ABERLI, JOHANN LUDWIG Trumeau mirror with portrait... Lot 7

ABERLI, JOHANN LUDWIG Trumeau mirror with portrait of a distinguished couple of children. Oil on canvas, wood, set and partially gilded, brass, verso sig. u. dat. 1767, 80x62 cm (painting) and 199x112 cm (with mirror) Arrangement of an 18th century painting and a 19th century trumeau. Provenance: patrician property of old Bern; private property, Switzerland. Johann Ludwig Aberli served an apprenticeship with Winterthur landscape painter Heinrich Meyer and moved to Bern at the age of 18, where he worked as a flat and portrait painter. He continued his education in the drawing school of Johann Grimm and became his successor in 1747. After a trip to the Bernese Oberland, the painter developed a keen interest in landscape painting. In the 1750s he opened his own studio with workshop and publishing house and later also a store in Bern, where he offered drawings, watercolors, paintings, prints and painting utensils for sale. On the occasion of a trip to Paris in 1759, he visited the publishing house of the engraver Johann Georg Wille, whose working group of draftsmen, engravers and printers was to make a lasting impression on him. Johann Ludwig Aberli gained particular attention for his "pleinair" landscapes, which he captured on canvas with obsessive precision. The artist also invented the "Aberlische Manier", a technique that allowed for faster reproduction of watercolors with the help of printed outlines. Although his skills were not based on an academic career but on regional customs, Johann Ludwig Aberli can be described as a pioneer of a widely adapted Swiss landscape painting, which was based on a precise study of nature, an orientation towards miniature painting and 17th-century Dutch art, as well as on working in groups of works. http://www.dobiaschofsky.com/d106--10007.html