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Alongside his provocative surrealist visions, a number of travel pictures and city views, anticipating the “new objectivity” in their photographic realism, characterize the oeuvre of Richard Müller. These works still impress with their technical perfection, revealing a precision of detail almost in the manner of the Old Masters.
However, a purely narrative reproduction of the landscape rarely satisfied the artist’s imagination, and so the viewer’s habits of seeing are repeatedly tested with an unusual play of light and shadow or through the addition of objects on a different plane of vision. In this case, the open book and binoculars, presumably on the draughtsman’s window sill, complicate our view of the landscape.
As the artist’s inscription reveals, the background depicts the so-called Kupferhübel or Kupferhügel (“copper hill”), a knoll of 910 meters in the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains), which now goes by the Czech name Médnik. The striking tower with its little chapel, the Kupferburg (“copper castle”), has been retained as a landmark of the peak.