Max Rabes, View from the Obersalzberg Toward the Hochkalter and Reiter Alpe, Berchtesgaden Alps, 1930s, Oil Painting on Canvas

Max Rabes

1868 Samter - 1944 Vienna

View from the Obersalzberg towards the Hochkalter and Reiter Alpe, 1930/1940

Oil on canvas

Signed lower right

Size: 50 x 70 cm

Frame: 61 x 81 cm

Good condition (see photos)

Authenticity will be confirmed in writing.

The painter Max Friedrich Ferdinand Rabes is among the best-known German artists of the period between the German Empire and the Second World War. Today, his name is primarily associated with vividly colored depictions of the Orient. However, this categorization is too narrow, as Rabes considered himself a versatile landscape, architectural, and travel painter. Against this backdrop, his depictions of the Berchtesgaden region are of particular interest. Max Rabes was born on April 17, 1868, in Samter in what was then the Province of Posen and later grew up in Berlin. His artistic training was not exclusively academic. Initially, he worked largely autodidactically from nature, later receiving instruction from the architectural and landscape painter Paul Graeb. Training as a decorative painter also gave him confidence in handling large canvases and architectural motifs. Rabes became famous primarily through his extensive travels. He visited the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Middle East. A highlight of his career was his participation in Kaiser Wilhelm II's 1898 tour of Constantinople and Palestine. This established Rabes as one of the socially recognized and internationally experienced German painters even during the German Empire. A loose, impressionistic approach to light and atmosphere became characteristic of his painting. Rabes was less interested in meticulous topographical rendering than in the visual impact of a landscape: sunlight, clouds, colored shadows, vegetation, and the effect of architecture within its surroundings. This aspect of his work is important when considering his connection to the Obersalzberg. Rabes explicitly did not want to be understood solely as an "Oriental painter." Landscapes from Germany and the Alpine region were also part of his repertoire. The mountainous landscape of the Berchtesgaden region offered a painter of his caliber almost ideal subjects. The monumental mountain ranges, the dramatic shifts in light, low-lying clouds, wooded slopes, and traditional farmhouses enabled precisely that combination of landscape, architecture, and atmosphere that particularly interested Rabes.

Obersalzberg is a district, or hamlet, of the market town of Berchtesgaden in the Upper Bavarian district of Berchtesgadener Land. Obersalzberg was part of the municipality of Salzberg until it was incorporated into Berchtesgaden on January 1, 1972. with the Pension Moritz, founded in 1877 by Mauritia Mayer and hosting numerous prominent guests, Obersalzberg became one of the cradles of tourism in the Berchtesgaden region. Around the turn of the century, many well-known figures, such as Carl von Linde, also established second homes in the village. Adolf Hitler first visited Obersalzberg in 1923 and regularly used it as a holiday retreat. Later, he rented a house there permanently and, after purchasing it, expanded it into the Berghof, a prestigious second residence. from 1933 onward, almost the entire district, including the Kehlsteinhaus (Eagle's Nest), became a restricted area for Hitler. Both the local population and the owners of the second homes were partially forcibly relocated; their houses were bought or expropriated and subsequently largely demolished. A bombing raid in April 1945 largely destroyed the buildings. The former residents' desire to return to Obersalzberg after the war and rebuild the original village never materialized. In the postwar period, the area was largely part of a recreation center for the American armed forces.