The painting technique, if compared to the
The Oaks in Mestni log (
NG S 127), is more spontaneous, but well-considered in terms of composition – the line of the tree-tops approximately corresponds to the one formed by the mountains and the clouds. The forest path on the right is a kind of a
repoussoir, while on the green surfaces there is a play of green and dark tones which flatten the image in the modernistic manner. The work was most likely created in front of the natural motive, accounting for the smaller format as well as pasteboard as the support.
Karinger painted this landscape in the last years of his life, when he was active in the organization of exhibitions in Ljubljana of the branch establishment of the Austrian Art Society, travelled a lot, and was retired and financially secured. Relief from existential expectations of the clients and the public is demonstrated in the painter’s work in unexpectedly modern and relaxed style, when formalist questions come to the fore rather than verism and the pleasure of the motif. Karinger’s late plain-air studies thus represent a bridge between the Romantic and Biedermaier landscape painting and realistic research.