Monastery building on the Herreninsel in Chiemsee

Wilhelm Trübner's 1874 painting of the monastery buildings on the Herreninsel in Lake Chiemsee is a companion to his jetty view from the same year and island. The Herreninsel had an Augustinian monastery whose buildings Trübner painted with the same direct, plein-air realism he brought to natural subjects. At this very moment, Ludwig II of Bavaria was beginning the process that would lead to the demolition of parts of the monastery to build his Herrenchiemsee Palace modeled on Versailles — making Trübner's unpretentious documentary view a valuable record of the island before royal fantasy transformed it. The Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin holds this as a direct, unrhetorical example of German plein-air painting.

Trübner renders the monastery buildings with the same direct, unconventional honesty he brought to all his subjects — architectural mass, texture, and the quality of lake light all observed with clear eyes and confident application. The palette is cool and clear, the Chiemsee light giving the scene a crisp quality. No atmospheric prettification softens the straightforward observation.