich colouring of its foliage and branches. The overall impact of the painting owes much to the immediacy characteristic of plein-air painting. It vividly documents the effects of light and weather conditions as experienced in a storm, and the rapidly changing ambience they produce.

Zünd handles the play of light on the uprooted tree with extraordinary attention to natural detail. This close-focus precision in the observation of nature bears comparison with the masterly landscapes of Waldmüller.[2] Zünd uses impasto to define the branches and trunk. He emphasizes form and portrays detail with a precision reminiscent of the Old Masters, but his painterly sensitivity for the qualities of light in colour [3] is highly modern - as is shown in the vivid russet of the roots. All this testifies to his outstanding skills as a landscapist.

Additional support for the authorship of the present oil sketch is provided by the existence of a signed pencil study depicting the same uprooted tree.[4] The majority of Zünd's strikingly realistic large-format landscapes were based on drawings and oil sketches after nature. The freedom and fluidity of his brushwork in these sketches is surprising and fascinating but the sketches also serve to document the important role straightforward observation of nature played in his work. They are also of course, the products of conscious artistic involvement - in the present oil sketch this applies to the perspectival use of contrasting effects of light, the choice of motif and the positioning of the uprooted tree. However, the sketches also demonstrate his debt to landscape tradition. [5] Gottfried Keller correctly characterizes Zünd as a painter of ‘the ideal real landscape or the real ideal landscape'. [6]

Zünd attended the gymnasium in Lucerne and went on to study painting and drawing in the studio of Jakob Schwegler. He moved to Geneva in 1848 where he worked under two of Switzerland's leading landscapists, François Diday and Alexandre Calame. Zünd met the Munich painter Rudolf Koller in 1851 and a close friendship quickly developed. He first visited Paris in 1852, where he drew inspiration from his discovery of seventeenth-century painting. He returned to Paris on a number of occasions and also visited Dresden and Munich. He settled in Lucerne in 1863.

Literature: Susanne Neubauer (ed.), Robert Zünd, exhib. cat., Lucerne, Kunstmuseum,
12 June - 26 September 2004, Lucerne 2004.

1)See Neubauer, op. cit., p.157, letter from Zünd to Jost Pfyffer, 13 August 1850: Diesen Sommer konnte ich wegen leider immer anhaltendem Regenwetter beinahe nicht arbeiten. Ich habe einige wenige Studien im Würzenbach gemacht. Der lästige Regen entmutigt mich wahrhaft; ich darf gar nicht daran denken, wie manchmal ich schon ganz durchnässt wurde. [This summer I have been virtually unable to work due to the endless rain. I have made a few studies in Würzenbach (sic). This tiresome rain most certainly disheartens me, I should waste no thought on how often I have been soaked to the skin]. The Würzenbach flows through a district of Lucerne known as the Würzenbachquartier. From there it continues into Lake Lucerne.
2)See Husslein-Arco and S. Grabner (eds.), Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller. 1793-1865, exhib. cat., Musée du Louvre, Paris and Belvedere, Vienna 2009, nos. 10, 11 and 16-18.
3)Literarische Chronik des Berner Bundes, 4 August 1912: Zünds Landschaftsstudien, die von den fünfziger bis in die siebziger Jahre des letzten Jahrhunderts vor der Natur entstanden, gehören zum Unmittelbarsten und Interessantesten im Werke des Malers; vor allem sind es die Ölstudien, die sich in voller Frische erhalten haben und die schon zu Zünds Lebzeiten sorglich gehütet - zwar wenig bekannt, aber von Künstlern und Kennern, die sie je zu Gesicht bekamen, ungemein geschätzt wurden. Die Naturtreue, die Kraft der Zeichnung, wie das moderne Empfinden für das Licht in der Farbe, machen diese Studien zu den wertvollsten Dokumenten für Zünds künstlerische Persönlichkeit. [The landscapes Zünd produced before nature in the fifties to seventies of the last century are among the most immediate and most interesting of his entire oeuvre; it is the oil studies in particular that have retained all their freshness, having been carefully conserved during the artist's lifetime - although little known but held in the highest esteem by artists and connoisseurs who had the good fortune to see them. Their faithfulness to nature, the power of their draughtsmanship and the highly modern, painterly sensitivity they display for the qualities of light in colour make them the most valuable testimony of Zünd's artistic personality].
4)SIK (Schweizerisches Institut für Kunstwissenschaft, Zurich), inv. no. 39'201, Uprooted Tree, pencil on grained oatmeal paper, 25.3 x 631 cm, signed lower left R. Zünd.
5) In this sketch Zünd was probably influenced by his teacher, Calame. See Valentina Anker, Alexandre Calame (1810-1864). Dessins. Catalogue raisonné, Wabern, Bern and Bernex 2000, F 8r, repr. p.201 and F 33r (Arbre coupé, dated 1850), repr. p. 210, et al.
6) (...) der idealen Reallandschaft oder realen Ideallandschaft (...). G. Keller in Neue Züricher Zeitung, 23 March 1882, describing a visit to Zünd's studio. He continues: Kein einziges Touristenstück, keine Vedute oder Knalleffekt aus dem nahen Hochgebirge darunter, sonder lauter Gegenstände, welche das ungeübte Auge, der ungebildete Geschmack draussen im Freien weder sieht noch ahnt, die aber doch dort und nicht erfunden sind (...). [There was not a single work for tourists, no views, no sensations relating to the high peaks nearby, just objects which the unpractised eye and uneducated taste would neither detect nor expect to see in nature but which are very much present in it and not in any way constructed (...)].