(Vienna 1842–1892 Westerland on Sylt)
A Rainy Landscape, signed Schindler, oil on canvas, 65 x 102 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private Collection, Switzerland.

Compare:
Heinrich Fuchs, Emil Jakob Schindler, Vienna 1970, p. 269, no. 688–690.

Emil Jakob Schindler coined the term “poetic realism” to describe his own art and his oeuvre certainly lived up to it. Undoubtedly one of the finest Austrian landscape painters of the second half of the 19th century and main representative of Stimmungsimpressionismus (literally translated mood impressionism), he renewed the landscape genre by going beyond the faithful depiction of reality. Employing a reduced colour palette and open brushstrokes, Schindler had the ability to capture the atmospheric quality of a place. Air, light and colour are magnificently invoked for the viewer to experience an intimate moment with nature through the artist’s lens.

Schindler’s exposure to the work of the Barbizon artists and to Vienna World’s Fair in 1873 encouraged him to venture into open-air painting, leading to his distinctive experimentation with changing light conditions. Paintings created from the later 1870s onwards were characterised by an increasingly subtle perception of the weather, as well as a preference for simple daily-life motifs. Despite the large format of the following lot, the painting retains its intimate character and is an outstanding example of how the artist went beyond the optical reality in order to communicate an inner, emotionally determined truth.