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The first of these very private works, which the artist himself kept in separate albums, date to shortly before 1800. They document Kobell’s quiet turning away from the ideals of Claude Lorraine toward a free and almost impressionistic manner of painting, which in an astonishingly modern fashion allows contours to dissolve and places emphasis upon contrasting effects of light. All the subjects are actual impressions of nature from the surroundings of Munich, where Kobell had settled upon his return from Rome, as a result of the princely family of the Palatinate’s succession to the Bavarian throne in 1778.