Landscape with Trees and Fountain

Special exhibitions offer the opportunity to engage with works which, unlike collection highlights, are not immediately focal points. During preparations for the exhibition Nature in Image. Austrian Baroque Landscapes (2021) new findings emerged on the hitherto unstudied painting Landscape with Trees and Fountain, previously listed simply as “Austrian”.
Trees surround an elevated clearing, where the striking feature is a hexagonal fountain-basin with a single-step base, with boulders lying beside it. Visible through the thicket of trees is a niche-like structure with a splendid vase, forming part of the fountain architecture. On the left, the forest opens on to a view down a terraced slope. The path leading downwards from the clearing runs by a hedge, a meadow, a village with a tall church spire, a wood and two mountain ranges, the more distant one reminiscent of the Untersberg massif.
The mountains, rendered in soft blue tones, merge into sunlit clouds, then into the blue of the sky – from the dark forest into the light-flooded landscape. The natural world is uninhabited; only the architectural elements of the fountain and the village indicate the landscape as a human habitat. The work is characterised by the complete absence of staffage figures.
With its colour palette reduced to green, blue, brown, beige and white, the painting has no intense colours, and the shades of blue and green, together with the rendering of the foliage, show similarities with the work of Flemish artists. The preparations for Nature in Image confirmed the need to examine the original more closely, when the signature “R. Meganck” was discovered in the bottom left-hand corner, allowing the work to be attributed to the Flemish painter Renier Megan(ck).

Translated catalogue text from:
Ducke Astrid: Eine „österreichische Barocklandschaft“ von Renier Megan(ck). In: Thomas Habersatter, Ducke Astrid (Hrsg.): Natur wird Bild. Österreichische Barocklandschaften. Residenzgalerie Salzburg. Salzburg 2021, S. 31–39, Abb. 6, S. 32.

Translation: Gail Schamberger MA, Salzburg