Austrian artists – my daily art display

Broncia Koller-Pinell

I was reading an article entitled A Forgotten Fame in the German Arts magazine, Schirn Mag. It was about the life and works of the Austrian artist Bronislawa (Broncia) Pinell, later, Broncia Koller-Pinell and the headline read:

“…Broncia Koller-Pinell is listed as one of Austria’s most important female artists of the turn of the 20th century – but today her name has been almost entirely forgotten…”

She was an Austrian Expressionist painter who specialized in portraits and still-lifes. I was fascinated by what I read and so I decided to feature the young Austrian painter in one of my blogs. It is a strange story as she was listed as one of the most important Austrian artists of the turn of the 20th century – even though her name has by now largely slipped into obscurity.

Had you heard of her ?

Self Portrait by Broncia Koller-Pinell

Bronislawa (Broncia) Pineles was born on February 23rd 1863 in the town of Sanok, which is situated in the extreme south-east of Poland close to both the Polish and Ukrainian borders. She was one of five children brought up by Orthodox Jewish parents, Klara Chaja and Saul Pineles, an architect of military fortifications. She was the fourth-born of five children and had two older brothers, Markus and Stanislaus and an older sister Erika, and younger brother Friedrich. Later in life, Dr. Stanislaus Pineles, became a lawyer and lecturer at the University of Vienna, and Friedrich Pineles, a physician at the Wiener Allgemeine Krankenhaus and later head of the Franz-Josefs Ambulatorium.

Egon Scheile and his wife Edith by Broncia Koller-Pinell (1918)

At the age of seven, Broncia moved with her family to Vienna. Her father had set up a manufacturing business just outside the city. It was also the time when the family name was changed to “Pinell”. Broncia developed a love of art and her father Saul did everything he could to nurture his daughter’s love of painting and sketching. When she was eighteen, he had her receive private lessons from the sculptor Josef Raab and after Raab’s death in 1883, she was tutored by Alois Delug, the Austrian painter and later a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

Seated Woman (Marietta) by Broncia Koller-Pinell (1907)

In 1885, Broncia went to Munich and enrolled at the so-called “Ladies Academy” at the Munich Kunstverein and this presented the young painter with the opportunity to further professionalize her skills in a single-sex art class. The Munich Women Artists’ Association was founded in 1882 and according to the statutes, the primary goal was:

“…to give the ladies of the arts and crafts the opportunity for mutual stimulation in their work and mutual support in their endeavours, to raise a sense and taste for beauty and to develop artistic understanding in women’s circles more and more…”

Silvia Koller with Bird Cage by Broncia Koller-Pinell (c.1905)

It was during her five-year stay at the Lady’s Academy that she was able to study in the ateliers of the German artist and educator, Ludwig Heterich and Ludwig Kühn, the German Impressionist and Modernist artist.

The Artist’s Mother by Broncia Koller-Pinell (1907)

Broncia Pinell began exhibiting her work in 1888. However, it was not until 1892 when she achieved her first success with her paintings when they were exhibited at the Künstlerhaus in Vienna. The following year her paintings were well received at the Glaspalast in Munich and in 1894 at the Kunstverein in Leipzig. In 1896 she exhibited her works for the first time at the International Art Exhibition in Vienna.

Sleeping Child (The Artist’s Daughter, Sylvia) by Broncia Koller-Pinell (1903)

The year 1896 was also an important one for Broncia for this was the year she married Dr. Hugo Koller, a German Catholic physician and physicist, who studied medicine as well as mathematics and physics at the University of Vienna. This decision did not please her family because she was Jewish and her husband was Catholic and the children were raised as Christians, albeit Broncia did not convert to Catholicism. After marrying, the couple lived in Salzburg and later Nuremburg where Hugo held a leading position at Schuckert & Co., a German electricity company based in the city. Whilst living in Nurenburg, they had two children, Rupert in 1896 and Silvia in 1898. More about them later. In 1903 the family resettled in Vienna.

Nude standing in Front of a Mirror by Broncia Koller-Pinell (1904)

Once settled in Vienna, Broncia actively participated in the circles around the Vienna Secession, which was also known as the Union of Austrian Artists, or Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs. It was formed in 1897 by a group of Austrian painters, graphic artists, sculptors and architects, including Josef Hoffman, Koloman Moser, Otto Wagner and Gustav Klimt. The latter becoming a friend of Broncia and her husband. The Vienna Secession was an art movement, closely associated with Art Nouveau. The artists who formed this organisation were opposing the domination of the official Vienna Academy of the Arts, the Vienna Künstlerhaus, and official art salons, with their traditional orientation toward Historicism. Broncia was also involved with the Wiener Werkstätte, which was an association formed and brought together architects, artists, designers and artisans working in ceramics, fashion, silver, furniture and the graphic arts.

Die Ernte (The Harvest) by Broncia Koller-Pinell (1908)

Broncia’s husband Hugo Koller was an art collector and patron of the arts and he endorsed his wife’s artistic work and, through his good relations with the Secessionists and artists of the Wiener Werkstätte, he facilitated her access to exhibitions. In 1898 the family moved to Nuremberg. In 1903 the family moved back to Vienna and lived right next door to the Theater an der Wien.

Hugo Koller by Egon Schiele (1918)

Hugo built the first power plant in Lower Austria to power the factory in Oberwaltersdorf which was owned by his father-in-law, Saul Pineles. After the death of his father-in-law in September 1903, Hugo and Broncia inherited Saul’s Oberwaltersdorf estate and had the main residence extensively rebuilt.

House Koller in Oberwaltersdorf (Vienna), Austria.

The couple would often entertain guests from the art world here such as Josef Hoffmann, Kolo Moser, Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, as well as philosophers, musicians, and scholars. Broncia Koller had a special relationship with Klimt and his group of friends and she would exhibit her work alongside this group of artists and in 1913 she became a member of the Bund Österreichischer Künstler founded by Klimt, Moser, Hoffman, and others.

Erster Schnee” (Der Wiener Naschmarkt im Winter) by Broncia Koller-Pinell (1911)

Life’s pathway to being a respected artist was very bumpy for Broncia. There were two main reasons for this. Firstly she was a female and as such was looked down upon by some male art critics who, according to Albert Paris von Gütersloh, an Austrian painter and writer, despite her artistic accomplishments, her critics and even some of her “friends” labelled her with the stigma of being simply “the talented wife of a prominent husband” or “a painting housewife”. Sadly, like many Jewish women artists of her time, Broncia Koller-Pinell was supposed to fit into the male-ordained female role of just looking after the family and the home. The second reason as to why she had to fight all the way along her career path and parry male “put-downs” was that she was a prosperous Jew. That duel factor, coupled with the growing antisemitism in Austria after the First World War, was experienced ever more acutely by Broncia and other Jewish artists and their families.

Werden und Vergehen by Broncia Koller-Pinell (1920)

Bronica Koller-Pinell died in Oberwaltersdorf on April 26th 1934, aged 71. Her husband died in October 1949.

