The
Large Spruce (Bad Gastein, Austria)
circa 1899
Such a lush and
healthy giant gently dwarfing the person below it pruning their garden, while it,
too, is being dwarfed by the great sky above it. Here, there is a domination of
Nature. The artist's texture of watercolour is crisp and bright, despite using
rather mundane colours. Each leaf and stem and twig threatens to burst through
the paper, even those in the forests on the sloping hillsides far beyond,
giving the impression that this is in fact not a sheaf of painted paper, but a
mere glass pane through which we are - right this very moment - looking out
onto the Austrian countryside.
This scene breathes realism, but rather than that
which evokes a perfect detail-for-detail rendition of the exact world, von Alt
transformed each leaf and stem and twig into its alternate, but all the while
real, ego - as if flora could have such things. Through only watercolour he
seems to have combined the ambiance of the wilderness, the actual living air, with the plants themselves. He melded
two of the four fundamental states of matter into one; from a gas and a solid
to an almost solid gas, we look out onto a scene explicit with simmering,
swaying, monumental trees and all things wild living in a thick, gurgling
atmosphere. We may not see warm colours, but do we not sense the chilling,
vibrant beat of Nature itself, its many hearts pulsing as of only a few metres
away? And no, we see no literal movement, but do we not feel the overpowering triumph
of Nature just being present - here,
there and everywhere? This watercolour, flat as it may be, certainly puts many
daunting but beautiful questions of existence into perspective.
