DOI Artikel:
Bartning, Ludwig: A decorative landscape painter: Paul Schultze-Naumburg
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20710#0232
Paul Schultze-Naumbtirg
The first difficulty to be encountered was of an
external and technical character. Oil-colour, treated
as a thick paste and laid on without much manipu-
lation, had proved the best medium for plein-air
subjects, but here it no longer sufficed. In the
old masters interior effects could be noted that
were pleasing to the eye, but their constitution
was a riddle. With the energy that he brought to
every task, Schultze set himself to re-discover the
technical methods of past ages, and to experiment
scientifically with all the new processes that our
modern industry provides. His intimate study
of the old masters, particularly those of the
early Renaissance, gave him the key to a long-
sought-for secret. The visible picture of nature,
even in the full witchery of some special
mood, when reproduced on the canvas certainly
repeated the impression made upon the eye ; but
it did not give the mental sensation that the vision
of nature had evoked. He now learned from the
old masters that a piece of natural beauty must be
translated into pictorial beauty, in order that we
may experience, at sight of the latter, what we ex-
perienced on beholding the former. And this
pictorial beauty follows the same laws that in
applied art regulate the " pleasing" or the
" repellent " sensation. Thus from the imaginative
conception was evolved the decorative conception.
His picture Schbnburg (page 214) may serve
as an example to show how true to nature were
the pictures that he based on decorative considera-
tions, just because they did not copy the beauties
of nature, but created them anew for the purposes
of the picture. The wall-picture became Schultze's
special task.
The " decorative movement" in Germany
threatens likewise to become over-externalised and
superficialised. Imitation of the foreign or of the
old-fashioned, on the one side, and on the other, a
restless striving after the novel, the unusual, the
eccentric, have much distorted its original character.
Schultze-Naumburg has been saved from these
dangers by the last new development of his artistic
personality. In his practice of decorative art he
had discovered what he had long suspected in the
case of pure art—namely, in what intimate relation-
The first difficulty to be encountered was of an
external and technical character. Oil-colour, treated
as a thick paste and laid on without much manipu-
lation, had proved the best medium for plein-air
subjects, but here it no longer sufficed. In the
old masters interior effects could be noted that
were pleasing to the eye, but their constitution
was a riddle. With the energy that he brought to
every task, Schultze set himself to re-discover the
technical methods of past ages, and to experiment
scientifically with all the new processes that our
modern industry provides. His intimate study
of the old masters, particularly those of the
early Renaissance, gave him the key to a long-
sought-for secret. The visible picture of nature,
even in the full witchery of some special
mood, when reproduced on the canvas certainly
repeated the impression made upon the eye ; but
it did not give the mental sensation that the vision
of nature had evoked. He now learned from the
old masters that a piece of natural beauty must be
translated into pictorial beauty, in order that we
may experience, at sight of the latter, what we ex-
perienced on beholding the former. And this
pictorial beauty follows the same laws that in
applied art regulate the " pleasing" or the
" repellent " sensation. Thus from the imaginative
conception was evolved the decorative conception.
His picture Schbnburg (page 214) may serve
as an example to show how true to nature were
the pictures that he based on decorative considera-
tions, just because they did not copy the beauties
of nature, but created them anew for the purposes
of the picture. The wall-picture became Schultze's
special task.
The " decorative movement" in Germany
threatens likewise to become over-externalised and
superficialised. Imitation of the foreign or of the
old-fashioned, on the one side, and on the other, a
restless striving after the novel, the unusual, the
eccentric, have much distorted its original character.
Schultze-Naumburg has been saved from these
dangers by the last new development of his artistic
personality. In his practice of decorative art he
had discovered what he had long suspected in the
case of pure art—namely, in what intimate relation-