Nathe studied in Leipzig with Adam Friedrich Oeser, who taught many important figures of the period including the writer and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the archaeologist and art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Oeser inspired Winckelmann’s philosophy "edle Einfalt, stille Grösse" (noble simplicity, quiet magnificence). Although Nathe went in his own direction, this meticulous landscape of sunlight striking rocks beside a brook reveals the influence of his teacher.