This rare topographical Caucasian view depicts Truso Valley with river Terek by the village Kertesi in South Ossetia. The Truso valley opens up to the main road connecting Kasbegi with Tbilisi and runs north-east of South-Ossetia. Earlier it was the part of Georgia , now belongs to the Republic of South Ossetia. The author of this landscape painting is German artist Waldemar Gustav Knoll ( 1829 Berlin - 1909 Coburg). He studied at the Berlin Academy in 1846-49 under E.Biermann and L.Zielke , travelled Tirol and Turingia and debuted at the Berlin academical exhibition in 1848 with his "View of Franciscus monastery in Bozen". He was a decorative painter at Berlin´s Victoria Theatre , he followed in 1863 on mediated by the Prince Toumanoff reputation of the Grand Duke Mikhail,who was at the time the General Governor of Caucasus, to Tbilisi as a set designer and decorative boss at the Imperial Theatre, He painted ceilings and curtain decorations of this theater During his stay in Tbilisi lasting until 1872 the painter has also frequently held landscape motives of the great mountain world of the Caucasus in paintings and sketches, which were purchased mostly to Russian private ownership. Especially the play of light and shadow in the gorges of the high mountains and thunderstorms mood he took like a reproach his studies .Bei his return to Germany he settled first in Dresden, where he led the artistic director of the Court Theatre performances, settled in 1878 in Frakfurt a M. and worked there until 1899 at the United theaters. in 1899 he moved back to Coburg. He is the founder of the Coburg Art Association. The Town of Coburg has his landscape painting of 1905. The painter worked as an employee of Farnkfurter Illustrated Newspaper. In 1893 he published an illustrated article "Images from the Caucasus," The auction of his artistic legacy found in the Munich galerie halfling ion 07.06.1910 and included 28 landscape paintings, 20 watercolors and numerous sketches and studies of the visited countries, including some folk figural studies of caucasian peoples.

Provenance: noble German private collection.

Literature: Thieme/Becker "General Arists Lexicon" (in German), Leipzig, 1999.

Inscription: signed and dated (19)04 lower right , on the reverse of the stretcher there is the original artist`s inscription in German : " Kaukasus. Terek Truso Tal, Georgien, Ketrisi. Knoll, 1904" (in English: caucasus, Terek Truso Valley.."

Technique: oil on canvas, Original period frame.

Measurements: unframed w 32 " x h 24 " (81 x 61 cm), framed w 37 " x 29 1/8 " (94x 74 cm).

Condition: original good condition.