Herbert Boeckl

Dr Otto Brill, London
Hans Brill, London
Private collection, London

Gerbert Frodl, Boeckl, Salzburg, 1976, no. 161, listed p. 187
Herbert Boeckl. Retrospektive (exhibition catalogue), Vienna, Belvedere, 2009-10, no. 156, illustrated p. 356

The canvas is not lined and UV examination reveals some minor spots of retouching along the lower left edge and a further minor spot to the upper left corner. There is some stable shrinkage to some of the heavier impasto areas. A small area of craquelure lower right corner which is associated to a minor crease in canvas approximately 8cm in length. The work is in overall good condition and would benefit from a light clean.
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In Boeckl's vivid Stillleben mit Muschel und Buch, colour exists not to complement structural organisation, but to command it, and it does so brilliantly. Boeckl's thrusting use of scarlet and royal purple against a faded turquoise wall force the subject matter out towards the picture plane, the foreshortened book at odds with the flatness of the table, almost flush with the wall. In his typically bold manner, Boeckl relies far more on his vibrant palette than traditional pictorial space to describe his scene.

By the time Boeckl completed this painting in 1929, he was already well established as one of Austria's most preeminent artists. His rough landscape paintings from this time, with their impulsive, sporadic brushstrokes, speak of Boeckl's discovery of the work of Paul Cézanne in the avant-garde galleries of Berlin and Paris. Indeed, the vivacity of this still life also sings of the Expressionist's fascination with Cézanne. Indeed, the parallels between Boeckl's style and Cézanne's are clear. Cézanne, similarly preoccupied with the power of the artist's palette over composition, had given license to twentieth-century painters to exploit this new, liberated colour, and to use it to demonstrative effect. Here, Boeckl uses tools Cézanne had provided; but the result is an Expressionist creation that is uniquely Boeckl's.