About the Work
Friedrich Metz used this sketchbook mainly with a pencil and, among other times, in September 1878 during the second part of a journey through Scandinavia (see Inv. SG 2767, Städel Museum, for the first stages of this journey). From the date and place information given underneath some of the drawings by the 58-year-old artist, as well as from individual notes related to the journey, it is clear that Metz first stayed in Norway, in Kongsberg in the province of Viken and in Christiania (today Oslo), then spent a few days in Gothenburg and Trollhäten in Sweden. In order to put his travel impressions, which he noted down with quick strokes, on paper, Metz turned the portrait-format booklet usually 90 degrees to the right and reproduced what interested him – farmsteads and barren terrain, views of towns and cities, and forest and river landscapes – in landscape format. The studies remain largely sketchy.
In the second half of the book, there are similarly quickly jotted down landscape studies which, according to the occasional date and place, Metz made in Germany in the years 1880 and 1883, for example on the Lahn, near Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe and near Heidelberg.
For a full sketchbook description, please see “Research”.
