Description

Joseph Rebell was one of the most important painters of his time in Rome and Naples. His specialty was landscape views, his outstanding achievement was bringing light into the painting. The numerous views of the most beautiful points on the Gulf of Naples, the islands of Capri and Ischia in front of it, the fire-breathing Vesuvius and the picturesque places on the Amalfi coast show Rebell to be an outstanding nature observer. The figures are no longer staffage, but Rebell shows the fishermen and dockworkers at work and thus provides a vivid picture of everyday life at sea. During the last years of his life, Rebell, as director of the Imperial Picture Gallery in the Upper Belvedere, had also made fundamental structural changes and thus converted the summer palace into a museum.