Landscape in Semmering 1907

Koloman Moser made this landscape painting, a vertical rectangle mostly greens and browns, probably en plein air. Can you feel what it would have been like to stand there, in Semmering, painting? I can almost smell the sap from the trees and feel the sun on my skin. It’s all very lush and impressionistic, and Koloman is clearly interested in the patterns and textures of nature. Look at those fir trees. I bet he stood there, brush in hand, thinking about how to capture it all. The thickness of the leaves, the height of the mountain, the way the light filters through the branches. He's trying to flatten it all into shapes, into a composition. What I like is that it feels unresolved. It’s not just a pretty picture of a place, but a record of an artist's looking, thinking, and painting. And that is a kind of conversation between Koloman and me, and between all painters, really.