Sunburnt heather 

Wilhelm Amandus Beer made this watercolor painting, Sunburnt Heather, sometime in the mid-19th century. Beer was born in what is now Latvia but spent much of his career in Germany during a period of increasing national consolidation and identity formation. While Beer’s biography offers scant details on his personal beliefs or affiliations, this work speaks to the power of landscape as a site for the projection of cultural ideals. The vast expanse of heather, rendered in muted yellows and greens, suggests a space of both desolation and potential. It evokes the romanticism of the period. The focus on the natural world provided a sense of continuity with the past, and a vision of a shared cultural inheritance. The subtle, almost melancholic tones may reflect a longing for a simpler, more authentic existence, a common theme in the art of the period. Beer asks us to consider how we are shaped by the landscapes we inhabit and how those landscapes, in turn, are shaped by our collective memory and experience.