Junge Frau by Sylvia Koller (1924)

After completing her studies, her daughter Sylvia Koller worked as an artist in Vienna. She became a member of the Kunstschau and the Wiener Frauenkunst, at whose exhibitions she began entering her work in 1927. Being Jewish, it is probable that she was no longer allowed to work as an artist after the annexation of Austria. In 1937, three years after the death of her mother, she returned to Oberwaltersdorf and became a carer for her sick widowed father. In 1961, she organized the first posthumous exhibition of the work of her mother, Broncia Koller-Pinell. Silvia Koller not only posed for her mother several times but also for a number of artists including Egon Schiele. Sylvia died in 1988, two weeks before her eighty-fourth birthday.

Anna Mahler by Broncia Koller-Pinell (1921)

Anna Justine Mahler was the second child of the composer Gustav Mahler and his wife Alma Schindler. At the age of 16, Anna fell in love with a rising young conductor, Rupert Koller, the eldest child of Broncia Koller-Pinell and Hugo Koller. They were married on November 2nd 1920 but their marriage ended within months. She actually married and divorced five times during her life. Robert Koller was conductor at the Municipal Opera House in Elberfeld. He died in 1976.

I acquired a great deal of information for this blog from the following websites:

The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

Schirn Mag: Forgotten Fame

artvise.me: Viennese Modernism, 6 important female artists from 1900-1938

Hans Makart Revisited

Self Portrait by Hans Makart (1878)

The artist I am looking at today, and had written about in 2013, was one who was revered by many of the art critics of the time and yet hated by others, who baulked at his general lack of interest in factual accuracy in his depictions and for disparaging important episodes in history by including unwarranted female nudity in his paintings. It would appear that he refused to tone down his flamboyant lifestyle and was known as much for the outrageous society parties he held in his studio as for his works of art. Let me introduce you to the Austrian painter, Hans Makart.

Mirabell Palace and Gardens, Salzburg

“Hans” Johann Evangelist Ferdinand Apolinaris Makart was born to Johann Makart and Maria Katharina Rüssemayr in Salzburg on May 28^th, 1840. His father, an amateur painter, worked as the chamberlain of the Mirabell Palace, which was the home of the powerful Prince-Archbishop. Few facts are known about the early years of Makart, but because of his father’s job, it is thought that he grew up surrounded by the Neoclassical grandeur of this magnificent palace and its extensive Baroque gardens. It is more than likely that living amongst the splendour of the palace with its luxurious furnishings influenced young Makart who would later in life indulge in the excesses of extravagance and ornamentation as depicted in his artwork as well as his work as a designer and decorator.

The Valkyrie by Hans Makart (1877)

It seems likely that his father, having failed as an artist, urged his young son to take up painting and to endeavour to succeed where he had been unsuccessful. Sadly, in 1849, Hans Makart’s father died shortly after his son had celebrated his tenth birthday. A year after his father’s death the family moved to Vienna and Makart went to study painting under the Austrian painter, Johan Fischbach, at the Academy of Fine Arts, a public art school in Vienna. Living in Vienna, Makart immersed himself into the worldly life of the great capital, where the women were beautiful and elegant, where dress was held of paramount importance, and where Society balls and entertainments went on through the greater part of the year. In the midst of living such a life, the world Makart witnessed was seen on its brightest most appealing side, and as a young man his ideas were developed into a passion for beauty. From his time and experiences of life in Vienna, Makart could never paint a woman unless she was adorned in the most sumptuous clothes, and he could never help depicting the female with the grace and beauty that distinguished the ladies of the Austrian capital.

Die Japanerin by Hans Makart (1870)

However, Makart’s time at the Academy did not go well and as I have recounted many times in previous blogs, he, like many young aspiring painters, could not accept the precise structure and order of the Academy, as far as the teaching methodology and the type of artwork which those in charge celebrated. He was impatient to escape the endless routine of art school drawing. It was not for him and his stay at the Academy ended in 1851 when he was dismissed after only one year. Those in authority at the Academy gave the reason for his dismissal as his lack of natural talent. It could well have been that Makart’s love of intense colour, movement, and sensuality, a style which was similar to that of Titian or Rubens was unacceptable to the Academy hierarchy who wanted students to follow a more sombre, well-ordered classicism that still dictated academic art at the time. Makart would develop his own recognisable style but that would be ten years in the future.

Die Liebesbrief (The Love Letter) by Hans Makart

Makart believed in himself and was completely impervious to criticism, whether it be his artistic style or his decadent lifestyle. He was a rebel and proud of it. He left Vienna and travelled to Munich where the next two years passed without him receiving any formal artistic tuition. Makart became aware that he needed to learn the technique of his business — the mechanical side of it, so to speak — in short, to learn to paint and for that to happen he needed a good tutor.

Sarah Bernhardt by Hans Makart (1881)

In 1853, Makart enrolled in the Munich Academy where he was tutored by the German realist painter Karl von Piloty, who was noted for his historical subjects, and recognised as the foremost representative of the realistic school in Germany.

Moderne Amoretten (Modern Cupids) by Hans Makart (1868)

In 1864, after studying under Piloty for some years, twenty-four-year-old Makart left Munich. His confidence in his ability had been heightened during the years under the guidance of Piloty. He was now full of self-confidence. During this early period, he perfected his highly decorative style. Makart also journeyed to London, Paris and Rome visiting all the major art galleries. In 1868, while he was staying in the Italian capital, Makart was invited to submit a piece for the opening of the Austria Artists’ Society in Vienna. Makart sent over his colossal three-part work Modern Cupids, along with painstaking instructions on how it should be displayed. All three paintings were bought by the Count Johann Palffy, who became one of Makart’s regular patrons.

Dame mit Federhut in Rückenansicht (Lady with Feather Hat from Behind) by Hans Makart (1875)

It has to be said that Makart was neither totally impressed by Raphael’s Madonnas which he saw in Rome, nor was he moved by the gilded glories that crown the virgin martyrs, and there can be no doubt that the Italian capital failed to fire his soul. However, when he moved to Venice all that was to change. It was the art he witnessed in that city that fired his imagination and would influence him for the rest of his life. Makart had always been a devoted colourist and in Venice he witnessed the colourful works of Veronese, Titian and Tintoretto. These three Italian (Venetian) Masters were to be his mentors. To him, they were inspirational.

Hans Makart’s Studio in Vienna

Makart’s artistic achievements came to be noticed by the Emperor of Austria, Franz Joseph who, in 1869, summoned him to work in Vienna. Buoyed up by this prestigious support, Makart requested set of lavish apartments. That request was denied but instead the Emperor arranged for Makart to be given a studio which had been converted from a disused foundry. Far from being disheartened, Makart transformed this industrial space into the plush, decadent heart of Viennese society. It was not just his art which was colourful. His lifestyle was equally flamboyant and rich in vibrancy. His studio, in the Ring-Strasse, at the heart of Vienna, was resplendent. It was transformed into a ballroom-like space and decorated in lustrous colours. It was here that he depicted females adorned in beautiful satin gowns in shimmering satin tones. In his studio he surrounded himself with richly ornamented German chests of the Renaissance, Chinese idols, Greek terracotta, Smyrna carpets and old Italian and Netherlandish pictures mingling beside antique and medieval weapons. The walls of his studio were covered with splendid vessels, weapons, sculpture and costumes. Makart turned his hand to interior design, costume design, furniture design and soft-decoration, and his studio overflowed with statues, flowers, fine fabrics, and music. It acted thus as the perfect artistic backdrop for his models – largely nude women – who were also welcomed into his high-society circle.

