“Ländlicher Garten (mit Bauernhaus)” – Rural garden (with farmhouse)

Details

Provenance:

Private property, Baden-Württemberg, by succession to the present owner.

Description

– The colourful flowering cottage garden is one of Balwé’s most popular motifs

– Created on Lake Chiemsee, Balwé’s adopted home since the 1920s

– Balwé follows the tradition of the magnificent artists’ gardens of Monet, Nolde and Liebermann

Arnold Balwé’s views of his own garden make up a large part of his oeuvre and are among his most sought-after motifs. Since the late 1920s, he has lived with his family on Lake Chiemsee in an old farmhouse surrounded by a large garden. This places Balwé in the tradition of artists’ gardens, such as those of Claude Monet and his successors Emil Nolde and Max Liebermann. For the artists, their own gardens became a place of longing and retreat and inspired them to create a large number of paintings. Balwé also painted his blossoming oasis over the years and from a wide variety of angles. A characteristic feature of these paintings is the depth of perspective, which Balwé achieves through his cropped house or a narrow strip of landscape at the upper edge of the picture. In front of this frame, which closes the picture section at the top, he spreads out the lush sea of flowers on the canvas in an incomparably bright colourfulness. He places the pure colours directly next to each other without outlines, surface to surface, and varies the application of paint from bold impasto brushstrokes to thin, almost liquid areas of colour that allow the white primed canvas to shine through. Despite their opulence, these light-coloured areas lend the exuberant vegetative splendour an airy lightness. With his optimistic garden paintings, Balwé immediately transports us to the carefree time of high summer: sunflowers, hollyhocks, evening primroses and numerous other country flowers bloom here in a lavish variety.