We would like to thank Dr. Irene Haberland, Bonn, and Prof. Werner Busch, Berlin, for kindly providing additional information.
A small but very fine new discovery from the artist's oeuvre: the depiction of a romantic figure resting, lost in thought. Embedded in the scenery of untamed nature, the young man appears programmatic in his reflective engagement with his own thoughts, almost emblematic of the zeitgeist of the early 19th century. The beautiful face, wild curls, slender figure and large sketchbook bear the individual traits of a character portrait. After comparing it with Scheuren's miniature self-portrait in the Rhein-Romantik collection (collection no. 497), Dr Irene Haberland, Bonn, and Prof. Werner Busch, Berlin, suggest this to be an early self-portrait of the artist. Caspar Scheuren liked to see himself in the role of the ‘lonely earthly pilgrim’. Wolfgang Vomm proclaimed in 2010: "In his landscape paintings, [Scheuren] depicts nature and human endeavour with the loving, retrospective, romanticised gaze of a poet. When he does so with a deep feeling that occasionally borders on the sentimental, evoking a long-lost romanticism, this is not a hollow attitude, but a genuine expression of his attitude towards life." With the help of the imaginary bridge his painting builds, the artist succeeds in escaping the mundane present – a longing that is not foreign to us even in the 21st century. LJM
We would like to thank Dr. Irene Haberland, Bonn, and Prof. Werner Busch, Berlin, for kindly providing additional information.
A small but very fine new discovery from the artist's oeuvre: the depiction of a romantic figure resting, lost in thought. Embedded in the scenery of untamed nature, the young man appears programmatic in his reflective engagement with his own thoughts, almost emblematic of the zeitgeist of the early 19th century. The beautiful face, wild curls, slender figure and large sketchbook bear the individual traits of a character portrait. After comparing it with Scheuren's miniature self-portrait in the Rhein-Romantik collection (collection no. 497), Dr Irene Haberland, Bonn, and Prof. Werner Busch, Berlin, suggest this to be an early self-portrait of the artist. Caspar Scheuren liked to see himself in the role of the ‘lonely earthly pilgrim’. Wolfgang Vomm proclaimed in 2010: "In his landscape paintings, [Scheuren] depicts nature and human endeavour with the loving, retrospective, romanticised gaze of a poet. When he does so with a deep feeling that occasionally borders on the sentimental, evoking a long-lost romanticism, this is not a hollow attitude, but a genuine expression of his attitude towards life." With the help of the imaginary bridge his painting builds, the artist succeeds in escaping the mundane present – a longing that is not foreign to us even in the 21st century. LJM
