Storms and bad weather, dramatically roiling clouds, windblown treetops and rain-covered plains – that is vintage Adolf Stäbli (1842 – 1901), the painter and draughtsman from Brugg in the Canton of Aargau. Stäbli was highly acclaimed during his lifetime for his atmospherically charged landscapes, not just in Switzerland but also far beyond its borders and especially in his adopted home, Munich. His preference for rain- and thunderstorm-ridden landscapes even earned him the reputation of being the «Ruisdael of the nineteenth century.»

The Aargauer Kunsthaus is devoting an exhibition to this landscape painter that focuses on the specific way in which he structures his paintings. It assembles numerous variations and studies of the same motifs, thereby illustrating the artist’s lifelong struggle to develop innovative compositional schemata and the way in which he applied these to landscapes in his native country, Switzerland – among other places in Lower Aargau and in Ticino – and in Upper Bavaria.