Peasants resting in a landscape

This delicate miniature landscape is one of some 300 etchings produced by Ferdinand Kobell, court painter to Maximilian III Joseph, Elector of Bavaria in Munich. Kobell borrowed his artistic vocabulary from the Dutch artists of Holland’s Golden Age, such as Nicolaes Berchem. Like this forebear, Kobell was particularly attentive to the effect of light. Here we see how carefully he modulated the strength of his lines so that figures and trees seem to dissolve in the distance.