About the Work
In his sketchbook, probably used among other occasions during a trip to Greece in September and October 1881, Friedrich Metz mainly made sketches of rocks and mountains. There are also drawings of trees and buildings in barren landscapes; only a few pages were left blank or torn out.
The journey to Greece took Frederick Metz – according to the scattered notes on locations – to Salamis, Piraeus, Munychia, Corinth, Mycenae and Argos. Along the way, the artist drew close-ups of boulders and rocks, views of stony and rugged terrain, scree slopes and hills broken up by cave entrances, as well as distant views of mountain ranges and landscapes. For his drawings, mostly outlined with rapid strokes and usually in landscape format, as well as for his sketches sometimes comprising several strokes, he mainly used a pencil, but he occasionally combined it with charcoal or even made a few charcoal drawings. The dates, which are often below the drawings and usually have no chronological order, and the rotation into landscape format, sometimes 90 degrees to the left, sometimes to the right, indicate that Metz occasionally drew in the book several times a day on randomly opened pages. He seems to have been less concerned with the capturing of precise details than with characteristic features, some of which he sketched roughly and most likely while standing.
For a full sketchbook description, please see “Research”.
