About the Work
Friedrich Metz took this sketchbook with him on excursions and hikes from about 1845 to 1855. According to the manufacturer’s label on the inside front cover, it was bought in Munich. The first drawings were made in the surrounding area of the Bavarian royal capital and of Augsburg. Further studies apparently followed on a journey to South Tyrol in 1848 (see sheet 45 recto and the sketchbook documenting this journey, Inv. SG 2821, Städel Museum). The drawings in the book, mostly made with a sure hand with a pencil, rarely with a pen in blue-grey or grey-brown, mainly show landscapes, also some buildings, and occasionally studies of trees and bushes or animal sketches. Numerous inscribed sheets were later cut or torn close to or directly at the fold ‒ probably by Metz himself.
Due to its many years in use, the sketchbook also documents a section of Friedrich Metz’s artistic development. For example, he repeatedly drew gently bending trees and bushes in the wind in wide landscapes with the same rapidly set, fluidly curved strokes that have regularly appeared in his sketchbooks since the late 1840s (see e.g. Inv. SG 2770, Städel Museum). At the same time, the book contains a number of individual drawings, such as the depiction of a tree in front of a mill on sheet 37 verso, dated 1855, which are characterised by the very quick, energetic, comparatively angular strokes that increasingly dominate the artist’s later sketches (see e.g. Inv. SG 2761 or SG 2767, Städel Museum).
For a full sketchbook description, please see “Research”.
