Berglandschaft mit See und Wasserfall 

Franz Kobell created this landscape with brush and gray ink in the late 18th or early 19th century. This work presents an idealized view of nature, carefully composed, in line with the aesthetic sensibilities of its time. Kobell was a German artist working in an era defined by emerging Romanticism, which emphasized emotion and the sublimity of nature. Note how this drawing is not merely a record of a real place, but an artful arrangement. The figures are small and their labors seem harmonious with the setting. The waterfall and distant mountains evoke a sense of awe. The work resonates with the changing attitudes toward nature that were emerging at the end of the 18th century. To fully understand a work like this, one might look at the aesthetic theories circulating at the time in Germany, the development of landscape painting as a genre, and the social history of leisure and attitudes toward the natural world.