Earth, Air and Water

Sketches of a Ramble in the Eifel is the theme of this beautiful exhibition at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne.  Edward T. Compton was born in Stoke Newington, London in 1849, and died in Feldafing near Munich in 1921. Like many of his 19th century contemporaries he undertook sketching tours of the Rhineland and Moselle, but unlike them, he stayed.  In 1868, at the age of eighteen, he started making sketches while on a walking tour of the Eifel and then ventured further up the Moselle, one of his sketch map's shows the meandering route that he followed. His spontaneous watercolours dispense with preliminary sketches. Using thin pencil strokes, he marks at most the horizon and the outlines of striking pictorial elements, before proceeding immediately to using watercolour in strong, bold colours. Compton’s language of nature allows us to hear quiet sounds: the austere, the barren, but also the beautiful. Almost 150 years have passed, but Compton’s collected impressions of nature still arouse wanderlust and invite us to follow his trail, right on Cologne’s doorstep.

Wallraf-Richartz-Museum
Obenmarspforten, (am Kölner Rathaus), 50667 Cologne
T: 0221-221 21119
www.wallraf.museum