“Bildstöckel”

Details

With an expertise by Herbert Ascherbauer, Schwarzach, dated 29 January 2024 (as scan).

Provenance:

Privately owned, Lower Saxony, in family ownership for decades, by succession to the present owner.

Description

– Large-format painting by the famous mountain painter

– A “heroic” landscape executed in a striking palette knife technique developed to perfection by Mulley

– The impasto application of colour almost seems to merge with the material of the sitter

Herbert Ascherbauer writes about this painting: “The wayside shrine motif, which is relatively rare in Mulley’s oeuvre, in the present case shows the building, which is almost ‘grown together’ with the rock and is kindly illuminated by the sun, far above the tree line on a seemingly threatening precipice. What is also remarkable about the high alpine motif, which is excellently depicted both in terms of colour coordination and composition, is the execution of the mountain range that surrounds the wayside shrine in the wide background like a backdrop: It runs from structured and elaborate in the left-hand third of the picture to unstructured and flat on the right-hand side.

The painting is executed in a striking palette knife technique developed to perfection by Mulley, in which the impasto application of colour virtually merges into the material of the sitter, a characteristic of Mulley’s artistic creative phase between 1925 and around 1938.”