Carl Wilhelm Kolbe

This charming depiction of a fashionably dressed young couple walking along a narrow woodland path is one of Kolbe’s early etchings compiled in his first collective work that was published in the late summer of 1796. It contained a selection of landscapes and illustrations of figures and animals that were not systematically organised in any way. Kolbe’s sensitive artistic temperament is already apparent in this delightful early work. The scene radiates a natural lyricism that is fully in keeping with the spirit of the age of sensibility. Kolbe’s idiosyncratic observation of nature immediately struck his contemporaries as novel and individualistic. The handsome courting couple are heading for a nearby bower, but once again the dominant pictorial motif is the impressively branched oak tree towering above them that testifies to Kolbe’s deep-felt admiration for his great Dutch predecessor, Anthonie Waterloo. A very fine, strong early impression with inky platemark and even margins, before the number. Slightly foxed and minor surface soiling, otherwise in excellent condition.