(Atzgersdorf 1832–1889 Vienna) Spanish Landscape, signed A. Romako, oil on canvas, 61 x 83.5 cm, framed, (Rei)

Compare: Cornelia Reiter, Anton Romako, Pioneer und Außenseiter der Malerei des 19. Jahrhunderts, monograph and catalogue raisonné, Vienna 2010, CR no. 824. Letter of authentication: Dr Cornelia Reiter, dated July 2010 available. “This painting, with a view of the Alhambra in Granada, is directly comparable to the only known landscape to date of the Spanish journey... The similarity in colouring, painting technique and composition allows one to suppose that this painting, which has only recently turned up, is also a landscape from this early journey through Spain. The landscape itself could well be a view of the region just outside Granada. The painting adds to the few of the artist’s works which can be dated with certainty to this period. Its style characterises it as one of his earlier works and the landscape is still composed in a scholastic manner. In the foreground, a wide path leads into the picture, to the left the scene is enriched with rural folk, dressed in picturesque, merely lightly sketched, costumes, resting on the rocks. The differentiation in colour within a monochrome palette of brown tones, and the pastosity of the painting technique, especially in the depiction of the ground in the forefront of the picture, are all worthy of note. Romako paid great attention to the particular atmospheric conditions in the thick cloud formations, which are thickly heightened with white.”