Shop art print and framed art The Great Piece of Turf by Albrecht Dürer

The Great Tuft of Grass (in German: Das große Rasenstück) is a drawing by Albrecht Dürer in watercolour and gouache (41 × 31.5 cm), currently held in the Graphic Collection of the Albertina Museum in Vienna. Dated lower right (on the ground), it was produced by the artist in his Nuremberg studio in 1503. It is a study depicting a group of wild plants, apparently taken from nature, including dandelions and large plantain. Along with The Hare (also in the Albertina Museum), the drawing is considered to be one of Dürer's masterpieces of realistic nature studies, and is sometimes considered to be one of the origins of the still life genre. In 1495, Dürer returned from his years of travel ("wanderjahre") in Italy and settled in Nuremberg, where he opened his studio. He was only twenty-four years old at the time, but his studio soon acquired a great reputation for the high quality of his work. In 1500, he painted what remains perhaps his most famous work, his Self-Portrait with Fur, now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. At the same time, he was producing smaller works on paper that focused more on the study of nature, such as The Great Tuft of Grass, done in 1503, and The Hare, drawn the previous year (25.1 × 22.6 cm, Vienna, Albertina Museum Graphic Collection). The drawing shows only a large clump of grass on marshy ground. The plant species are rendered with such a degree of realism that they can be precisely identified: cocksfoot, bentgrass, meadowgrass, daisy, dandelion, [...]

 

This artwork is a painting from the renaissance period. It belongs to the flemish & northern renaissance style.

 

« The Great Piece of Turf » is kept at Albertina Museum Collection of Prints and Drawings, Vienna, Austria.

 

Find the full description of The Great Piece of Turf by Albrecht Dürer on Wikipedia.