| OCR Text |
Show 134 (Bodmer) caught the mystery Inherent in the setting and the land itself.....his painting of the White Castles...indicates how he used a strange, diffused light reflected on the aquamarine surface of the river to focus on the antelope peacefully drinking, undisturbed by man. Highlighting two golden brown promontories in the right and left of the picture, he made it appear as if the sun had broken through the dark rolling clouds in the background to cast a glow upon the upland meadows. This "framing" through light inevitably focuses the eye upon the real subject of the picture, the White Castles, remote and perched atop rocky crags with the faint sun emphasizing their stark whiteness. The whole mood and tone of the picture is keyed by the subtle use of light. Goetzmann also has pointed out Bodmer's debt to the past traditions of landscape painting and in particular to the seventeenth-century landscapist Claude Lorrain: Claude Lorrain is best known for his distinctive composition of landscapes in which the foreground is defined by dark clusters of trees or underbrush linked through the use of diagonals to a plain in the middle distance and culminating in a horizon that seems to stretch on to infinity. Bodmer's debt to him is obvious. Ibid. 38. See note 1, Chapter Three. 39. Paul Ortwin Rave, "Die Rheinansichten in den Reisewerken zur Zeit der Romantik," Wallraf-Richartz Jahrbuch 1 (1924): 123-150. 40. Most of these paintings are attributed to the years 1835 and 1836. But it is known through Maximilian's correspondence that Bodmer had resumed his former occupation soon upon his return. These paintings included the watercolors Binaen. Stolzenfels. Bornhofen. and Godesberg und Siebengebirge. which have been located, as well as many other paintings that have not. See Appendix E, Chronology, for further information about these and other paintings Bodmer executed during this time. 41. Hans Lang, Indianner Waren Meine Freunde (Bern und Stuttgart: Hallwag Verlag, 1976). 42. F. C. Lonchamp, Manuel du Bibliophile Suisse (Paris and Laussane: Librariedes Bibliophiles, 1922), #2139: Das Moselthal von Trier bis Coblenz. nach der Naturgezeichnet von C. Bodmer. ("In 80 PI. gravees sur cuivre dont |
