Oil on canvas
61.7 x 51.2 cm
Circa 1905
Signed 'Charles J. Palmié
Charles Johann Palmié was a famed German Pointillist, or Neo-Impressionist, especially noted for being a founding member, with Wassily Kandinsky, in 1909, of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (NKVM) which prefigured the influential Expressionist Group, Der Blaue Reiter.
In ‘View of the Munich City Hall’ Palmié takes on the challenge of trying to capture the hazy light and air of ,what appears to be, a spring morning over Munich. Likely painted in 1905, this piece not only shows Palmié’s debt to the Impressionists but also to the Neo-Impressionists, as he is starting to use a variation of brushstrokes, both dashes and dots, applying them in differing directions to create a shimmering effect. The intriguing cropping of the tower is very modern and something that started coming into painting from the 1870s onwards largely due to the rise of photography and the influx of Japanese woodcuts into Europe, both of which changed artists’ approach to composition.
Born in 1863 in Aschersleben in Prussia, Palmié trained at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts for two years before moving, in 1884, to Munich, where he completed his artistic education, studying under August Fink. Palmié frequently travelled to paint, to the Alps, Wörnitz and Danube, originally, in a traditional style before engaging more with the avant-garde innovations of the time. He, in 1901, along with his wife, started an artist’s colony in Kallmünz, Bavaria, where Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter famously stayed in the summer of 1903. Heavily influenced by Monet, Palmié spent the summer of 1906 painting at the great artist’s home in Giverny which fuelled his desire to grasp and depict air, light and atmosphere. In 1909 Palmié, together with Kandinsky, Jawlensky and Münter, among others, became a founding member of the NKVM, however, he later resigned due to artistic differences. Two years later, he tragically died of a stroke.
