Studies of Vegetables
  • Christian Friedrich Gille
  • Ballenstedt 1805 - 1899 Wahnsdorf / Dresden
  • Studies of Vegetables, 1839
  • Oil on prepared board,
  • dated with brush lower left: Nov... 39,
    numbered upper right: 46
  • 287 × 252 mm
Provenance:
Johann Friedrich Lahmann, Dresden (1858-1937),
his sale with Rudolph Lepke, Berlin, June 1938
Walther Heinrich, called Unus, Berlin/Rome (1872-1939)
Ernst Heinrich, Berlin/Nienburg (1915-2008)

Christian Friedrich Gille began his education at the art academy in Dresden, but left in 1827 to join the studio of Johan Christian Clausen Dahl (1788-1857), a close friend of Caspar David Friedrich. During his years with Dahl, Gille’s love of painting grew, and oil sketches came to occupy an ever more important place in his oeuvre. They made it possible for Gille to try out new paths without inhibition and to achieve a certain level of abstraction that was misunderstood by his contemporaries. This voluntary artistic isolation increased with age, although during his lifetime, museums such as the Gemäldegalerie (painting gallery) of his native city began to acquire Gille’s work.

The recognition the artist deserved was denied to him in life, and he died impoverished and forgotten. Only with the start of the new century would the art world attend to the unrecognized talent and astonishing life’s work of Christian Friedrich Gille.