Landscape at Sunset

Böcklin painted this in 1849, when he was 22 and had not yet found the strange mythologies he became known for. The year before, he had been in Paris and watched the street fighting of the 1848 revolution. Now he was working through calm landscapes like this one, a wide view held in the low warm light of a setting sun. In March 1850 he set out for Rome, and Italian light and old ruins would slowly pull his art toward gods, nymphs and sea monsters. This sunset view is among the last things he painted before that journey south.