This painting employs a traditional aerial view, with the subjects in the foreground depicted in stronger, more detailed tones, and the illuminated mountains in the background painted with broader strokes. The northern ridge rising above the lake is reflected in its surface. The staffage in the foreground hints at the simple, pristine environment around the lake, which today is one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations.
Karinger also produced a larger, more detailed version of this motif (NG S 138), with the view differing in the shape of the mountains, and there’s also a small hill on the right with a large building on it. The comparison shows how, even when depicting a real scene from a plein air sketch he’d already produced, the painter still subjugated reality to his own artistic license and romantic expression. Within his opus, Karinger’s panoramas of Bohinj can be compared to his portrayals of the Bay of Kotor, in which the ridges and crags similarly soar dramatically above the water’s surface – this time, the sea.