Neapolitanische Landschaft (Neapolitan Landscape), 1883

Oswald Achenbach captures the view from an elevated vantage point looking south towards Naples and across the bay to Mount Vesuvius, glowing in the evening sunshine. The narrow lane in the foreground is swathed in the subdued light of dusk. This has the effect of focusing our attention on the far distance rather than the foreground with its scenes of Italian folk life for which the artist had such a fondness. The location is most likely in the vicinity of the Castel Sant’Elmo in Naples. Although topographical accuracy clearly mattered a great deal to Achenbach, he also worked with architectural set pieces. This is evident from the white tower perched on a promontory above the street that recurs in the artist’s views of the Gulf of Naples painted from Posillipo, situated further north. Achenbach painted this work a year after his last major tour of Italy in 1882, when his impressions of Naples, a city he had visited twice before in 1857 and 1871, were still fresh in his mind.¹ It is an accomplished mood piece that shows the artist making skillful use of light to generate an overall impression that harmonizes perfectly both the city and its inhabitants and the sea and the volcano looming over it all in the background.