Carl Wilhelm Kolbe
Auch ich war in Arkadien (I Too Was in Arcadia)

Auch ich war in Arkadien (I Too Was in Arcadia)

Public Domain

Auch ich war in Arkadien (I Too Was in Arcadia)
CultureGerman
Titles
  • Auch ich war in Arkadien (I Too Was in Arcadia)
Datebefore 1801
PlaceGermany
MediumEtching
DimensionsPlate: 15 1/8 × 19 7/8 in. (38.4 × 50.5 cm)
Sheet: 16 1/4 × 20 7/8 in. (41.3 × 53 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the Marjorie G. and Evan C. Horning Print Fund, Benjamin and Renée Danziger in honor of Barry Walker, and by Nina and Michael Zilkha
Object number96.698
Not on view

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Object Type
Description

After studying French as a youth, Carl Wilhelm Kolbe attended the Berlin Academy of Art. The academic training led him to draw by observing plaster models and classical sculpture, but his true passion was landscape imagery, as seen here in his most famous etching, I Too Was in Arcadia.


After teaching himself printmaking, Kolbe became the finest German etcher of his time. His etchings featuring idyllic landscapes, which were inspired by 17th-century Dutch landscape paintings and the forests of Dessau, were the source for German Romanticism. He produced 28 highly personal etchings in which giant vegetation dwarfs the human figures. This young couple, nude yet modest, is in Arcadia, a region in ancient Greece that symbolizes a pastoral paradise. The couple fix their gaze on the Latin inscription on a tomb translated by Kolbe as “I too lived in Arcadia.” This phrase is an example of memento mori, a cautionary reminder of the transitory nature of life and the inevitability of death. Arcadian landscapes such as this one were immensely popular among German artists of the late 18th century.


Provenance Research Ongoing Exhibition History"Acid on Metal: The Art of Etching and Aquatint," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 11 September - 27 November 2011.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Printed under the image: "Auch Ich War in Arkadien C.W. Kolbe. fec."
Catalogue raisonnéMartens 96; Jentsch 231

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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