The Espousals of Catterina Cornaro by Hans Makart (c.1873)

A good example of Makart’s large colourful paintings is his work entitled The Espousals of Catterina Cornaro, (Venice pays tribute to Caterina Cornaro), which he completed around 1873. Caterina Cornaro was the last monarch of the Kingdom of Cyprus, also holding the titles of the Queen of Jerusalem and Armenia. She had been engaged by proxy to the King of Cyprus, James II Lusignan, since 1468, when she was just fourteen years old, and at the same time she was declared the daughter of the Republic of Venice. It was not until 1472 that she went to Cyprus for her wedding. The painting depicts representatives from Cyprus and Venice, of dignified men, of procurators of St. Mark, of women in foreign garb of bright colour, who crowd round their young mistress, the queen of the feast, rejoicing, amid the splendid architecture of the piazza. Sadly the marriage did not last long as eight months after the ceremony. James died and according to his will Catherine, who was carrying his child, became regent. Caterina’s son James died under suspicious circumstances in 1474 before his first birthday.

Death of Cleopatra by Hans Makart (1876)

Around 1875 Makart completed some paintings depicting the death of Cleopatra. They both portray Cleopatra, the legendary queen of Egypt, contemplating suicide. The Roman Emperor Octavian’s forces had fought their way into Alexandria, and knowing that her country had fallen, Cleopatra withdrew to her tomb with her closest attendants, Iras and Charmion. In one of the paintings, we see Cleopatra reclining on a bed of fabrics, semi-nude and wearing jewelry and her crown. To her left, one of her servants weeps, whilst just below the queen another has already died. A brazier burns on the left-hand side.

Death of Cleopatra by Hans Makart (1875)

In both paintings the asp is menacingly depicted. It is a thin, black form with a tiny wisp of a tongue, and stands out against Cleopatra’s breast. This adds a sense of eroticism, and danger to the painting which reminds us of the line from Shakespeare’s play, Anthony and Cleopatra:

“…The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch, which hurts and is desired…”

There is a sensuous decadence about Makart’s depiction of Cleopatra’s naked, bejeweled body and the way his use of chiaroscuro picks out the stark whiteness of Cleopatra’s body, as if she were spot-lit on a stage.

Das Schlafende Schneewittchen (The Sleeping Snow White) by Hans Makart (1872)

Makart’s life in Vienna enabled him to immerse himself into the worldly life of the great Austrian capital, a city where the women were beautiful and elegantly dressed and where Society balls and entertainments are held throughout the greater part of the year. In the midst of living such a life, the world the painter witnessed was seen on its brightest side, and consequently, as a young man his ideas were developed into a passion for beauty.

The Dream after the Ball by Hans Makart

In 1878, Makart took a post as a professor at the Viennese Academy in 1878. This was the very same institution which had expelled him for lack of artistic talent in the late 1850s. Two years later, he became the institution’s head of a particular school for historical painting, a position he held until he died. It was during this time that Makart, as teacher, met Klimt, one of his students. Klimt had an important role in continuing Makart’s legacy after his death. In addition to his position as a professor, Makart’s work kept him well-off and well-known. Even the negative comments regarding his art appeared to simply inspire him to strive more.

Statue of Hans Makart in Vienna City Park (“Stadtpark”)

Hans Makart died on October 3rd 1884, aged 44. He was buried in the Wiener Zentralfriedhof in Vienna. Makart influenced many painters who followed him, the most notable being Gustav Klimt, who is said to have idolized him. It can be seen in Klimt’s early style which is based in historicism and has clear similarities to Makart’s paintings. Jugendstil, the Austrian Art Nouveau, of which Klimt was a part and it has been suggested that primacy of sexual symbolism in Jugendstil artworks were influenced by the sensuality in many of Makart’s paintings.

Rudolph von Alt

The focus of my blog today is to look at the life and work of the nineteenth century Austrian painter Rudolph Ritter von Alt. The word “Ritter”is used as a title of nobility in German-speaking areas. It translates approximately to the British designation “Sir”, denoting a Knight. It is not a first or middle name of the person. The artist was born Rudolph Alt and used the title of a Ritter after he gained nobility in 1889.

*View from the Artist’s Studio in Alservorstadt toward Dornbach by Jakob Alt (1836)*

Rudolph was born in Vienna on August 28^th 1812. His father, Jakob Alt, the son of a carpenter, was a German landscape painter and lithographer who was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1789 where he received his first artistic tuition and later moved to Vienna where he enrolled at the city’s Academy of Fine Arts. Jakob Alt travelled through Austria and Italy, hiking through the Austrian Alps, all the while painting scenes of beauty. He also depicted many scenes of the neighbourhood along the River Danube and in the city of Vienna.

*Room of Archduke Ludwig Victor in the Hofburg, Vienna by Franz Alt (1861)*

Rudolph Alt had a younger brother, Franz, who was nine years his junior and who also became a famed Austrian landscape painter. His work can be seen in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cooper Hewitt Museum (Smithsonian), the Albertina Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest and other international collections.

*The Dachstein Mountain from Lower Lake Gosau by Rudolphe von Alt* *(1838)*

Rudolphe, like his father before him, went on many hiking-trips through the Austrian Alps and northern Italy and fell in love with the spectacular landscapes he witnessed.

*View of the Strada Nuova against the Giardini Pubblici in Venice by Rudolph von Alt (1834)*

In 1833, he travelled to Venice where he pictorially recorded his visit. He was inspired by the city of Venice and took the opportunity to visit neighbouring areas as well as the Italian capital, where he completed a number of architectural paintings

*The Capitol in Rome by Rudolphe von Alt (1835)*

Rudolphe von Alt was a talented watercolourist and during his journeys around Italy he completed many watercolours featuring various Italian cities.

*Port of Santa Lucia, Naples by Rudolphe von Alt (1935)*

In 1830, five years before he took the throne, Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria started to develop a plan which entailed the commissioning of paintings depicting the most beautiful views of the Austrian Empire. Jakob Alt, and his eldest son, Rudolf were two of the commissioned artists and between them they painted about one hundred and seventy of the three hundred completed works. The project came to an end in 1849 a year after Ferdinand abdicated.

