Forest path near Spandau

During his late period, Blechen painted a series of forest and swamp landscapes in which he picked up the mysteriously dark, fantastic natural scenery of his Romantic early work. Surrounded by the impenetrable density of a forest, a young peasant woman carrying a bundle of hay stands on a small wooden bridge. A storm has left behind numerous puddles and pools of water on the muddy ground. Gloomy branches hang down from massive tall trees; tree trunks against the light bend over a watercourse. The painting’s three vanishing points make the forest interior look like the nave and two aisles of a basilica. Only a few individual rays of light penetrate the cathedral-like vault of dense foliage and scatter restlessly among the deep shadows of the forest. Blechen used the tension of contrasts between light and dark to give this picturesque scene dramatic highlights. As the central focus of the light, the sunlit figure of the woman corresponds to the bright window formed by a clearing that affords a view of a Gothic church surrounded by water.