ROTTMANN, Carl

Carl Rottmann, who was a specialist in landscape, was also drawn to the South, like other artists of his day. Although he did not settle there, he studied the scenery of Italy and Greece on extended visits. He produced in 1830, as a study for a fresco of the Arcadian Fields in the Hofgarten in Munich, the Museum’s view of the rock of Cefalu in northern Sicily. Rottmann’s paintings are topographical. He wanted to depict accurately an existing geographical situation. Equally important to him was the place’s historical significance.

Rottmann came from a family of artists, which brought him into contact with other Heidelberg painters early on. In 1821, he began courses in history painting at the Munich Academy, and went on excursions in the Bavarian mountains to do nature studies. Sojourns in Italy in 1826-1828, and again in 1829, introduced him to the Roman manner of open-air painting. A key event for his development was his meeting the Bavarian crown prince, the future King Ludwig I, who lived in Rome. Ludwig commissioned Rottmann to paint the Italian Cycle in the Munich Hofgarten Arcades (1830-1833), a series of frescoes depicting Italian landscapes, which would remain a favourite subject.

Another major work was the Greek Cycle, based on studies made during a visit to Greece in 1834-1835 and destined for the Neue Pinakothek in Munich. These were done in encaustic (a technique employing heated wax colours that fused after application), and Rottmann worked on them until his death. In these landscapes, the architectonic structure of rigorous, classical composition is combined with a dramatic treatment of colour, expressed through light and other natural phenomena.

Rottmann succeeded in creating a new vision out of the sobering reality. The historic site in Greece that continued to blossom in the humanist imaginations were stony, the landscapes eroded and bare. He transmitted the heroism of the sagas to the topography, which itself now became the active hero. He showed the earth formation in a struggle against cosmic forces; he intensifies his subject, taking it into the realm of the fantastic. The painting Marathon can be seen as the ultimate expression of the heroic landscape.

This Romantic canvas of the battlefield at Marathon is one of a series of oil sketches Rottmann prepared as a Munich court painter for a projected fresco cycle of thirty-eight “Greek Landscapes” intended to supplement those of Italy. Marathon was a site with a powerful political agenda. It was the battleground that represented the triumph of the West over the East, of the Greeks over the Persians.

When Carl Rottmann came from Heidelberg to Munich in 1811, he saw Joseph Anton Koch’s paintings in the Neue Pinakothek. It turned out to be a crucial experience. Beginning from such models, Rottmann developed a unique landscape style that made him one of the major German landscapists of the nineteenth century.

Intimations of this are already seen in his painting of the Eibsee. By means of sweeping horizontals, Rottmann evokes the majesty and sublimity of the mountains, emphasizing them all the more by contrast with the tiny figure on the outcrop in the left foreground. Otherwise the scene shows no trace of human presence or habitation. Water, rocks, and sky speak with their own voice, underscoring their wild, primeval character.