Description:

dated: d. 12 Marz 1822 (lower right)
oil on paper laid down on board
262 x 381 mm

Provenance:

Caroline Bull (née Dahl; the artist's daughter)
Caroline married Anders Ørsted Sandøe Bull, an army officer, in Christiania 1847
Chief Justice G. J. Bull (son of the above)
General Siegwald Bull;
thence by descent to the present owner, great-great-grandson of the artist

Literature

Aubert, Andreas, Maleren Johan Christian Dahl. Et stykke av forrige Aarhundredes Kunst- och Kulturhistorie, Kristiania (Oslo), 1920, p. 453
Bang, Marie Lǿdrup, Johan Christian Dahl 1788 – 1857, Life and Works, Oslo, 1987, vol. II, p. 133, no. 359, catalogued; vol. III, pl. 145, illustrated

Exhibitions

Kristiania (Oslo), Jubileumsutstillingen, 1914 Oslo, Blomqvist Kunsthandel, 1926, no. 144
Oslo, Kunstnernes Hus, 1937, no. 212

Note:

Dahl made this sketch in Dresden, where he had lived since 1811, after his return from Italy where he had travelled between June 1820 and April 1821. His time there was a decisive factor in his artistic development. It was in Italy, with its strong southern light, that Dahl's art truly flowered. It forced him to examine nature and paint it how he saw it, undiluted by the influences of the old masters. The spontaneity of this idiosyncratic oil sketch, which up until last year had been passed down in the family of the artist, shows this new spirit in his approach to painting.