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La Serpentara near Olevano
Also known as: Open Woodland Near Olevano alla Serpentara
About the Artwork
Friedrich Preller studied in Weimer, Dresden, and Antwerp before winning a stipend from Grand Duke Karl Alexander von Sachsen-Weimar to study in Rome. During his years in Italy (1828-31), he formed important ideas about landscape painting that would develop into a long career in Germany as a landscape painter. Like his teacher in Italy, the painter Joseph Anton Koch, Preller was inspired by the area known as La Serpentara around the picturesque mountain village of Olevano, southeast of Rome. He made numerous trips there and was especially struck by the oak forest depicted in this drawing. He inscribed the drawing with the locale and date (2 June 1829) in its lower left corner. His lively pen work leaves the lightest areas in outline only, so that the white of the paper helps record the fresh and bright atmosphere of the scene, set in relief by darker areas of firm, parallel hatching. Preller later wrote about the area around Olevano: "Nowhere was the organic coherence in nature so clear as there, and my observation was mainly directed toward that."
Inscriptions
by artist, lower left, in brown ink: Olevano / alla Serpentara il 2 di Guinio / 1829.
Provenance
1971: with C. G. Boerner, Inc., Dusseldorf. 1971-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio.
Exhibition history
Year in Review: 1971. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 28, 1971-February 6, 1972). German Drawings of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries. The Cleveland Museum of Art (April 1-July 13, 1980). National Schools of Style. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 14-September 18, 1983). The German Tradition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 27-June 27, 1993). Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (May 23-August 19, 2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX (October 14, 2001-January 6, 2002).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Friedrich Preller (German, 1804–1878)
- Date
- 1829
- Medium
- pen and brown ink over black chalk
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 40.8 x 54 cm (16 1/16 x 21 1/4 in.)
- Type
- Drawing
- Classification
- Drawing
- Department
- Drawings
- Credit line
- Delia E. Holden Fund
- Accession no.
- 1971.12
More by Friedrich Preller in museum collections
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00011048
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