View of Trent

In September and October of 1815, the nineteen-year-old Carl Philipp Fohr set out from Munich – where he had returned to his studies at the academy that summer – on a voyage by foot to Upper Italy and Venice by way of Tyrol, after which he returned by way of Salzburg. This work is to be seen as one of the most significant ‘among the 70 views that I collected for myself’ (letter to Dieffenbach from October 1815) – which collectively document this important phase in his brief development as an artist. With contours alone, he grasps the general form of the mountains and clouds, but also the details of the houses and towers in the middleground, to which he devoted his most intense attention. The delicately, sparingly and two-dimensional application of the watercolours clearly expresses his efforts at formal reduction. The work appears almost incomplete in its execution; however, the cursory quality of the drawing and tonality serves him as a means to constructed clarity.