*The Josef square in Vienna by Rudolphe von Alt (1831)*

*The St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna by Rudolphe von Alt (1831)*

*View of Salzburg by Rudolpe von Alt (1831)*

*Der Hohe Markt in Wien by Rudolphe von Alt (1836)*

Rudolphe’s watercolour depictions of interiors of wealthy patrons’ residences brought him more recognition from the Austrian public

*Interior at Palais Windischgrätz in Renngasse in Vienna by Rudolphe von Alt (1848)*

*Salon in the Apartment of Count Lanckoroński in Vienna by Rudolphe von Alt (1881)*

*The library in the Palais Dumba by Rudolphe von Alt (1877)*

The Blue Drawing Room at the Valtice Palace by Rudolphe von Alt (1845)

The grandeur of the interior of many palaces was captured by Rudolphe in his magnificent watercolour paintings. Originally the Gothic Valtice palace was founded in the 12th century by the bishops of Passau and in 1530 Valtice became the place of residence of the princely family of Liechtenstein, one of the wealthiest families in Europe.

*Drawing Room at the Rasumofsky Palace by Rudolphe von Alt (1836)*

A less formal room was captured by Rudolphe von Alt in his 1836 watercolour entitled Drawing Room at the Rasumofsky Palace. The palace was commissioned by Prince Andrey Razumovsky as a Neoclassic embassy which would be worthy of the representative of the Russian Tsar, Alexander I. It was built at the prince’s own expense on Landstraße, close to the centre of Vienna. Razumovsky then filled the rooms of the palace with antiquities and modern works of art.

*The Staircase of the State Opera Thatre, Budapest by Rudolphe von Alt (1873)*

A large number of Rudolphe von Alt’s paintings are held in the Princely House of Liechtenstein collections in Vaduz, Liechtenstein and Vienna. The Princely House of Liechtenstein is one of the oldest noble lineages in Europe being first mentioned in the twelfth century. The Princely House of Liechtenstein is one of the oldest still extant noble lineages in Europe. The first documented bearer of this name was a Hugo von Liechtenstein, mentioned in archival sources dating to between 1120 and 1143.

*View from the Klausen Valley to Modling Castle by Rudolphe von Alt (1827)*

The family’s art collection had its beginnings in the sixteenth century and has been influenced over time by the varying interests of individual princes. The collection has been assembled over several centuries, and now the Collections of the Prince von und zu Liechtenstein are one of the most important private art collections in the world, containing around 1,600 paintings with masterpieces ranging from the early Renaissance to the second half of the nineteenth century, including works by Lukas Cranach the Elder, Quentin Massys, Raphael, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Friedrich von Amerling and Hans Makart and today’s artist, Rudolphe von Alt,

*Organ Base by Master Anton Pilgram in St Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna by Rudolphe von Alt (1876)*

Alt demonstrated a remarkable talent for expressing certain peculiarities in nature. He managed to paint nature authentically by focusing on the different hues of sky, the colour-tone of the air and the vegetation.

*Ansicht von Jägerndorf mit ländlicher Staffage* by Rudolphe von Alt

His later works were more Impressionistic in style but maybe above all von Alt will be remembered for his exquisite architectural and indoor scenes, genres that made him famous in Vienna.

Rudolphe Ritter von Alt died in Vienna on March 12th 1905, aged 92. Most of his paintings are held by various museums in Vienna.

Alois Heinrich Priechenfried

Today’s blog is a very short one. I think I have mentioned before how I choose an artist to write about. There are two things I need before I can embark on the journey of looking at the life of an artist. Firstly, I need to have multiple sources which offer a biography of the painter. Why multiple? Because you would be amazed at how often I come across differing facts such as names of family members, educational information and simple dates and I have to work out what are the true facts. Secondly, I must have a wide range of pictures so as to be able to highlight the artist’s skill as a painter. Proceeding with the blog without both of these is very difficult.

Portrait of an Old Man by Alois Heinrich Priechenfried

However once in a while, and today is one of those occasions, I come across artwork which is so good that I just have to formulate a blog even though my knowledge about the artist’s life is severely limited. I scoured the internet and reference books and, as I was on a three-day visit to London on child-minding duties, I even went to the British Library but all to no avail as little seems to be written about today’s painter although the auction houses such as Bonhams, Christies and Sothebys offered samples of his art without a biography, which is somewhat unusual. Let me introduce you to the nineteenth century Austrian portrait and genre painter Alois Heinrich Priechenfried.

Seated Rabbi by Alois Heinrich Priechenfried

Much of the Jewish art by Priechenfried focused on the quiet contemplation of the holy scriptures.

A Rabbi Studying the Torah by Alois Heinrich Priechenfried

Alois Michel Priechenfried, the artist’s father, was a gilder by trade. Gilding is the decorative technique for applying a very thin coating of gold to solid surfaces such as metal, wood, porcelain, or stone. He married Anna Hackensoellner and the couple had three children, August Franz, Georg and Alois. Alois Heinrich Priechenfried was born June 25th, 1867 in the Gumpendorf district of Vienna.

Alois was brought up in the Catholic faith although when I first looked at his paintings I wrongly believed that he must have been Jewish. Many of his paintings featured rabbis as is the one he painted entitled Seated Rabbi. The quotation behind the rabbi is from Psalms 118:17, “I shall not die but live and proclaim the works of the Lord.”

Reading the Scriptures by Alois Heinrich Priechenfried

My favourite painting of his featuring people of the Jewish religion is one entitled Reading the Scriptures. There is something very peaceful about this painting. The rabbis, who are seen reading the holy book or quietly contemplating what they have just read, offers one a feeling of extreme serenity which many people get from their belief in their religion and their God. I suppose, being a non-believer, I miss out on such times of peaceful contemplation.

A Cardinal Reading by Alois Heinrich Priechenfried

Not all Priechenfried’s paintings depicted aspects of the Jewish religion for one of his best paintings features a cleric from the Catholic religion. It is simply entitled A Cardinal Reading. Once again it is a portrayal of tranquil meditation.

Conversation in the Kitchen by Alois Heinrich Priechenfried

When young Alois was fourteen years old, he followed in his father’s footsteps and trained and worked as a gilder. At the age of seventeen he enrolled for one year at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts as a guest student.

One of his professors at the Academy was the German painter, Christian Griepenkerl. Griepenkerl had been appointed a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 1874 and three years later he was the lead professor at the Academy’s special school for historical painting. Griepenkerl specialised in allegorical representation using themes from classical mythology and portraiture. He taught many of the foremost painters of the time including Egon Schiele and Anton Peschka but his teaching methodology and that of the Academy was looked upon by many young students as antiquated and overly-conservative and so many left the Academy and founded the Neukunstgruppe (New Art Group), which fostered its own style without Academic constraints. Christian Griepenkerl later became famous for refusing Adolf Hitler’s application to join the Academy in 1907 stating that Hitler’s entrance submission piece was both unimaginative and unsatisfactory.

The Visit by Alois Heinrich Priechenfried

Alois married a Emile Aurelia Watzek, a Yugoslavian lady in 1890 and the couple went on to have eight children. As can be seen in the above painting and the ones below, he also completed many genre works.

German Interior Scene by Alois Heinrich Priechenfried

Priechenfried spent many periods of his life in Munich but always returned to his beloved Vienna.

The Rehearsal by Alois Heinrich Priechenfried

Alois Heinrich Priechenfried died on May 24th 1953 at his home in Diefenbachgasse in the Rudolfsheim-Fünfhausdistrict of Vienna which lies on the northern bank of the River Wien. He was 85.

