View at Eller 1886

Hugo Mühlig created this small oil painting, titled View at Eller, sometime before his death in 1929. The rough texture of the brushstrokes is clearly visible, especially in the foreground, where the artist has built up thick layers of paint to represent the muddy road. This is called ‘impasto,’ and it's a technique that emphasizes the materiality of the paint itself. Look at the way Mühlig has captured the light. You can see he laid down strokes of contrasting color, rather than blending them together. There is a great sense of immediacy, as though he was rapidly capturing the scene before him. And indeed, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many artists worked ‘en plein air,’ directly in the landscape. This allowed them to respond to the transient effects of light and weather. Paintings like View at Eller invite us to reflect on the labor of art, and the economic and social conditions of its production. Mühlig's choice of subject matter, a rural scene with working-class figures, also speaks to the changing social landscape of his time.