Wooded Landscape with Girl

Waldmüller’s small painting, dating from his early period, is surprising in its constricted pictorial space. The boscage looks impenetrable, no sky is visible, and only along the gently rippling brook does the undergrowth thin out before disappearing round a bend. Waldmüller creates a convincing spatial depth by means of the overlapping tree-trunks and branches, the different green shades of the leaves and the terrain, together with the light situation. The clothing of the girl stepping into the water provides a colour accent.
The artist may have modelled the scene on a real place, such as the Vienna woods, propagating as he did a more naturalistic rendering. Only some decades later would Austrian landscape painting once again take up this form of representation.

Habersatter Thomas: Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Wooded Landscape with Girl, in: Ducke Astrid, Habersatter Thomas (Hrsg./Edi.): von | from 0 auf | to 100. Residenzgalerie Salzburg 1923-2023. Salzburg 2023, S. 344-345