My apologies for the lack of biographical information but I am sure you will agree the paintings themselves are worth the blog. If anybody knows more about Priechenfried I would love to hear from you and then I could update this blog.

Finally, Merry Christmas and a belated Happy Hanukkah to everyone.

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller and the Biedermeier era

Portrait of the fictitious character Gottlieb Biedermeier from the Munich Fliegende Blatter — Portrait of the fictitious character Gottlieb Biedermeier from the Munich *Fliegende Blatter*

My blog today starts with a caricature of Gottlieb Biedermeier. Gottlieb is not the artist of the day. He is just the lead-in to the star attraction. Gottlieb Biedermeier, more commonly referred to as Papa Biedermeier, used to appear as a cartoon character in the popular newspaper, Fliegende Blätter, a German weekly non-political humour and satire magazine which appeared between 1845 and 1944 in Munich, and it is through his regular appearance that this period was actually termed the Biedermeier era, an era which stretched between the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and the Republican revolts against European monarchies of 1848, which began in Sicily, and spread to France, Germany, Italy, and the Austrian Empire. Papa Biedermeier was a comic symbol of middle-class comfort. The art of the Biedermeier period came to be characterized by what art critics of the period termed “rigorous simplicity.” The works of art often had an enamel-like finish that masked individual brushstrokes. Landscape and portraiture grew in importance while history painting declined. In painting, the Biedermeier style reflected the bourgeois, simple, joyful, affable and conformist environment, enhanced the aesthetics of the natural beauty and has influence on contemporary art and design.

Early Spring in Vienna Forest by Ferdinand Waldmüller (1864)

In Austria painters during this time portrayed a sentimental and virtuous view of the world but in a realistic way. The German word best describing the emotions derived from the art is gemütlichkeit, which is a space or state of warmth, friendliness, and good cheer. Other qualities of gemütlichkeit include cosiness, peace of mind, belonging, and well-being. In other words, a “feel good” factor and such comfort, as depicted, emphasized family life and private activities, especially letter writing and the pursuit of hobbies. No Biedermeier household was complete without a piano as an indispensable part of the popularized soiree. Soirees perpetuated the rising middle class’s cultural interests in books, writing, dance, and poetry readings—most subject matter for Biedermeier paintings was either genre or historical and most often sentimentally treated. The leading Austrian exponent of this type of art is my artist of the day. He is Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller.

The Girl Antonia Seemann by Ferdinand Waldmüller

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller was born in Vienna in January 1793. In 1807, at the age of fourteen, Waldmüller studied Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under the Austrian painter, draughtsman, and well-respected teacher, Hubert Maurer, who had been teaching art at the Academy since 1785. Waldmüller remained there until 1811. Waldmüller then went to Presburg in Hungary to study portraiture. Following that he worked in Croatia as a drawing teacher for the children of the Count Gyulay, the governor of Croatia before returning to the Academy in 1813 to carry on with his artistic studies, this time concentrating on portraiture.

Whilst in Vienna Waldmüller would visit the court and municipal galleries where he would make copies of the Old Masters.

Martyrdom of St Andrew by Jusepe de Ribera (1628)

One example of this is his version of Juseppe de Ribera’s Martyrdom of St Anthony which the Spanish artist completed in 1628 which is now in the Szépmüvészeti Museum in Budapest. St. Andrew was St Peter’s brother and preached around the Black Sea Area. According to legend he was crucified on two pieces of wood which formed an “X” which has since become known as the cross of St Andrew.

Martyrdom of St Andrew by Ferdinand Waldmüller (1821)

Waldmüller’s copy of the painting can be seen in the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna. Waldmüller had hoped to sell the copies he made of the paintings of the Old Masters but the income from this venture was insufficient for him to live and support himself.

Katharina Waldmüller (née Weidner) by Joseph Weidner

In 1814, Waldmüller married a well-known Austrian opera singer, Katharina Weidner and he worked as a scenery designer at the various venues at which his wife was performing. He took up the role as professor of art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and in 1823 exhibited for the first time at the Vienna Akademie.

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller Kaiser Franz I (1827)

For the next decade he travelled around Europe, enhancing his reputation as a leading portraitist of his time and in 1827. He received royal patronage following his portrait of the nineteen year old Franz I, who would become the Holy Roman Emperor in 1845.

Portrait of a Young Lady by Ferdinand Waldmüller (1820)

His art at the time concentrated on portraiture, an art genre in which Waldmüller excelled. His portraits had a high smooth-finish and decorative detail and were often compared to the French Neo-classical painter Ingres. One of his most beautiful portraits is entitled Portrait of a Lady, which he completed in 1820.

Portrait of Beethoven by Ferdinand Waldermüller (1823)

One of the most famous of his sitters was Ludwig van Beethoven who sat for him in 1823. The portrait had been commissioned by the Leipzig publishers Breitkopf & Härtel. According to notes and letters, it was a one-off sitting and even that was interrupted. So in the short time he had, Waldmüller only portrayed Beethoven’s face, and it was later, back in his studio, that he added the clothes and probably also parts of his hair. The original was destroyed in 1943 but fortunately, the portrait was so popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that it was reproduced and copied many times.

Julia Comtesse Apraxin by Ferdinand Waldmüller (1835)

Perhaps, one may consider his portraits of children a little too “syrupy” but this should not detract from the excellent portraits. In 1835, Waldmüller, whilst living in Vienna, completed a commission to paint the portrait of seven year old Julia Aspraxin, the daughter of Count Alexandr Petrovich Aspraxia, a serving Russian in Vienna.

Portrait of the Future Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria as a Grenadier with Toy Soldiers by Ferdinand Waldmüller (1832)

In 1832 he painted a portrait of the two-year-old Franz Josef, the future Austrian Emperor entitled Portrait of the Future Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria as a Grenadier with Toy Soldiers. The child posed for the artist in the uniform of a grenadier along with some similarly dressed Hungarian wooden figures. It is like a state portrait on a miniature scale. The child, with his blue eyes, looks out innocently unaware of his future role and the disasters that would follow.

Old Elms In Prater by Ferdinand Waldmüller (1831)

Waldmüller painted pictures of all genres and had soon built up his standing as a talented landscape painter. His beautiful landscape artistry was appreciated by the public and in the 1850’s he became very interested in the depiction of sunlight and the contrast between light and shadow which one realises was a pre-cursor to Impressionism. I especially like his 1831 paintings featuring the elm trees in Prater, the large park in Vienna. One was entitled Old Elms in Prater. Look at the extraordinary detail.

Elms In Prater by Ferdinand Waldmüller (1831)

The other simply, Elms in the Prater. His landscape artistry was based on his strong belief that art should be determined by the careful and meticulous examination of nature. For Waldmüller, a talented colourist and someone who had a great knowledge of nature, it was all about natural observation achieved by plein air painting and not so much the way art was taught in academies. It was, like the Impressionists, fifty years later, about the effect of light.

