There are only a few landscapes of this outstanding quality that Erich Heckel made in 1907. In 1965, Paul Vogt, author of the catalogue raisonné, had to declare the majority of Heckel's paintings created between 1905 and 1910 destroyed or lost. And with the catalog raisonné published in 2017, edited by Andreas Hüneke, we gain certainty: A landscape from 1907 is very rare and special indeed.

Schmidt-Rottluff first visited Dangast in mid-May 1907, and Erich Heckel came to the small fishing village on the Jade Bay in the Oldenburg region in late June the same year. At the age of 24, the young Heckel, native of Döbeln in the gentle hills of the ‘Freiberger Mulde’ in Saxony, had found his first painter's paradise. The self-taught artist, who studied architecture in Dresden and worked in the architecture bureau of Wilhelm Kreis, experienced a creative boost under the vast skies of the Oldenburg countryside. The "Brücke" painters went on their legendary summer excursions to the Moritzburg Ponds near Dresden, generally regarded a first apex in the work of the artist group, only after Dangast, or simultaneously in the years 1909 and 1910. The paintings that Heckel and his friend Karl Schmidt-Rottluff created in Dangast and its surroundings between 1907 and 1912 are among the most consummate landscapes of German Expressionism. "It is incredible how strong the colors are here, an intensity almost too sharp for the eyes. Yet the color chords are of great simplicity. Painting here actually means: to be humble in front of nature, and to do so in the right place, perhaps that’s a definition of art," Schmidt-Rottluff wrote to Gustav Schiefler, Hamburg judge, art collector, patron and art critic, in 1909.
Heckel's impasto brushstroke is still strongly reminiscent of the powerful late impressionist phase of Vincent van Gogh. But the colorfulness derived from unmixed primary tones already corresponds far more to the revolutionary colors of the French "Fauves". During the four summers that Heckel and Schmidt-Rottluff spent in Dangast together, their style continuously developed towards a generous flatness that finally broke with the function of painting as an image of any kind of reality. The likeness in style to his friend Karl Schmidt-Rottluff is obvious, while the differences in character between the artist friends remained. Likewise, they also chose similar motifs of this landscape. Technique and painting style, such as the broad, impasto brush or even the use of painting putty, are also similar, and even the strong palette is common to both artists. Ernst-Ludwig Kirchner also developed a similarly rough, staccato style of painting at that time.

Erich Heckel painted an unusually color-intensive section of a summer landscape and captures it in complementary color contrasts that transform the calm noon in the marsh into an optical glow. A plane of pure colors, red and green, sprawls in front of a hedge in a strong green. The artist uses two smaller, barely visible trees to add perspective to the color blaze. The brushstrokes transform the surface of the painting into a dynamic field of forces; creating an impression characterized by artistic passion and spontaneity. In September 1907, Heckel wrote to Gustav Schiefler from Dangast: "I have been back here in peace and nature for a few days now, which makes me feel really good after the exhausting days of life in the city." (Heckel to Schiefler, https://www.kulturstiftung.de/mittag-der-moderne/) The earlier works that Heckel created during his stays in the Oldenburg Land show a mature artist with a palette of powerful and intensive colors who knows how to render homage to the flat coastal landscape with a grandiose color dynamic. [MvL]