Rügen

Eugène Dücker, who succeeded Oswald Achenbach as Professor of Landscape Painting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, did a lot to pave the way for the generation of Modern Artists. Unlike the Italian landscapes of his predecessor, with all the attention to special effect, he preferred as themes simple views of Baltic or North Sea coasts – with the sea calm and hardly moving. Without any great pathos, he captured the mood of the light on the water. Attracted by the ‘paysage intime’ of the French painters in Barbizon, he championed a resolute Naturalism. In plein air studies he recorded fleeting natural phenomena and then transposed them into Paintings with great attention to detail once back in the studio. The Düsseldorf painting of Rügen is a typical example of Dücker’s art, with the colour reduced to a few tones. He did not follow Caspar David Friedrich and opt for the spectacular chalk cliffs and instead was happy to present the plain motif of the rocky beach at Arkona with a calm sea. (Nicole Roth)