View Of The Dachstein With The Hallstättersee From The Hütteneckalpe At Ischl by Ferdinand Waldmüller (1838)

Another beautiful landscape work was his 1838 painting entitled View Of The Dachstein With The Hallstättersee From The Hütteneckalpe At Ischl.

He became the curator of the Gemäldegalerie of the Academy of Fine Arts in 1829, a post he held for almost three decades. However in 1849 and again in 1857, he wrote critical papers with regards the Academy and academic teaching of art and, at the age of sixty-four , was forced to resign from his position at the Academy.

Corpus Christi Morning by Ferdind Waldmüller (1857)

The third “string” to Waldmüller’s artistic bow was his great talent as a genre painter. His genre paintings shied away from idealisation or pretentiousness and although he would often add historical and religious elements to his depictions he was never afraid to highlight social criticism in the paintings. Through his depictions of life in the countryside his paintings extolled the virtue of rural life and at the same time highlighting the positivity of family life. Such joyousness can be seen in his 1857 painting, Corpus Christi Morning. Life for the peasant class may not all laughing and dancing but for that moment in time life could not be better. It was a gemütlichkeit time.

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Children decorating a Conscript's Hat (1854) — Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Children decorating a Conscript’s Hat (1854)

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller completed his painting Children decorating a Conscript’s Hat in 1854. The painting depicts a very poignant moment. It was an occasion of great importance to rural families. We see a group of girls, maybe his sisters, decorating the hat of a young man who has been called up to fight for his country during his compulsory military service. His hat is being decorated with flowers and ribbons. The decorating of the hat is a time of joy and merriment which masks the possible horrors the young man may encounter. As far as art is concerned, it is a masterpiece of evocative genre painting and, the work is a testament to how Waldmüller depicts the intricate interplay of light and shadow.

The Departure of the Conscript by Ferdinand Waldmüller (1854)

Another work by Waldmüller, The Depature of the Conscript, shows the family of a conscript saying their farewells and wishing him a safe journey. His mother places the decorated hat on the head of her son. Look how the boy wraps one arm around his mother whilst his other hand is held lovingly by his father. It is now that maybe they realise that the ceremony of decorating the hat will mean nought if their beloved son does not return home. In the background we see women in tears. A young man, maybe the conscript’s younger brother, looks back pensively at his older brother wondering when it will be his time to join the military. The conscript’s young sisters try to cling hold of him, not wanting him to go. This is not a scene of joy but one of realism, one of foreboding.

I have always loved genre paintings especially when there are numerous characters depicted. Each time I look at painting like this I discover something different.

In 1851, Waldmüller, aged 58, married his second wife, 25-year-old Anna Bayer. He carried on exhibiting his work at various exhibitions, including the prestigious World Exhibition in Paris and at the International Exhibition in London. In 1856 he travelled to London where he sold thirty one of his paintings to the royal household and court. By the 1860s, the Academy in Vienna had forgiven Waldmüller’s transgressions and outspoken views critical of their institute and their teaching methods and he was once again welcomed back to the Viennese artistic fold. He was knighted in 1865, shortly before his death that August, aged 72.

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Self-Portrait at the Easel, (1848)

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller is looked upon as one of the most important Austrian painters of the Biedermeier period. His superb artistic talent, as a landscape painter, was never questioned. He was an advocate of plein air painting, putting down on canvas what the eye could see. This to him was of greater importance than the art taught in academies. The way in which he achieved an accurate characterisation of the human face took his portraiture to another level. His genre works which depicted rural everyday life were outstanding. The depictions, often moralising and socially judgemental would set a marker for future artists who favoured this genre.

I give you Ferdinand Georg Waldermüller.

Hans Makart

The artist I am featuring in My Daily Art Display today is the Austrian academic history painter Hans Makart. He was an artist who was so loved by the high society of Vienna that he attained an almost cult-like status. He was born Johann Evangelist Ferdinand Apolinaris Makart in Salzburg in May 1840. His mother was Mary Catherine Rüssemayr and his father was John Makart, who was the chamberlain at the Mirabell Palace in Salzburg. He must have shown some artistic talent as a youngster for he enrolled at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in 1858. His tutor was the Austrian painter of genre pieces and landscapes, Johann Fischbach. However, his tenure at this famous art establishment was short lived as his tutors found that he lacked the talent to become an academic painter. Hans Makart was not to be put off by the comments of his former tutors as he still retained a great self-belief in his artistic ability. In 1860 Makart moved from Vienna to Munich and in 1861 enrolled at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München, also known as the Munich Academy and, for four years, studied under the tutelage of the German painter and Munich Academician, Karl von Piloty. During those four years he also found time to visit London, Paris and Rome.

His artistic “break” came in 1868 but the lead up to his opportunity began ten years earlier. The inner city of Vienna in 1857 was ringed by its 13^th century city walls. However in that year the emperor, Franz Josef, decreed that the walls should be demolished and in their place a wide thoroughfare was to be built, which would circle the inner city. This large-scale building project was financed, in part, by the sale to private individuals, of land alongside the proposed boulevard, which had not been set aside for public buildings or parks. The work started in 1858 and was completed seven years later. It became known as the Ringstraße and soon buildings, both private and public, were erected along the tree-lined boulevard. People loved their new boulevard and would take the opportunity to stroll along the Ringstraße. This love of promenading by the citizens of Vienna was captured in Theodore Zasche’s work entitled The Ringstrasse, Vienna.

Moderne Amoretten (Modern Cupids) by Hans Makart (1868)

One of the first public buildings erected along the Ringstraße was the Vienna Künstlerhaus which was completed and opened in September 1868 and became home to the Austrian Artists’ Society. To mark its opening it held an art exhibition and Hans Markt was invited to submit some of his work. One of the paintings he sent was a very large triptych entitled Moderne Amoretten (Modern Cupids). It was such a large work that he even sent written instructions and drawings as how it was to be hung to achieve the best visual result. All three paintings were bought by Count Johann Palffy who later commissioned more work from Makart, including a portrait of his wife. A few months after the end of the exhibition Emperor Franz Joseph, who had already acquired some of Makart’s works, invited him to return to Vienna and in return for doing so, he was provided with a large studio, for his art work, which had once been a foundry.

Hans Makart's Studio before the Auction by Rudolf Ritter von Alt (1855) — Hans Makart’s Studio before the Auction by Rudolf Ritter von Alt (1855)

Makart filled the place with sculpture, ornate furniture, musical instruments and flowers, all of which he used as a backdrop to his historical works and for his staged elaborate and opulent interiors which he incorporated as backgrounds for some of his portraiture. Before long the former foundry was not just a simple, if large, artist’s studio, but a Salon and it was here he would invite his friends, models and patrons. He entertained everybody notwithstanding whether they were nobility or bourgeoisie. The social class of his guests mattered little to him, all he wanted from them was their adoration of him as an artist. It was simply his showroom for marketing his paintings. The visitors were merely his admiring audience and soon he became the talk of the Viennese high society. He had become a cult hero and he loved every minute of it. He had become the leading artistic figure of Viennese society.

