Mountains over Lake Hallstatt

The Austrian academic painter Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller distinguished himself in landscape and still-life painting, dedicating his art to the close study and accurate rendering of nature. This view of Lake Hallstatt, in the Salzkammergut Mountains (east of Salzburg), captures the exhilarating range of colors, textures, and forms found in the nature and the wondrous effects of shifting light and shadow revealed to those who look for them. He presents the alpine lake and its surrounding mountains as a panoply of blues, pinks, grays and purples as the first light of day dawns. In a small rowboat a father and son, dressed in traditional costume for a feast day, row their boat across the calm morning waters. Lake Hallstatt was remote in 1840; its small town and Schloss Grub, seen on the shores in the distance, could only be reached by boat. As day breaks and the mountains silently emerge from the shadows, only the gentle paddling of the father and son's miniature oars seem to disturb the silence of this isolated world.