Christian Friedrich Gille was Johann Christian Dahl’s most prominent pupil in Dresden. Scarcely acknowledged during his lifetime, Gille’s oeuvre was rediscovered by the Bremen physician and art collector Johann Friedrich Lahmann (1858–1937), who had gone to Dresden in 1906. Lahmann bequeathed the treasures of his collection “as equally as possible” to the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden and the Kunsthalle Bremen. From a slightly raised vantage point, the oil sketch Red Houses affords an intimate, seemingly random view of gardens on the outskirts of Dresden. The high gable facade and the red tile roofs of the clearly outlined cubic houses stand out in the sunlight to colorful effect. The gardens have been depicted with flowing brushwork typical of Gille’s painting style, engendering an impression of sunlight without demarcating areas of light and shade. Gille’s unconventional oil sketches usually came about independently of his finished paintings. He did not personally consider them to be autonomous works of art. The technique of the oil sketch was something he had learned from Dahl. Gille had never traveled to Italy, where the oil sketch had become widespread by the 19th century.
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