Mountains over Lake Hallstatt

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller

1840

Oil on panel

Minneapolis Institute of Art

A lone figure rows a boat across a calm lake, with steep, sunlit mountains rising in the background and rocky, tree-covered shores in the foreground. A lone figure rows a boat across a calm lake, with steep, sunlit mountains rising in the background and rocky, tree-covered shores in the foreground. The Austrian academic painter Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller distinguished himself in landscape and still-life painting, dedicating his art to the close study and accurate rendering of nature. This view of Lake Hallstatt, in the Salzkammergut Mountains (east of Salzburg), captures the exhilarating range of colors, textures, and forms found in the nature and the wondrous effects of shifting light and shadow revealed to those who look for them. He presents the alpine lake and its surrounding