DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.60474#0016
warm glowing light brings out deep tones with touches of dark orange red yet
the whole effect of the sketch is as airy and translucent as are the cool blue tints
which form the atmosphere in other sketches.
In his landscapes Durer discovered the luminous beauty of the sun’s rising
and setting. The mingling of colour and light, rich in harmonies as in fantastic
contrasts, new each morning and each evening, especially fascinated him. It
was this magic which held him spell-bound before the little Segnitz-island with
the fisherman’s hut outside the gates of Nuremberg. The sun had just set and
it was that moment when all the colours, no longer touched by the direct rays
of the sun, blaze again while the clear light on the horizon fades slowly out. The
waters still reflect bright colours because light lingers in the sky through the
world is darkening. A water-surface holding more light than the sky itself, such
a vision had been seen by no eyes until Durer beheld it and it was immediately
forgotten again.
This was probably an unconscious process with Dürer, involuntarily he
abstracted the very essence of the phenomena of nature, and gave it an indépen-
dant existance of its own, when his intention was only to render the reality of
the view he saw before him. That little sapphire-blue lake surrounded by pine-
trees and decked with wreaths which he seized and held fast in the coolness of
the morning attracted him at first probably by reason of its position. He drew
the pines one by one, he delicately indicated the reeds and expressed the mani-
fold gradations of colour tone by tone from ultramarine to forget-me-not blue,
from emarald green to the yellow in the green of a mignonette. But over it all
there flashed out a violent conflict in the heavens and golden and rose-coloured
rays of light struggled with the dense blue night-clouds as the sun rose and rent
the veil of darkness with its shafts. Durer seized the supreme moment and left
the rest unexpressed as though, dazzled by the rush of light, he was unable to
see that the sun had destroyed his delicately woven tissue of colour. The vision
was arrested too suddenly, the fantastic element lurking behind reality overcame
the artist. When he was painting more prosaic subjects he saw clearly yet his
imagination never lay dormant and since his effort was to seize the whole, not
any one part, reality sometimes faded a little under his fingers. As under the
glaring sun the roof of a farmhouse ceases to be colour at all and becomes a mere
surface, a reflection, insubstantial and immaterial, so single features gradually
8
the whole effect of the sketch is as airy and translucent as are the cool blue tints
which form the atmosphere in other sketches.
In his landscapes Durer discovered the luminous beauty of the sun’s rising
and setting. The mingling of colour and light, rich in harmonies as in fantastic
contrasts, new each morning and each evening, especially fascinated him. It
was this magic which held him spell-bound before the little Segnitz-island with
the fisherman’s hut outside the gates of Nuremberg. The sun had just set and
it was that moment when all the colours, no longer touched by the direct rays
of the sun, blaze again while the clear light on the horizon fades slowly out. The
waters still reflect bright colours because light lingers in the sky through the
world is darkening. A water-surface holding more light than the sky itself, such
a vision had been seen by no eyes until Durer beheld it and it was immediately
forgotten again.
This was probably an unconscious process with Dürer, involuntarily he
abstracted the very essence of the phenomena of nature, and gave it an indépen-
dant existance of its own, when his intention was only to render the reality of
the view he saw before him. That little sapphire-blue lake surrounded by pine-
trees and decked with wreaths which he seized and held fast in the coolness of
the morning attracted him at first probably by reason of its position. He drew
the pines one by one, he delicately indicated the reeds and expressed the mani-
fold gradations of colour tone by tone from ultramarine to forget-me-not blue,
from emarald green to the yellow in the green of a mignonette. But over it all
there flashed out a violent conflict in the heavens and golden and rose-coloured
rays of light struggled with the dense blue night-clouds as the sun rose and rent
the veil of darkness with its shafts. Durer seized the supreme moment and left
the rest unexpressed as though, dazzled by the rush of light, he was unable to
see that the sun had destroyed his delicately woven tissue of colour. The vision
was arrested too suddenly, the fantastic element lurking behind reality overcame
the artist. When he was painting more prosaic subjects he saw clearly yet his
imagination never lay dormant and since his effort was to seize the whole, not
any one part, reality sometimes faded a little under his fingers. As under the
glaring sun the roof of a farmhouse ceases to be colour at all and becomes a mere
surface, a reflection, insubstantial and immaterial, so single features gradually
8