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The Rauschberg

Georg von Dillis

1800

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Romanticism Early 19th Century Landscape

Dominant colour

The Rauschberg is a 1800 by Georg von Dillis, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.

Who painted this?: Georg von Dillis
When & what style?: 1800 · Romanticism
Where can I see it?: Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

This painting shows a steep, jagged mountain called Rauschberg. Clouds half-hide its peak while sunlight breaks through, painting shadows on the rocky face. The trees below look small by comparison. Dillis often sketched outdoors, not in studios. This piece feels alive because he caught light and air in quick, loose brushstrokes. That loose handling was new for German landscapes then. Look up Georg von Dillis (German, 1759–1841) to see more like this.

The story of this work

Overview

Alongside his career as a connoisseur and art historian, Dillis drew and painted enthusiastically. Between 1808 and 1814 he was a professor of landscape painting at the Munich Academy. Most of his work consists of freely painted watercolors and oil sketches executed directly from nature. This atmospheric study of the staggeringly high Rauschberg mountain may have been influenced by English watercolors, with which Dillis was familiar.

Read the full account in the museum source.