View To The Mount Santis 1925

Willy Schlobach made this painting of Mount Santis with oil on canvas sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. The marks are small and dab-like, like he’s touching the canvas gently, building the mountain and the sky with a kind of soft, repetitive motion. I can imagine him, brush in hand, trying to capture that monumental peak, not with grand strokes, but with this quiet dedication. What's he thinking as he daubs? Is he meditating on the mountain's permanence, or maybe on the fleeting light playing across its surface? I think painting like this is less about showing what’s there, but more about feeling what’s there. Notice how the cool blues and purples of the mountain contrast with the warmer yellows and pinks of the sky. It’s not just a visual thing, right? It gives the whole scene a kind of dreamlike quality. I love that painting is a conversation across time, painters looking and learning and riffing off each other and off the world, too. It’s never fixed. It's always open to how we feel and what we see.