Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, circle of, Approaching Storm in the Roman Campagna
Inscribed lower right: "J. W. Schirmer".
The theme of this painting is one of the most important compositions in the oeuvre of Johann Wilhelm Schirmer. The artist himself has created numerous variants of this subject, both in his time in Düsseldorf and in Karlsruhe, which are now kept in Krefeld (Kaiser Wilhelm Museum), Freiburg (Augustinermuseum), Munich (Neue Pinakothek), Düren (Leopold-Hoesch Museum), Basel (Kunstmuseum), Karlsruhe (Staatliche Kunsthalle), Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) and Jülich (Museum Zitadelle). Moreover, the subject was also very popular with numerous pupils and later artists, copies are known from F. X. von Riedmüller, Ph. Röth, R. Fresenius, E. Engert, K. Wagner and W. Mohr, among others. Finally, around 1863/1864 Eduard Willmann also made a steel engraving after the motif.
Rudolf Theilmann, who recently dedicated a revealing essay to Schirmer's various replicas, considers the composition "one of the most impressive and lasting pictorial creations of his entire oeuvre" (R. Theilmann: „… ein interessanter Kompromiß zwischen Klassizismus und Romantik“. Johann Wilhelm Schirmers Komposition „Heranziehendes Gewitter in der römischen Campagna“, in: Jülicher Geschichtsblätter 85/86, 2017/18, p. 103-131, quotation p. 128), while the catalogue of the Schirmer exhibition of 2002 speaks of a creation "which is regarded as particularly felicitous, since it contains a convincing synthesis of precisely observed nature and the conception of an ideal landscape" (Ausst.-Kat. "Johann Wilhelm Schirmer in seiner Zeit", Karlsruhe and Aachen 2002, Heidelberg 2002, p. 239).
Although our small-format version of this prominent pictorial theme is marked "J. W. Schirmer", it should not be a signature of the artist himself. Due to the high painterly quality, however, Schirmer's handwriting is by no means excluded..