Koch's landscapes are firmly rooted in the classical tradition, both in their artful composition and the staffage and views they depict. Deeply inspired by the classical writers Ovid and Aeschylus from an early age, as well by Michelangelo, Raphael, and the seventeenth century classical paintings of Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain, Koch nevertheless believed that neoclassicism could and should blend seamlessly into Romanticism and have ideological motivations.

Painted circa 1834-37 Landscape with Apollo among the shepherds epitomises Koch's idealising classical landscapes. The artist clearly attached considerable importance to this composition, as he painted it seven t.mes s between 1833 and 1837. Of these versions, four are in museum collects ions: in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich (1833); in the Thorvaldsen Museum Copenhagen (1834-35); in the Tiroler Landesmuseum, Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck (1836-37); and in the Georg Schäfer Museum, Schweinfurt (1837). A related drawing is in the collects ion of the Städel Museum, Frankfurt (circa 1832).

On 6 April 1835 Koch wrote to his friend Fischer about the version he painted for Thorvaldsen: ‘I am currently painting Apollo among the shepherds. Pan on the other side of a stream has been playing his Syringa, and now Apollo is playing his delightful lute. Satyrs, fauns and nymphs are resting in the shade of fig trees and vines, etc. A sort of Alpine procession of rams, goats and sheep together with their happy shepherds are crossing a sunny mountainous range, in short, I believe I have painted Arcadia.’

The painting spirits the viewer into a t.mes less, bygone realm populated by fauns, shepherds, shepherdesses, and their animals. From the foreground, the eye is led by clear compositional serpentine lines over pastures, along the lush stream with its cascades to sunny plateaus and rugged hills, to evoke a harmonious, lush and verdant arcadian idyll. The landscape itself was inspired by the environs of Olevano. The composition is divided into two halves by the central stream: on the right, Pan and his followers, and on the left, Apollo and the shepherds. The resting rams in the foreground embody the serenity and peacefulness of the moment. A procession of shepherds and their herds moves from the sunny bay in the upper left upwards towards the craggy hilltop in the upper right. The entire landscape is bathed in sunlight, imbuing the composition with a sense of warmth and carefreeness.

The importance Koch attached to tempering observed reality with aspects of the sublime or mythology is perhaps a reflection of his rural upbringing. Koch himself started life as a shepherd boy in the remote Tyrolean valley in which he was born. His talents as a draughtsman attracted the attention of the Bishop of Augsburg, who funded his education at the Dilling Seminary and then his art training at the Karlsschule in Stuttgart. Yet, like Schiller before him, Koch felt stifled by the school's harsh drill and fled by way of Strasbourg to Switzerland. Having joined the Jacobin Club in Strasbourg, the young artist was inspired by the Alps and their remoteness from the political turmoil in his homeland to project his love of liberty and unity into art. Apart from a brief three year intermezzo in Vienna from 1812 to 1815, which he also found intolerable, Koch lived in Rome from 1795 until his death, his adopted country providing him with his greatest creative inspiration.

In Rome, Koch proved an immensely influential figure on the succeeding generation of German Romantic painters working there, including the Nazarenes, Friedrich Overbeck, Wilhelm von Schadow, Philipp Veit, Carl Philipp Fohr and Carl Rottmann, as well as Friedrich Preller, Peter von Cornelius, and Bertel Thorvaldsen.

We are grateful to Professor Christian von Holst for endorsing the attribution to Joseph Anton Koch on the basis of digital images.