Danubian Landscape, Seen from the Bisamberg Hill

Around 1790 the Danube at Vienna still ran wild. It split into side arms around wooded islands and often flooded its banks, and only in the 1870s did engineers give it a single straight bed. Brand painted this view from the Bisamberg, the hill on the north bank where the river pushes through a gap in the hills into the Vienna basin. The water curves across the middle of the picture, with low green islands in it and thick floodplain woods on the near side. Across the river rises a steep slope crowned with buildings, which matches the Leopoldsberg and its church, and far off the city spreads out in the haze. The canvas is unsigned and less than half a metre wide, and the reddish slope in the foreground is laid in with a few quick strokes.