Adolf Kaufmann (Austrian, 1848-1916) Original Oil Painting Forest Landscape
This fine Barbizon antique oil on canvas by listed Austrian artist Adolf Kaufmann (1848 - 1916) depicts two women gathering wood in dappled sunlight near a small meandering stream that winds through the dense forest. The painting measures 18" x 23-1/2" and is presented in a gold tone wood frame with cast gesso embellishments having dimensions of 22-3/4" x 27-3/4" and has a brass plaque affixed bottom center indicating the artist, Adolf Kaufmann.
This 150 year old painting is in good overall condition, but as one would expect, some scattered craquelure and some canvas waviness that could be remedied by having the canvas re-stretched. There is also a very old repair (reference picture #10 patch verso) and a heavy application of varnish on the surface for preservation purposes over the years, but nothing that really distracts from the beauty of the painting when viewing. Adolf Kaufmann, a Realist painter is best known for his landscape painting depicting colorfully intensive, but peaceful views of the forests, trees, streams and small meadows, capturing the quite solitude of the surroundings making this a quintessential example of his works.
Adolf Kaufmann was born in Opava, Austrian Silesia (now Troppau, the Czech Republic) on May 15, 1848. After his early educated in Opava, where he began to draw and paint without any formal training, he traveled to Paris, France where he studied painting with Emile van Marcke de Lummen, a successful realist painter of peasant life thriving in a verdant and idyllic nature. During this period Kaufmann is recorded as traveling extensively throughout central Europe, Russia, Poland, the Netherlands, Turkey and the Levant. He visited, and studied for a while in Berlin, Dusseldorf and Munich before settling in Vienna, Austria, where, together with fellow painter Carl Freiherr van Merode, a painter of portraits and interior genre scenes, Kaufmann opened an atelier and school in 1900 to teach the art of painting to young ladies. The small village of Barbizon in north central France near the Forest of Fontainebleau became the home of a number of artists including Theodore Rousseau and Jean-Francois Millet who developed a style that celebrated the noble life of peasants and the beauty of unspoiled nature.
Having studied German Romantic painting in Dusseldorf and Munich, Kaufmann soon developed a unique and muscular version of the Barbizon approach with his use of a high contrast chiaroscuro and a dark, rich palette. Early in his career in Paris, Kaufmann won a number of awards and commissions from his entries in the Paris Expositions which helped to introduce and popularize the work of the new Barbizon style of landscape painting in France. During this period he exhibited his paintings in exhibitions in the Kunstlerhaus of Vienna, the Munich Glass Palace and in the semi-annual competitions at the Great Berlin Art Exhibitions.
From 1909 to 1914, Kaufmann traveled and painted in Holland, the South Tyrol, Northern Italy, and in Norway where he developed a series of colorful, panoramic and atmospheric fjord and landscape paintings. Today, Kaufmann's landscape and topographical work is included in national and private collections throughout the European Union, Great Britain, Russia and the United States. Throughout his early career, Kaufmann curiously signed many of his paintings with pseudonyms including A. Two years after his trip to Norway, Kaufmann died in his adopted home of Vienna, Austria, at the age of 68 years in 1916.
Libby art historian, curator and author.