Forest landscape with flowing water and two hunters

A group of forest studies was created from 1831 to the middle of the 1830s; Blechen is likely to have executed them en plein air during the excursions that he began making with his pupils into the countryside around Berlin, into the Spandau Forest, for example. Executed in a variety of techniques ranging from pure pen and ink to watercolour and oil sketch, these works did not always strictly adhere to nature; they are often dramatically or idyllic-romantically idealized through striking light effects or through the addition of all manner of accessory figures. This sheet thus not only conveys an impression of the brilliant draughtsmanship and diversity of Blechen's ink-and-wash technique; it may also be interpreted as the scene from E. T. A. Hoffmann’s novel Elixiere des Teufels [The Devil’s Elixirs] where the monk Medardus, frightened by the uncanny wood, and the hunter’s son, with whom the monk is staying, are lying in wait for their quarry—shortly before the devil secures the monk an unexpected kill.