Vegetable garden in Plankenberg in September

Emil Jakob Schindler's 1885 view of a vegetable garden at his summer residence in Plankenberg is characteristic of his Stimmungsimpressionismus — the distinctly Austrian approach to landscape painting that privileged mood and atmosphere over the brighter, more optically focused French Impressionist manner. Schindler was the dominant figure in Austrian landscape painting in the 1880s and the father-in-law of Gustav Mahler; his circle at Plankenberg was a center of Viennese artistic and intellectual life. This intimate garden view, now in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, represents the quiet, domestic side of a painter also known for more ambitious Dalmatian and Hungarian landscapes.

Schindler renders the late-summer garden in soft, warm tones — the fading greens and ochres of September foliage and vegetable beds. His handling is atmospheric and tonal rather than optically divided, with the forms dissolving at their edges into the surrounding air. The light has the particular quality of late-season afternoon — warm but slightly melancholy.