Landscape
WILLIAM LOUIS SONNTAG (1822–1900)
Dream of Italy, about 1858–60
Oil on canvas, 35 1/4 x 55 in.
Signed (at lower left): W L Sonntag
EX COLL.: sale, Sotheby’s New York, September 13, 2006, no. 157; to [Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 2006–08]; to private collection, 2008–14
In the mid-1850s Sonntag set to work on a series of large Italianate landscapes, to which Dream of Italy belongs. The largest of these landscapes is a massive canvas (60 x 96 inches), also with the title Dream of Italy (1859, sold by Hirschl & Adler to The Dayton Art Institute, Ohio, in 2004), that was recently rediscovered after its whereabouts went unknown for over a century. Considered by Sonntag to be his magnum opus, Dream of Italy was intended from the start as a major exhibition piece. It was shown widely to enthusiastic audiences, provoked a controversy in the discourse on landscape painting, and thrust Sonntag into the limelight. A close reading of the critical response to Sonntag’s huge painting sheds light on the artist’s innovative contribution to landscape painting at this juncture.
Finished early in 1859, Dream of Italy immediately went on view at the Williams, Stevens and Williams Gallery, New York, in February of that year. Williams, Stevens and Williams had previously established itself as a major exhibition venue when Frederic Edwin Church’s monumental Niagara (1857, Corcoran Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) was shown there on two occasions in 1857 and 1858, attracting huge numbers of visitors. Sonntag’s picture garnered a great deal of critical attention. The critic in The Crayon felt that Dream of Italy was “a decided advance on the previous effort of this artist” (“Exhibitions,” The Crayon VI [December 1859], p. 382), while another critic called it “a work of high order and excellence, [which] will add measurably to the artist’s already eminent reputation” (“Art Gossip,” Cosmopolitan Art Journal III [December 1859], p. 233). The New York Herald gave the work an even more pronounced endorsement:
M. Sonntag’s “Dream of Italy,” at present on exhibition in the Dusseldorf Gallery, is a work to which full justice has not been done. It will never do to judge of such a composition by the strict canons of art as applied to landscape painting. The work is as it should be—full of poetic sentiment—exhibiting, it is true, in its expression some of the peculiarities of the painter’s early training, but still transcending in its aims and actual success similar efforts by older and more firmly established artists. . . . The painter seeks to present us with a vision embodying the traditions and climatic charms of that classic and poeti
Sonntag’s overall move toward Italianate subjects came during a time in which what was considered the ideal form of landscape painting was undergoing a great debate. While some critics, such as Henry Tuckerman, approved of the type of imaginary Arcadian scenes of Italy that Sonntag and others were producing during this period, others favored a more truthful, highly realistic and topographical style, as promoted by the influential English critic and historian, John Ruskin. Dream of Italy, Sonntag’s dreamy, high-keyed exhibition piece, served as a lightning rod for this debate, which is reflected in the differing responses in the press.
The success of Dream of Italy catapulted Sonntag momentarily into the front rank of artists in New York. In March 1860, one reviewer suggested that he “should be glad to see this noble work done on steel,” (“Art-Gossip,” Cosmopolitan Art Journal IV [March 1860], p. 34), although no reproduction of this work appears to have been produced. In May, perhaps due in part to the success of Dream of Italy, Sonntag was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design. He was advanced to full membership the following year.
Compositionally and stylistically, the present version of Dream of Italy is remarkably similar to the Dayton painting, with the same grouping of trees at left, overgrown stones in the foreground, and Temple of Venus at the right. There are slight differences in the bridges in the foreground and the middleground, and the general shape of the mountains in the distance. While there are no figures in the present canvas, the same dreamy, high-keyed light is employed in both, allying this painting closely with Sonntag’s working aesthetic of the late 1850s and early 1860s.