New! Wooded Landscape with a Wayside Shrine – Barend Cornelis Koekkoek - Catholic Gift – Peaceful Catholic Wall Art – Archival Qualioty

Catholic landscapes were something we wanted to carry in this shop, but in the first few years we didn't think there were any. Gradually we began to find them as we scoured the art world, and they make us very happy. This particular genre, of the shrine in the woods, was very popular among the Germans and sometimes the French. Besides being beautiful, a forest can symbolize quite a few things, and the woodland shrine is like a window to Heaven.

Romantic painters especially loved to put Catholic touches in nature, explicitly manifesting the spiritual implications of that beauty and grandeur. Barend Cornelis Koekkoek (1803-1862) was a German painter of the Lower Rhine Region. He was one of the leading Romantic landscape painters of his era, called 'Prince of landscape painters' by his contemporaries. European royalty had to get in line when they commissioned his paintings.

Wealthy from his art, he built a tower in a hilly German village with a panoramic view of the Rhine and its forests, and he would paint up there every day. Occasionally he would add a shrine or a church to his landscape. They say he painted oaks in almost all of his paintings as symbols of strength and imperishability, standing for immortal life. They were perhaps for him windows into eternity, a leafy parousia. (source: www.simonis-buunk.com)

** IMPORTANT ** THE IMAGE IS SMALLER THAN THE PAPER! There is a blank border around the image. Approximately 0.5" wide for 5x7, 1.3" for 8.5x11, 1.6" for 11x14, and 1.75" for 13x17 and 16x20. For the two poster sizes, 18x24 and 24x36, we use 0.5" borders. We do this because the ratio of the rectangle of the art almost never matches the rectangle of the paper, and if it did happen to match one size, it would not match the others. Most fine art printers do this because otherwise they’d have to crop the art or warp it to make it fit the paper. The border looks good. It gives the picture a faux matted appearance.

There is almost always a little more border either on the left-right sides, or the top-bottom, depending on whether the ratio of the art is wider or taller than the paper.

We make Archival Quality fine art prints:

– Acid-free paper

– Archival pigments

– Cardboard backer for sizes 11x14 and less.

– Above story of the art

– Enclosed in a tight-fitting, crystal-clear bag.

– Rated to last 200+ years without fading if kept dry and out of the direct sun.

Thanks for your interest!

+JMJ+

Sue & John

Lincoln, Nebraska

You might also enjoy original Catholic Art and Jewelry by me, Sue Kouma Johnson, here on Etsy at www.Etsy.com/shop/TreeOfHeaven

Also, check out our Catholic Quote shop, where we are pairing authentic quotes from Saints with Art: www.Etsy.com/shop/CatholicQuote

“In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art.”

~ St. Pope John Paul II

Original image is out-of-copyright. Descriptive text and any image alterations (hence the whole new image) © by Sue Kouma Johnson – Classic Catholic Art.