290. RUDOLF KONSTANTIN GITSLER. Woman on cliff, oil painting.

RUDOLF KONSTANTIN GITSLER 1873-1906 Woman on a cliff Signed and dated R Gitsler 1905. Oil on canvas, 34 x 59.5 cm.

Painted on Tjockö in Stockholm's northern archipelago with academy friend Signe Karlsson (1878-1941) as model.

PROVENANCE Mrs. Ingeborg Bergling, Artist Kurt E. Ehrefelt (1921-2010), Stockholm When Rudolf Gitsler in the summer of 1905 executed his atmospheric painting of the woman sitting and looking out over the water at Tjockö, in Stockholm's northern archipelago, he worked with a fast and broad brushwork, which brings to mind Zorn. It is a technique that makes great demands on the artist's skill, but Rudolf Gitsler had already been noticed during the years at the Art Academy 1899-1904 for his unmistakable aptitude and his great talent. When he left the academy in 1904 after completing his illustrious studies, he also received the chancellor's medal. An achievement in the light of the fact that his studies had taken place "under much poverty and much illness", an illness that would take his life just six months after he completed his motif from Tjockö.

The artist was probably aware that the summer of 1905 - when he captures his academic friend Miss Signe Karlsson lost in thought on the rocks by the water - could be his last. It is as if the realization of this strengthens his senses. In an almost sublime way, he conveys the beauty of the Stockholm archipelago and the love for women, for life and for art. The impressionistic ease with which he captures his subject is contrasted with a palpable sense that all that is beautiful and beautiful is impermanent. This sense of melancholy is present in much of the Northern Light painting of the turn of the century, but in the case of Rudolf Gitsler, his own fate becomes a further catalyst. Completely in line with the spirit of the times, he reproduces the inner experience of the subject, rather than simply depicting it. At the same time as the feeling of melancholy, there is a light and a certainty of faith, where the static darkness and weight of the rocks is contrasted with the constant movement of the bright water.

On January 14, 1906, Rudolf Gitsler died at the Mörsil sanatorium in Jämtland, where he had been treated for his tuberculosis. A predicted brilliant career had thus been prematurely terminated, just as it had begun. Works by Rudolf Gitsler are very rare on the market.