Makart did not shy away from controversy. He saw nothing controversial in his art work and in fact he realised that controversy could work in his favour. Alexander Klee, a curator at Vienna’s Belvedere museum commented on this aspect of Makart’s art, saying:

“…Part of the scandal came from erotic features in his paintings. Adults kissing, loose-fitting clothing, an uncovered ankle, monks receiving sexual favours, gold backgrounds inspired by church paintings with nudes in the forefront, depictions of sex and crime – these were all scandalous and sometimes almost blasphemous compositions…”

The Entry of Charles V into Antwerp by Hans Makart (1878)

One such painting which caused ructions was one Makart completed in 1878 entitled The Entry of Charles V into Antwerp. In the work we see Charles V, the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, depicted arriving in Antwerp in 1525. Makart has depicted the triumphal procession surrounded by beautiful scantily-clad virgins. Art critics of the time questioned why such nudity should appear in a modern historical scene and suggested that their inclusion was simply a tawdry way Makart had used to be noticed. In the United States, the painting fell afoul of the Comstock Law, a law named after Anthony Comstock, the United States Postal Inspector and politician dedicated to the strict ideas of Victorian morality which made illegal the delivery or transportation of “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” material . As we know, there is no such thing as bad publicity and despite prints of the painting being banned in America, the Americans were desperate to see the work and make their own judgement and of course the painting, in a round-about way, secured Makart’s fame in that country.

However maybe the critics were overly harsh about Makart’s inclusion of semi naked women in the historical painting as Albrecht Dürer in his book, Journal of a Voyage to the Netherlands wrote:

“…I gave a sou for a little book describing the entry into Antwerp where the king received a costly triumph. The city gates were ornamented in the most costly manner; there was music and great rejoicing, and beautiful maidens whose like I have seldom seen…”

And in 1526 Dürer wrote to his friend with regards the scene, writing:

“…I looked at these young women very attentively and closely, and without shame, because I am a painter…”

One presumes Makart was aware of Dürer’s comments as he included him in the crowd scene in his work!

Death of Cleopatra by Hans Makart (1875)

Another historical painting Makart completed in 1875 was sold at auction this year for 757,300 Euros. It was his work entitled Death of Cleopatra. The painting depicts the dramatic moment immediately after the snake has plunged its poisonous fangs into Cleopatra’s breast. The portrayal of the dying queen derives its intensity from the contrast between the depiction of Cleopatra’s luxurious silk garments along with her glittering gold jewellery that adorn her body and the pale opaqueness of her skin. We see the blue tinge on her right breast at the point where the asp has struck. The sitter for this painting was a friend of Makart, Charlotte Wolter, a Viennese actress. Gabriel Frodl, who was once director of the Belvedere in Vienna, describes how Makart set the scene:

“…In this manner, the painter conveys an erotic-lascivious mood, further emphasised by the palpable vulnerability of the body, doomed to die among the now insignificant luxury of its surroundings…”

Makart’s artistic work had now branched out in many directions. He not only created works of art on canvas but also designed costumes and furniture and conceived elegant interior designs for upper-class residences and his work became known as Makartstil (Makart-style). In 1879, just before his fortieth birthday, he was commissioned to organise a pageant and parade as part of the Silver Wedding Anniversary celebrations of the marriage of Emperor Franz Josef and his wife, Elizabeth of Bavaria.

It was a great success and Makart took this as an opportunity of self-aggrandisement for besides designing the costumes for the people on the floats, cars and carriages and the scenic settings for the various floats he designed a float specifically for artists, which would head the parade and this would be headed by Makart himself on a white horse. It is no wonder that this parade later became known as the Makart-parade. The Makart-styled parade was such a success with the Viennese people been given the opportunity to dress up in beautiful historical costumes and be “transported” back to bygone times. Such was the triumph of this parade and pageant that annual parades followed.

Portrait of Anna von Waldberg by Hans Makart (1883)

One could not end a blog about Makart and his paintings if one did not delve into his portraiture. Many men sat for their portraits but it is Makart’s sensual and seductive portraits of upper-class females which were his best. One such painting was his 1883 Portrait of Anna von Waldberg which he completed a year before her death. In the painting we see her wearing a black bustle-era evening dress with its low-cut neckline. The design was less conservative but incorporates a black bow as a modesty piece hiding the lady’s cleavage.

The Five Senses by Hans Makart (1872-79)

The final work of Makart which I am featuring is his famous; some would say his infamous, five-panel oil painting entitled Die Füunf Sinne (The Five Senses) which he completed in around 1879. It is a study in the nude, depicting five different views of his ideal female form under the guise of the five senses: the senses of smelling, seeing, hearing, feeling and tasting. Each of the five senses is represented by the action of the female nude.

Hans Makart died in October 1884, aged 44. He was buried in an honorary grave in Vienna’s Central Cemetery. The Austrian postal service has issued a number of stamps honouring his memory, the most recent being in 1990 to commemorate the 150^th anniversary of his birth.

The Three Portraits of Ria Munk by Gustav Klimt

I suppose the most challenging and distressing period of one’s life is when somebody close to us, somebody we love, dies. It is both a traumatic and painful time when suddenly we feel the loss of someone we loved. Later, we want to cling to memories of the dead person. We want to remember them forever. We do not want to ever forget that person who had so touched our lives. How do we do that? Within days of our loved one dying, we are offered the chance to see the deceased one last time as they lay in rest in the funeral parlour. I have done that on a number of occasions and regretted it. I probably did it more out of duty than out of a desire to see the body of the dead person. The face of the deceased I looked down upon was not the way I wanted to remember them. It makes no difference how well the mortician has waved his or her magic wand over the deceased, the face of the person is pallid and lifeless and only our mental capacity and power of imagination can change that image. Ultimately, our fondest recollection of the deceased person is almost always through photographs, which sadly, like our recollections, fade over time. Even after photography became the medium of remembrance, a painting of a person acted as an aide-mémoire and in today’s blog I want to look at how one family wanted to remember their deceased daughter.

Ria Munck on her Deathbed by Gustave Klimt (1912) — Ria Munk on her Deathbed by Gustav Klimt (1912)

My blog today is about a mother’s love for her dead daughter and her desire to hold on to her memories of her beautiful girl through a posthumous painting. The mother in question was Aranka Pulitzer Munk. She was the niece of Joseph Pulitzer, the man who, through the provisions in his will, set up the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism. Aranka married Alexander Munk, a wealthy Polish industrialist in 1882 and the couple went on to have three daughters, Lili, Maria (Ria) and Lola. The daughter that is featured in today’s blog is the second-born girl, Ria, who was born in November 1887. Ria was an extremely beautiful young woman and in 1911, when she was twenty-four years old, she had become the lover of the forty-year old German poet and writer Hanns Heinz Ewers. This was never going to be a good match for Ewers reputation as a libertine was well known and wherever he went, scandals followed. However maybe it was this that drew Ria to the latter-day “bad boy” character. They eventually became betrothed and despite Ria entering this arrangement with a sizeable dowry, Ewers called it off. According to the book Gustave Klimt by Jane Rogoyska and Patrick Bade, Ewers wrote Ria a letter that December, in which he described her as “a hopeless romantic and out of touch with reality”. As one can imagine, Ria was devastated and could not come to terms with the break-up and at noon on December 28^th she took a gun and shot herself through the heart.

