With his Black Forest scenes, Thoma epitomizes the idyll, a pictorial theme that has run through art since antiquity. Thoma was born in Bernau, where he attended drawing school and repeatedly returned in summer during his studies at the Karlsruhe Academy. He studied with Schirmer and his successor Hans Frederik Gude, who let classicist traditions live on in his art. In 1867, he moved to Düsseldorf, which was an important center of landscape painting at the time. It was precisely at this time that Thomas emancipated himself from the academic ideal: "Landscape painting also has a catch; the Schirmer School taught you composing - I usually couldn't do that with the impressions that the Black Forest had to offer, and generally couldn’t with what I had seen of landscape nature up to that point; the Black Forest fir trees didn't want to fit in at all, nor did the long mountain ridges, or the vast meadows - you couldn't even think of painting them" (Thoma, Im Herbste des Lebens, 1909, p. 28). In contrast to the still predominant Italian type, painters were now also discovering other regions that found their way into the landscape and redefined the panorama of what was worth painting in their individuality. Thoma broke away from academic compositions, daringly occupying the middle ground of the picture with the course of the river - where normally the view would have to go into the distance, an unusual and new perspective. Thoma often painted and drew directly in front of nature; in paintings he made in his studio, he then assembled the impressions in his own way. He used the tranquil Black Forest valleys with their magic atmosphere, as his motif. It was precisely these secluded valleys, protected by the surrounding hills, that became his favorite motif. His landscapes are characterized by a palette of green and ochre tones and an even distribution of light, which often lends the scenes an unreal character. A quasi-religious scene of paradisiacal atmosphere with children playing that form individual small color accents, in the green fields by the stream, which becomes a characteristic element for Thoma’s landscapes, running into the center of the picture. With the small farmhouse in the sheltered idyll in the valley, he staged the topos of the locus amoenus, the lovely place, which has existed in art and literature since antiquity. In paradisiacal seclusion, this is a place of endless spring, eternal youth and harmonious tranquillity outside of time and space. Thoma's landscape is also characterized by a peculiar timeless, almost dreamlike clarity. For Thoma, the attraction of these valleys and meadows, seemingly detached from reality, surely also lies in the comforting realization that such an earthly paradise, an imaginary utopian place, can actually be found in reality. [KT]