Joseph Anton Koch
(Obergibeln 1768 – 1839 Rom)
Arcadian Landscape, 1792
Pen and wash in Sepia, heightened with white
52 x 67.8 cm
Signed and dated lower left: "Koch . 1792"
PROVENANCE
Burckhard Collection, Basel (acquired directly from the artist c. 1793/95)
Thence by descent
Karl & Faber, Munich, sale 272, November 11, 2016
Private collection, Germany
This large representative composition by Joseph Anton Koch is a recent discovery, having remained in private hands since the time of execution 1792/3. Unknown to Otto von Lutterotti, author of the catalogue raisonné, the work retains its original mount by the artist. As such it is a remarkable new document for the general appreciation of Koch in the early part of his Swiss exile. Following his first visit in early 1791, Koch wrote in his diary about the enjoyment of freedom in the land of the free. Switzerland has been considered since Rousseau a place of lived natural freedom. In early December Koch fled to Strasbourg where he contacted a group of Jacobins. He moved to Basel in September 1792, soon after his first ideal landscapes in a sepia technique were produced. Koch's inspiration lay in the style of Salomon Gessner rather than the detailed study of nature, whereby his style adheres to a new canon of clarity and vigor. A novel vision of landscape and the antique is at the core of this special unsentimentalized rendering.