Wilhelm Hasemann

Wilhelm Hasemann explored the landscape of the Black Forest on numerous occasions. In particular, he looked for motifs in the region around Gutach in the Kinzig valley, a town in the central Black Forest where the artist himself founded a painters’ colony after 1880. Since Hasemann focused primarily on the houses of the Black Forest as well as the traditions and customs of its people, this landscape study of blooming gorse bushes, probably painted in 1910/11, is somewhat unusual. The painting was purchased in 1911 by the Münsterbauverein in Freiburg in connection with a lottery intended to raise money for the renovation of the Freiburg Minster. Here Hasemann employed a very loose, impasto technique. Using brushstrokes often applied in a thick, energetic manner over a thin layer of priming, he developed a painterly approach very much in the tradition of French Impressionism. As this work clearly demonstrates, Hasemann could paint in wide range of styles, and was entirely capable of incorporating new directions in painting into his works. The scene shows a number of gorse bushes growing on a high mountain meadow. Since gorse requires plenty of sun, the location is probably a dry, barren meadow on the southern slope of a mountain. A mountain range appears on the horizon on the other side of the valley, indicating that the viewer is likewise positioned on a high elevation. With great painterly sensitivity, Hasemann creates an atmospheric landscape in which green, brown, and yellow tones unite to form a harmonious whole. TILMANN VON STOCKHAUSEN (Transl. MELISSA THORSON)