International studio (25.1905)

FROM THE PASTEL DRAWING BY OTTO FISCHER

" OX THE RIESEXGEBIRGE

It is this very quality again which gives to his
lithographs their great charm. Not being one of
those who revel in colour for colour's sake, he has
proceeded on entirely different lines from the
Karlsruhe men and Heinrich Otto, upon whose
work the fame of modern German lithography for
the great part rests. Fischer uses two, sometimes
three stones, and in reducing the multiplicity of
hues in nature to a share in the values of these
two or three colours he experiences the same
delight as in translating the forms of nature and
the movements of living objects to a broader,
simpler, more epic scale.
Some of these lithographs are truly things of
beauty and a delight to possess. One among them
is a nocturne of a portion of the " Grosse Garten,"
the principal park in Dresden. Our eye falls upon
the rounding shore of a calm lake, encircled by
dark trees, which cast mysterious shadows in the
marvellous moonlight that floods the picture
beneath a clear, starry sky. This lithograph is as
full of atmosphere as any impressionist painting
can be. ^ N^7*777 presents an exquisite
study of clouds, looming up high, with the glare of
lightning still within them, a lurid contrast to the
dull, drenched held, across which a farmer leads
his ox in the foreground.
Otto Fischer has also done some remarkable

crayon drawings, heightened by means of pastel
colours. These are the best he has done yet in
this medium. The subjects for the whole set
were taken from the Riesengebirg.e.*
It is an uncommon reach of country, very
interesting to the traveller. The range rises rather
abruptly to a considerable height, the highest point,
the Schneekoppe, falling only ipg metres short of
the Rigi in Switzerland. These mountains possess
the peculiarity, otherwise met with only in much
higher altitudes, of being bare. There are no
forests ; nothing but a certain kind of shrub grows
sparely upon them. Hundreds of thousands of
travellers visit them annually, and they are
traversed by numerous paths for tourists. The
most interesting among these is the " Kammwan-
derung," a footpath extending all along the ridge.
You can walk there for hours, and have to the
north at your side all along a magnificent view
over a sheer endless plain, green, and dotted with
bright little towns just below you, waxing more
indistinct in form and indescribable in colour as
you raise your eyes, until you detect a few black
spots, scarcely perceptible in the dim distance,
which mark the position of big cities like Goerlitz,
Liegnitz, and Breslau.

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