After he had married Isabella Kantioler, Alexander Koester moved to Klausen, his wife's hometown, in 1896. "The quiet life and the closeness to nature inspired him to calm landscape motifs. Those were the days of the 'reclaimed paradises‘ […]. Forest paths, boulders and rocks, secluded places, a pond, a creek emanate special intimacy. What seems secondary becomes primary, even the smallest natural form is worthy the depiction. The art historian Cornelius Gurlitt said at what he thought was the heyday of landscape painting: '[…] Depicting the world's most boring corners, nothingness, that taught us the what abundant beauty we are surrounded by. The painter no longer goes on extensive journeys, … a sense for the near and simple grows everywhere'." (Ruth Stein, in: Ruth Stein and Hans Koester, Alexander Koester 1864-1932. Leben und Werk, Recklinghausen 1988, p. 43).