Christian Georg Schütz the Elder

Christian Georg Schütz, a native of Flörsheim in Hesse, was a largely self-taught artist who gained a considerable reputation in the course of his long career as a landscape painter in Frankfurt. He was a skilful, prolific and eminently successful painter who frequently worked simultaneously on several paintings. His central theme, which he portrayed in ever-changing variations, was the picturesque landscape along the rivers Rhine and Main where he grew up. As a landscapist Schütz was profoundly influenced by his great Dutch predecessor, Herman Saftleven, although his works reveal a poetically idealised view of nature which was fully in keeping with the spirit of the age.

Schütz produced just these two etchings. Nevertheless, the prints show him to be a skilful and talented etcher, whose deli­cate linework reproduces and artistically heightens the wide-ranging, picturesque river landscapes, turning them into “universal landscapes”, as it were. His consummate, unconstrained and surprisingly varied style of etching produces subtle atmo­spheric transitions and an intriguing three-dimensional effect.The two landscapes, which together are extremely rare, are on offer here in superb, contrasting impressions with fine plate tone and with margins around the distinct platemarks. Slightly foxed, minor ageing, occasional traces of previous mounting in the upper margin verso, otherwise in impeccable pristine condition.