NIKOLAÏ ASTUDIN (1847-1925)
Die Loreley (132m - 433ft)
Germany
Engraving from an oil on canvas, 1910
The mountain
Die Loreley (132m- 433 ft) high is a slate cliff in the Upper Middle Rhine Valley World Heritage near the town of St. Goarshausen. The view of St. Goarshausen, from the Loreley outlook point, with Castle Katz and the view of the town St. Goar and its Fortress Rheinfels, leaves a wonderful impression on all Loreley tourists. The Rhine, at the Loreley, is up to 82 feet deep and only 371 feet wide. Because this area is so deep and narrow, it is one of the most dangerous places in the World Heritage Upper Middle Rhine Valley. Ships, crossing each other here and all along the section between Oberwesel and St. Goarshausen, are directed by light signals, called “Wahrschau”.The name comes from the old German words lureln, Rhine dialect for "murmuring", and the Celtic term ley ("rock"). The translation of the name would therefore be: "murmur rock" or "murmuring rock". The heavy currents, and a small waterfall in the area (still visible in the early 19th century) created a murmuring sound, and this combined with the special echo the rock produces to act as a sort of amplifier, giving the rock its name. The murmuring is hard to hear today owing to the urbanization of the area. Other theories attribute the name to the many accidents, by combining the German verb "lauern" (to lurk, lie in wait) with the same "ley" ending, with the translation "lurking rock".
In the German language orthographic reform of 1903, in almost all German terms the letter "y" was changed to the letter "i".
The rock and the murmur it creates have inspired various tales. An old legend envisioned dwarfs living in caves in the rock. The Lorelei have inspired as well quite a lot of artists, musicians and painters and poets, the most famous of them being Heinrich Heine (link to the full poem here)
The painter
Nikolai Lvovoch Astudin ( Николай Львович Астудин) was a Russian landscape painter.
Astudin was the son of an officer and completed his school education in Saint Petersburg. He then became a student of the landscape painter Armand-Théophile Cassagne (1823-1907) in Paris. Study trips lead him to Finland, to the Alpine countries and to Italy. As early as 1876 and 1877 Astudin had exhibitions in Berlin, and in 1885 in Zurich. Among his Bonner motifs are the Rhine Bridge (1898) and the Godesburg. In 1912, he moved to Oberlahnstein, where he lived until his death. In this late phase, he mainly painted the Rhine motifs and repeatedly painted Lahneck Castle and The Lorelei (above). Astudin was widely known for his Rhine paintings and the numerous reproductions of his Rhine views. His work is an expression of the Rhine and Eifelromantik of the early 20th century._______________________________
2017 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
