In its free, study-like style, the view, which appears spring-like in fresh yellow and green tones, is characteristic of the artistic approach to nature in Josef Wenglein's work. As a student of Adolf Heinrich Lier, plein-air painting was of great importance in search for motifs and in capturing the colorful and atmospheric impression in a smaller, more handy format. As early as in the 1860s, he went on numerous hikes with Lier in the region around Munich, which he captured – guided by a proto-impressionist interest in light and color – in oil studies characterized by painterly freshness and spontaneity. Lier had come into contact with the painters of the Barbizon school in France and also made his pupil familiar with their plein-air painting. He created paintings of the Isar regions at different times of the day and year, of the wide landscape in the Dachauer Moos and Chiemgau and, above all, of the area around Bad Tölz, where Wenglein finally settled. Classical compositional schemes dissolve more and more through such direct encounters with nature, and especially in the small oil paintings created in front of the motif, an immediacy of the impression and a relaxed approach to nature can be seen, which is often captured in very individual image details . In 1883, Wenglein was appointed professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, which underlines his status as one of the last important landscape painters of the Munich school. A number of his works are in the collection of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and the Neue Pinakothek in Munich. [KT]