About the work
From an elevated vantage point our gaze falls onto a narrow stream in the foreground and the rising slopes beyond, where peasants are working in the fields. This densely structured, expansive composition is framed by the edge of the forest in the right background. The painting was executed during a journey through the Palatinate and the countryside on and around the Rivers Saar and the Lahn which Heck undertook in the autumn of 1933. With the focus of his creative interest and ambition lying in the richness of form and the varied tonality of the autumnal landscape, this representation is distinguished by its austere tectonic form and rigid compositional structure. (...)
(from the catalogue text by Andreas Gabelmann)