Small house behind trees
  • Franz Skarbina
  • Berlin 1849 - 1910
  • Small house behind trees
  • Black chalk on paper, partly smeared
  • monogramed on the lower right: F. Sk.
  • 237 × 136 mm
Provenance:
Gallery Siegfried Billesberger, Moosinning, private collection, London

The Little House behind Trees likewise reveals the artist’s specific conception and appropriation of nature; he knew just how to depict this simple subject most effectively here. With vigorous and sometimes fleeting, sketch-like strokes he has captured the carefree easiness of a summer day, in which he sets the play of light against the whitewashed house facades just as atmospherically into the scene as he does the contours of individual roof tiles blurring in the sunlight and the reflections in the foliage. Repose and movement balance each other out on this sheet if one’s gaze falls behind the lofty trees onto the foyer of the village house. Its slightly warped architecture lends an almost lively vigor to the deserted scene, just like softly the swaying leaves. The painterly effect of this sheet, an apparently perfunctory but actually very consciously composed “nature note,” makes it a typical Skarbina.