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Source Description
Beginning in the 1820s, the academy in Düsseldorf, a town on the Rhine River, began to attract artists from other German cities and from abroad. Achenbach, one of Düsseldorf's most influential painters in the mid-19th century, specialized in the "sublime" mode of landscape painting, in which man is dwarfed by nature's might and fury. At the left the evening sunlight breaks through the stormy sky to illuminate the turbulent sea breaking against the rocky coast. Seagulls struggle to fly in the violent wind. The only signs of human presence are a spar embedded in the rocks, a wooden keg adrift at the right, and a barely discernible flag. The tattered American flag on the rocks in the foreground implies that there is a shipwreck just out of view.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
19760
label
Clearing Up--Coast of Sicily
core
obj
dtoType
drawing
citationUrl
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
19760
sourceUrl
contentType
drawing
stage
normalized
title
Clearing Up--Coast of Sicily
description
Beginning in the 1820s, the academy in Düsseldorf, a town on the Rhine River, began to attract artists from other German cities and from abroad. Achenbach, one of Düsseldorf's most influential painters in the mid-19th century, specialized in the "sublime" mode of landscape painting, in which man is dwarfed by nature's might and fury. At the left the evening sunlight breaks through the stormy sky to illuminate the turbulent sea breaking against the rocky coast. Seagulls struggle to fly in the violent wind. The only signs of human presence are a spar embedded in the rocks, a wooden keg adrift at the right, and a barely discernible flag. The tattered American flag on the rocks in the foreground implies that there is a shipwreck just out of view.
provenance
The Düsseldorf Gallery, New York [John Godfrey Boker, proprietor], 1849-1857; Cosmopolitan Art Association of Sandusky, Ohio, 1857-1862 [mode of acquisition unknown]; John Wolfe [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; John Wolfe Sale, New York, 1882, no. 91; William T. Walters, Baltimore, 1882, by purchase; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1894, by inheritance; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.
date
1847
citationUrl
rightsUri
CC0
language
en
genreSpecific
Painting & Drawing
oil paintings (visual works)
imageCount
1
pageCount
1
source
import
dimensions
units
cm
width
82.5
height
116.1
dimensionsRaw
H: 32 1/2 x W: 45 11/16 in. (82.5 x 116.1 cm); Framed H: 48 1/4 x W: 65 x D: 5 3/4 in. (122.6 x 165.1 x 14.6 cm)
Source extras
inscriptions
[Signature] In black on lower left: A. Achenbach; [Date] In black on lower left: 1847
med
oil on canvas
creator_ids
2952
collection_ids
EAN
exhibition_ids
673
2354
2952
3300
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
photo
mediaId
7e346882c0d6977b