Exhibition with Traugott Faber's landscape paintings in Schweinfurt

Ein the field in front of the gates of the Franconian village of Oeslau, on the horizon a mountain ridge with a feudal building behind a defiant wall, in front of it the church with a pointed tower, a few houses between tall trees: the scene is completely peaceful, including the farmer who is with it Plowing the field with his team is obviously in no hurry, and three people are trotting along the winding path to the village. The watercolor depicting this view is about the size of an A4 sheet of paper, but is full of detail, making it easy for the eye to get lost in it, gliding up to the hazy hill on the right edge where the outline of another building becomes visible.

There is nothing that can be done about it, the composition inevitably slows down the viewer's gaze, and another element of the image's composition contributes to this manipulation: in the very foreground is a grassy hill on which an idler in a coat and hat has sat down. Representing us and as if taken from a picture by Caspar David Friedrich, he looks into the distance towards the village, leaning on his left elbow, his posture is attentive and calm at the same time. There is still space next to him, and anyone who sits next to him can compare their own impressions of the landscape with his own. Or watch with him and be silent.

Traugott Faber created this view of Oeslau near Coburg in 1820 on behalf of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld as part of a whole series of views from the surroundings of the Franconian city. He moved in a field that nourished not only him, but also numerous contemporary artists and formed a solid alliance with the journalism of the time: for private, wealthy clients as well as for publishers who intensively used the new printing technology possibilities of the technically extremely innovative Biedermeier period , views emerged from all angles, not just the German states.

In such works, traditional aesthetic demands were joined by documentary ones and came into conflict, at least in the eyes of some clients. The great value that such sheets, which preserve numerous buildings that have now disappeared or are barely recognizable, have for architectural historians is obvious. At the same time, the sheets that were created with a view to publication often raise the question of what is just a sketch that is to be carried out later and what, conversely, has its fleeting features intentionally.

For artists like Traugott Faber, born in Dresden in 1786 as the son of a button manufacturer, working with many others in this popular field means that it is not uncommon for far more to be known about the stages of their training and their commissions than about themselves. Faber learned drawing, but also the skills to prepare what he drew for printing, from the Dresden landscape painter Johann Christian Klengel. He entered the art academy in his hometown, traveled through Saxony, Thuringia and France and took part in a large project in 1833: together with other artists, based on the sketchbook that the Saxon Prince Friedrich August had created while traveling through his fatherland, these views on site in a series of sheets.

Bolder over the years

An exhibition is currently on view at the Georg Schäfer Museum in Schweinfurt that is reminiscent of Faber's work and is largely based on its own holdings. It was created in cooperation with the museums of Neustadt an der Orla, each with a different focus, so that two magnificent catalogs are now available: one shows Faber's work in Thuringia and Saxony, the other sets his Franconian pictures with those of his contemporaries Johann Adam Klein and Karl August Lebschée in relation.

The Schweinfurt exhibition, which has been planned for a long time and is only now being shown due to the pandemic, adopts this approach by hanging the two parts in two separate halls. The idea behind this is the same: Faber's works are subjected to constant comparison. This is obvious in the second part of the exhibition, when he is compared with the painters Klein and Lebschée, who like himself are now almost forgotten, and the latter – especially when it comes to his skies – shows himself to be a latent playwright, while Klein, on the other hand, is extremely colorful, while Faber is more so behaved. A second comparison is with Faber's motifs themselves, which were sought out and photographed five years ago on the initiative of the museum and now shed light on Faber's way of working, his attention to detail and sometimes also the freedom he took when doing so he was more interested in the big picture.

This is supported by the third comparison, Faber's with himself. By hanging together pictures in several places in the halls that Faber created of the same motif years or decades apart, it also shows what development he has undergone as an artist. He becomes bolder over the years, he paints freely, concentrates on the essentials, and how this happens becomes clear thanks to the clever exhibition direction.

Esthetic Places – Idylls in Franconia, Thuringia and Saxony. Georg Schäfer Museum, Schweinfurt; until February 25th. The catalogs cost 28 euros individually and 49 euros together.