In the moment, captured - sketches by Carl Blechen

 

Augustanerbrücke bei Narni (Augustan bridge at Narni), 1829.

Bucht von Rapallo (Bay of Rapallo), circa 1829-30.

Weg durch einen Eichenwald (Path through an oak forest), ND.

Junge Eiche (Young oak tree), circa 1820s.

In der Campagna (In the Campagna), circa 1828-29.

Aus dem Apennin (From the Apennines), 1829.

Galgenberg bei Gewitterstimmung (A scaffold in a storm), circa 1835.

Landschaft mit Sonnenuntergang (Landscape with sunset), ND.

Im Park der Villa Borghese (In the park of the Villa Borghese), 1823.

Ein Brunnen in einem Park (A fountain in a park), 1831.

Mönch auf der Terrasse (Monk on the terrace), 1835.

Waldinneres mit Wanderer (Forest interior with hiker), ND.

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And straying from "theme" because I find them so beautiful, two finished paintings:

Fort bei Neapel (Fort near Naples), circa 1829.

Im Berliner Tiergarten (In the Berlin Tiergarten), 1825.

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Carl Eduard Ferdinand Blechen (29 July 1798, Cottbus – 23 July 1840, Berlin), German landscape painter and professor at the Academy of Arts, Berlin. His father was a minor tax official from Regensburg. His parents being unable to afford to pay for his education beyond the secondary level, they apprenticed him to a banker. He was engaged in that profession until he was twenty-four, when an increasing interest in art led him to the Berlin Academy. Not long after, he obtained a position as a decorator for the Royal Theater on the Alexanderplatz. He married in 1824 and became a member of the Berlin Artists' Association in 1827. Later that year, he was dismissed from the theater because of an ongoing dispute with a singer, after which he supported himself as a free-lance artist. In 1828, he took a study trip to the Baltic Sea, followed by a trip to Italy which produced hundreds of sketches that were later elaborated in his Berlin studio. In 1831, upon the recommendation of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, he was appointed Professor of Landscape Painting at the Berlin Academy. Four years later he became a full member of the Academy and took a study trip to Paris. It was then that the first symptoms of his mental illness appeared. His condition deteriorated and he suffered severe bouts of depression that forced him to take a leave of absence from the Academy in 1836. The following year, he had to be admitted to a hospital. He was able to make one final trip to Dresden, where he made his last drawings. He died four years later, in a state of complete mental collapse. Six days short of his forty-second birthday, he was buried in the Holy Trinity Cemetery (II); the exact location of his grave is lost, and he is only commemorated with a plaque on the cemetery wall.

Self-portrait, 1825.