Scheune am Bach 1840

Ernst Ferdinand Oehme made this watercolor of a dilapidated barn by a stream some time in the first half of the 19th century. It is a potent image, and the barn becomes a symbol of the shifting social landscape of the time. Oehme lived through a period of intense social and political change in Germany, as industrialization and urbanization began to transform the traditional agrarian society. The broken-down state of the barn suggests the decline of this older way of life, its replacement by new economic models and forms of social organization. At the same time, the painting speaks to the growing interest in landscape and the natural world among artists and intellectuals of the time. Artists like Oehme, often working with the support of newly founded museums and academies, sought to capture the beauty and sublimity of nature, even as it was threatened by human activity. Art historians like myself look to letters, diaries, and exhibition reviews to understand this shift in taste.