Lot 41 Dα

A mill stands in a woodland clearing by a stream, surrounded by tall trees. A small path beside it leads further into the depths of the forest. A girl with a pitcher stands at the window of the mill and a man leading a donkey walks along the path. Both turn their backs to the painter, or rather, the viewer, and appear not to notice him as he stands by the side of the path on the bank of the stream looking at the picturesque scenery.

The “The Mill at Eichtal” bears witness to Ernst Ferdinand Oehme's fascination with his local landscape, which, although it may not have offered imposing historic buildings or sublime motifs, still possessed a captivating and suggestive lyricism of its own. Oehme's depictions of nature are characterised by a subtle use of green and brown tones and the play of sunlight, here falling through the canopy of the trees to illuminate the uneven planks of the mill in yellow and ochre hues. This landscape, like others from around this time, show signs of Oehme's striving to “temper the linear style of his painting by deliberately accentuating painterly elements” (Bischoff, op. cit., p. 90). Oehme created this landscape in 1839, long after his studies under Johan Christian Dahl, his discovery of the art of Caspar David Friedrich and his journey to Italy with his friend and fellow artist Ludwig Richter. The Dresden painter's landscape style changed during this time, with the influence of the Düsseldorf school becoming visible. This time is described as the late Romantic period, in contrast to the first decades of the 19th century in Dresden, when landscape painting was primarily inspired by the works of Friedrich and Dahl.

A watercolour by Oehme with an almost identical composition has survived and is presumed to be a sketch for the present work (fig. 1; Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, inv. no. 7077). The watercolour is carried out in detail and only lacks the figures, which provide an anecdotal element in the finished work. There are also obvious changes to the general composition of the landscape. Oehme has replaced the stones by the bank of the river with green grass and increased the density of the foliage in the trees. He thus created a poetic image of a native woodland characterised by a subtle use of colour and light.