Karl Heffner,
The Norfolk Broads
Case Study
An atmospheric late 19th-century oil painting by German artist Karl Heffner (1849-1925) depicting a flooded view on the Norfolk Broads at twilight.
Assessment
The painting arrived with extensive yellowing to the varnish, which was concealing a bright luminous vista.
Approach
The varnish proved relatively straightforward to remove and gradually the landscape was revived.
Result
As you can see, the transformation was scintillating and the work is now deemed as one of the artist’s finest examples. Unquestionably increasing its value.
Karl Heffner
(1849-1925)
Karl Heffner was a well-regarded German landscape painter in oils and watercolours. He trained in Munich under Adolf Stademann and Adolf Heinrich Lier. His works are held in numerous public collections including at the V&A in London.
The turbulent British weather with its electrifying mood swings, rapid showers and unpredictability has often been the butt of numerous jokes by those sheltering in warmer abodes. Much like its inhabitants, the no-nonsense climate bustles with eccentricity - the damp chill of an October morning morphs into a radiant mid-afternoon and concludes with thunder.
European artists have traditionally tended to avoid it, preferring instead the promise of brighter, less erratic, environs on the continent. Pitching their easels in France, Germany, and Italy in a fervent light-obsessed pilgrimage. But Karl Heffner was altogether different, rather than join his artistic brethren, he crossed the Channel to tackle the wilds of the English countryside.
His interpretation of the British landscape was unusual, subdued, and at times desolate. Leafless trees stretch for passing clouds, their sinuous limbs scrabbling for light in a symphony of feathery brushwork. Figures stand silhouetted, bitten by a chill whipping across a wetland. Humans a mere fleck within nature’s tangled brush. The Norfolk Broads had never seemed so poetic.
Various exhibitions beckoned and two of his works ended up at the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A). It’s said that landscape painter Benjamin Williams Leader (1831-1923) was so enthralled that he changed his approach upon seeing them. Before long, the American critics took note and his success was solidified.
Today, Heffner totters on the edge of obscurity, lost to the record books and dusty archives of Victorian magazines. He’s rarely discussed when considering the evolution of 19th-century British landscape art, but also overlooked in Germany. His greatest legacy was capturing the quiet beauty that radiates between transient moments. Perhaps it took a German to figure that out.