A Young Archer
Albert Kornek
- Artist
- Albert Kornek (Breslau, 1813 – Berlin, 1905)
- Date
- 1880
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- H. 78.5 × W. 65.5 cm
- Provenance
- Collection of the artist (stamp on reverse of stretcher)
Sale after the artist's death, Berlin, Rudolph Lepke, 20 February 1905
Bibliography
Friedrich von Boetticher, Malerwerke des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, Boetticher's Verlag, Dresden, 1895, pp. 744–745.
Born in Breslau in 1813, Albert Kornek trained at the Berlin Academy and subsequently in Karl Sohn's studio in Düsseldorf. A portraitist and painter of Romantic subjects, he worked from the 1840s for the Prussian court. His Junger Schütze (Young Archer) is documented by Friedrich von Boetticher in his catalogue of nineteenth-century German painting.
The painting depicts a young archer seen three-quarters, his gaze turned toward an unseen horizon. The palette of deep browns sets off the luminosity of the face and hands, the figure standing out against a dark background animated by a twilight sky. By isolating his subject from any precise historical context, Kornek transforms him into a figure of heroic youth emblematic of late Romanticism.