Becker

The Jungfrau by August becker (1853)

95.2 cm x 132.7 cm (37.5 in × 52.25 in)

Oil on canvas

August Becker was a German Romantic landscapist who, for a time, became the art instructor for some of Queen Victoria’s children. Becker was part of the Düsseldorf School, a subcategory in German Romanticism which had a heavy influence on the Hudson River School, an important group of American landscapists. Jungfrau Mountain is in southern Switzerland and is one of the major peaks of the region. In this painting, Becker creates a work of majestic nature that is quiet, sublime, and imposing in scale.

Beginning in the foreground, the greens of the valley are deep, lush, and cool but gradually lose intensity as the land recedes into the background. Becker recreates a natural phenomenon called atmospheric perspective to give the illusion of great distance in the flat painting by causing the colors and forms to lose definition and intensity the farther back in space they seem to go. They fade naturally into the blues and grays of the mountain and ice. Then, these new colors merge almost seamlessly with the deep blue sky and its puffy, white clouds. The colors in this painting are harmonic and relaxing, mimicking the quietness of the scene.

Countering the calm palette are the dramatic lines and sudden changes of form. The landscape is a series of low rises and hollows. In the middle ground, the land lifts to the base of the mountain. Notice how visually the highest part of the rise on the left doesn’t go much above the highest point of the copse of trees on the far right. If you drew a line connecting these two points, it would be at the horizontal middle of the painting. Below this line is a calm valley. Above it, the forms are sharp and sudden, and they explode out of the green landscape, perpendicular to the valley floor and our imaginary center line. The mountain stretches from left to right like a wall. Unlike the patchwork of individual forms that make up the bottom half—trees, rocks, meadows, and cows, the mountain is solid and massive. It dominates the painting despite the dullness of its colors. Then at the very top, with its puffy clouds floating by the sky calms the painting down again.

After my eye is drawn up the mountain through its strong verticals, I am brought back down by the meandering glacier on the center left. The line it creates continues along the base of the mountain to the right but hidden by the center group of trees. It reemerges to the right of the central group of trees and turns left again to follow the front edge of the painting, through the group of cows and off the edge of the painting. This meandering line is not lazy like the pasture, nor is it dynamic like the mountain. It is somewhere in the middle—a leisurely and pleasant stroll through the landscape.

The shepherd and cows Becker inserted in the picture establishes the scale of the imagery. The cattle are tiny in this painting. Their reddish coats are almost lost in the other earth-tones of the work and meld with the brown brush at the very front edge of the painting. The shepherd is even more hidden. I didn’t even see him until I started writing the last paragraph. These tiny creatures almost disappear in this huge scene. Their smallness emphasizes the height of the trees next to them, which are themselves dwarfed by the mountain. The atmospheric haze that causes the colors of the landscape to fade rapidly implies vast distances between the foreground and background, too. This painting is meant to recreate the wordless awe of this beautiful and majestic mountain.

This work is cared for by the Royal Collection Trust which oversees the art of King Charles III of the United Kingdom.