Wilhelm Fritzel (1870-1943) - Haystacks on the Lower Rhine

Wilhelm Fritzel (Hamburg 1870 – Ohrensen near Stade 1943) — "Corn Sheaves on the Lower Rhine", oil on canvas, c. 1910–1925, signed lower right "W. Fritzel", framed. A wide late-summer harvest landscape: stooked corn sheaves across a golden stubble field, a farmstead beneath a great oak behind them, farmhands at work, and a high, moving cloud sky filling more than half the composition. The sheaves are built up in thick impasto with brush and palette knife, giving the surface a vivid relief in raking light. Harvest subjects of this kind are among the artist's most characteristic and sought-after works. Fritzel trained at the Düsseldorf Academy from 1892 to 1895 and was a master student of Eugen Dücker in the landscape class. He followed the leading figures of Düsseldorf Impressionism, above all his teacher Olof Jernberg, and settled in Kaiserswerth on the Rhine in 1905, taking his motifs from the Lower Rhine and the Eifel. Exhibitions in Vienna (1910), Barcelona (1911) and Düsseldorf (1911) brought him prizes and awards. He sat on the board of the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. Listed in Thieme-Becker, Vollmer and AKL.

Estimate:$336.13

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