Landscapes. Émile Michel

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      Superior though he was to his predecessors and to his contemporaries, both as a painter and an engraver, Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), was not free from the old traditions. He was influenced by various masters. For more than three years he studied under Michael Wolgemut, and was influenced later by Jacopo de Barbari and by Andrea Mantegna. He belongs essentially to his times and, like his fellow artists, as a painter, he was a somewhat belated representative of the Middle Ages at the time of the Renaissance movement. But in his landscape drawings, both in his choice of subjects and in his interpretation of nature, he is absolutely original and distinctly an innovator. The town in which he was born, and in which he lived and died, does not account for his genius, but it was nevertheless instrumental in calling it forth.

      The name Dürer has become intimately associated with Nuremberg. Like Bruges and Venice, the historical aspect of the place appeals to the imagination. His father had come from Hungary, and had settled in Nuremberg as a goldsmith in 1455. He married the daughter of a citizen there and had eighteen children. Albrecht, the third of these children, was born on May 21st, 1471 and, like many Italian artists of that epoch, served his apprenticeship in his father’s workshop. It was in this way that he acquired the skill of hand and somewhat dry precision which we see in his pictures and etchings. In 1486 he entered the studio of a painter who had a great reputation at that time in Nuremberg. This painter was Michael Wolgemut, a stiff and formal artist, who owes the place he now occupies in the history of art to his illustrious pupil.

      Dürer learnt his profession in this studio, where the roughness and coarseness of his fellow students frequently tried his patience. Outside the studio the young artist obtained more direct and profitable instruction from nature. He painted his own portrait and that of his various acquaintances. He sketched or painted in watercolour the horizon which he saw from his window, the plants and flowers he gathered when out walking, and animals dead or alive. In this way he learnt to observe and to paint whatever he saw, only troubling to satisfy himself with his work. Everything seemed to him worth painting and the most insignificant objects worth observing. He endeavoured to copy to the best of his ability the infinite diversity of their forms, proportions, and substances.

      By the perfection of his work, he obliges us to have the same admiration for reality that he himself had. Even when he had arrived at the most masterly certainty and decision, he retained that respectful simplicity which is the supreme charm of great talent. With his active mind and keen intelligence, he soon found the perspective before him too limited. Young and ardent, he longed to see something new, to learn more, to know the great works of the past and to enjoy the picturesque beauties of neighbouring countries. Italy, with its monuments and works of art, attracted him and, at the age of nineteen, in 1490, he went abroad, with very little money, but rich in hope and confidence. He went through Alsace, Basel, Augsburg, the Tyrol, and, crossing the Alps, made straight for Venice. Many attempts have been made to fix exactly the itinerary and dates of this journey and of the sketches from nature that he made on the way. The precocity of the young artist’s talent and the fact that there were no dates on his sketches, make it impossible to decide whether they should be attributed to this first journey or to his second pilgrimage (1505–1507). The first journey has even been contested by some of Dürer’s biographers, but it is now proved to have taken place. Fascinated by the beauty of the landscape, he must have stayed some time in Trent and made several drawings. First there is the general view, also in watercolour, in which he shows the picturesque situation of Trent with the river, towers, palaces, cathedral and amphitheatre of mountains closing in the horizon. There is also another sketch, touched slightly with watercolour, which represents the Chateau at Trent with its high walls and one of the city gates.

      Albrecht Dürer, Ruin of a Castle on top of a Rock near a River (“Altes Schloss”), 1495.

      Watercolour and gouache on paper, 15.3 × 24.9 cm.

      Private collection.

      Two months after his return to Nuremberg, Dürer married a young girl named Agnes Frey, with whom he received a dowry of 200 florins. He has left us several faithful portraits of her, painted at different times. Although he was only twenty-three years of age, his talent was mature. He lived a simple, frugal life, content with the moderate return he received for his hard work. He had a few orders for his pictures, and his etchings began to attract attention and to be in demand. He made use of his landscape sketches for the backgrounds of his compositions, but, whilst he subordinated these to the subjects treated, we must acknowledge that he scarcely succeeded in giving perfect cohesion to the whole picture. Except in his portraits, particularly those of himself, which are masterly, his painting is cold, thin, somewhat dry, and rarely harmonious. It is evident from his pictures that he respected tradition and was influenced by the remembrance of the masterpieces he had seen in Italy. But the direct study of nature continued to give him the satisfaction which it had always given him. In the presence of nature he was neither a slave nor an exponent of any school. He gave himself full liberty. “Man’s resources are very limited in comparison with God’s creations,” he himself said. And as he felt that his own admiration for the works of the past paralysed his creative energy, he strongly insisted, “In order to paint a good picture it was no use hoping to take anything from a human work, as no man on earth had within him entire beauty… Art is contained in nature and the Master is he who can extract it from nature.”

      It was for himself and for his own satisfaction that he sketched the view from his own window of the housetops that formed the horizon to which he was accustomed. There is also a sketch of one of the picturesque views of the town near his home. In his drawing he has reproduced, with scrupulous exactness and a perfect understanding of aerial perspective, the walls of the former boundary of Nuremberg as far as the Thiergartner Gate, with a glimpse of one of the more distant parts of the town in the background. Dürer was one of the first to understand the peculiar beauty of big trees, and with loving patience he set himself to render their imposing outline, their intermingled branches and their masses of leaves. We have an example of this in his conscientious study of a Pine Tree, in the study in red chalk.

      Hans Thoma, German Landscape, 1890.

      Oil on canvas, 113 × 88.8 cm.

      Neue Pinakothek, Munich.

      Albrecht Dürer, Fisherman’s House on a Lake, near Nuremberg, c.1496.

      Watercolour on paper, 21.3 × 22.5 cm. The British Museum, London.

      Albrecht Dürer, The Large Turf, c.1503.

      Watercolour and gouache on paper, 41 × 32 cm.

      Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna.

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