Whereas now, the tabloid papers would be full of the scandalous story of the suicide of the daughter of a wealthy family, the suicide of Ria Munk was of little import in the local press. On the contrary, Viennese society looked upon suicide following a broken relationship as almost the norm. There was even a sense of romanticism about it, similar to cases of death at the end of a duel which was fought over someone’s honour. The Viennese society seemed to be in awe of the pomp and ceremony of grand funeral processions which followed on from such deaths. The famous Austrian writer and journalist, Stefan Zweig summed it up in his 1943 autobiography, The World of Yesterday, when he wrote:

“…‘In Vienna, even funerals found enthusiastic audiences and it was the ambition of every true Viennese to have a lovely corpse, with a majestic procession and many followers; even his death converted the genuine Viennese into a spectacle for others. In this receptivity for all that was colourful festive and resounding, in this pleasure in the theatrical, whether it was on the stage or in reality, both as theatre and as a mirror of life, the whole city was at one…”

That may in the case but one can only imagine the devastation and heartbreak felt by her parents. Her mother, Aranka, decided that she wanted a posthumous portrait painted of her daughter. Aranka’s sister was Serena Lederer (neé Pulitzer) and she was one of Gustav Klimt’s main patrons and he had painted her portrait in 1899 and a portrait of her daughter, Portrait of Elisabeth Bachofen-Echt in 1916. Serena Lederer and her husband August had built up the largest collection of the Austrian artist’s works and so it was logical for Aranka to ask her sister to speak to Klimt about the portrait commission, Klimt was, at that time, the most sought after portraitist in Vienna. It was also around this time in Viennese society that the death-mask portrait and the death-bed portrait had grown to become in vogue with city’s privileged classes, and so following the tragedy of her daughter’s suicide, Aranka Munk decided that she would commission a death-bed portrait of her beloved Ria and arranged, through her sister, to have Klimt paint it.

Presumably with the help of photographs, Klimt completed the death-bed portrait of Ria Munk in 1912 and it was entitled Ria Munk am Totenbett (Ria Munk I), Ria Munk on her Deathbed (Ria Munk I). The background of the work is dark blue and is in stark contrast to the red carnations which form part of the garland of flowers, which frame Ria’s beautiful face. Looking at the work we see Ria lying peacefully with her head on a white pillow. Surrounding the pillow there are some white carnations. There is no indication that Ria has died a violent death. This painting is all about Ria’s beauty. Her chest is covered in orange, red and purple fabric, which hide from us the bullet wound. She is at peace. Klimt has painted her with pink cheeks. As yet her facial features have not begun to sink into her skull. Her mouth is partly open which make us think that she is just asleep. She is surrounded by flowers and many people draw a similarity to Klimt’s depiction of her and the depiction of the tragic heroine in John Everett Millais’ 1852 painting, Ophelia. It is a lovely portrait which exudes an aura of peace and serenity but there was also something about it that made her parents to reject it. Aranka Munk decided the work, although beautiful, was too death-like and too distressful to behold. Aranka then belatedly decided that she wanted the aide-mémoire of her daughter to be a painting of how she remembered her when she was alive. She wanted to evoke memories of her daughter’s vivaciousness and exuberance, rather than the peaceful but solemn one of Ria, depicted by Klimt as she lay on her death bed and so, according to Erich Lederer, Serena Lederer’s son, Klimt was again commissioned to paint a second portrait of Ria. In 1913, Aranka gave Klimt some more photographs of her daughter and asked him for another portrait, one that would encapsulate her beauty and her joie de vivre.

Die Tänzerin (Ria Munk II) by Gustave Klimt (1916) — Die Tänzerin (Ria Munk II) by Gustav Klimt (1916)

There are some questions about this second portrait that remain unanswered. The one fact we do know was whatever the artist gave Aranka, she rejected it. Why did she reject it? Was the painting above the one Klimt handed over to Aranka Munk? If we look at the painting which bears the title Ria Munk II, then it is not difficult to see why a mother would be horrified and subsequently reject such a semi-naked portrait of her late daughter. However we are not sure that the portrait we see before us was the painting Klimt gave her, in fact we can almost be certain that it was not. Would Klimt really believe that a grieving mother would welcome such a semi-nude depiction of her daughter? Although we have no way of knowing what Klimt’s second portrait of Ria Munk, which he gave to Aranka looked like, what we do know is that it was rejected by her. Another fact we know about this second commission from Ria’s mother was that Klimt struggled with it. We know this from a postcard he sent to his life-long friend, the Viennese fashion designer Emilie Flöge, in 1913. He wrote of his problem with the commission:

“…the Munk portrait… wouldn’t come together! Can’t make it a likeness!…”

Following Aranka’s rejection of the painting, Klimt took it back to his studio, and altered it. The altered and finished version is more erotic and depicts a bare-breasted portrait of a dancer. It is now beleived that the dancer could have been Johanna Jusl, who was not only a dancer with the Vienna Hofoper but was also one of Klimt’s models. His amended version, which we see above, depicts a lady, bare-breasted and exuding an overt sensuality, which one presumes would not have been present in the painting he offered Aranka Munk. She stands in a full-frontal pose but her head is coyly turned away. Her cheeks have a faint rose tinge to them. The elongated horizontal shape of her eyes gives her an oriental look. There is a delicate tinge of light blue on her face and neck which confers upon her a ghost-like appearance. Next to her is a table upon which there is a vase of poppies. Behind her, to the right, there is a vast floral display whilst in the left of the work we see oriental figures portrayed on a green background. Her highly colourful and garish patterned dress, which is open to her waist exposing her breasts, seems to become one with the background. Below the hem of the dress we catch sight of lace-edged black pantaloons below which we see her shapely white-stocking legs and high-heeled shoes with their decorative bows. There is a definite oriental-feel to this work and we know Klimt was fascinated by orientalism. In Frank Whitford’s 1990 book, Klimt, he tells the story of a young aspiring artist, Egon Schiele, visiting Klimt’s studio in the Vienna district of Heitzing and how Schiele describes the studio as being dominated by Far Eastern Art and artefacts as well as Japanese woodblock prints. Klimt had also a large collection of kimonos, a large red Japanese suit of armour and a number of exquisite Chinese costumes. So was Klimt’s love of orientalism unusual? In 1923, Anton Faistauer, a Viennese painter wrote a book entitled ‘Neue Malerei in Osterreich’ and in it he discussed Klimt and orientalism, he wrote:

“…for Europeans Klimt is an outsider… (and) it would be better not to compare him at all to western ways. He is incomprehensible to the West, to the French and Germans, and his art, for now, is rejected there… He is conceivable only in Vienna, better still in Budapest or Constantinople. His spirit is entirely oriental. Eroticism plays a dominant role in his art, and his taste for women is rather Turkish… He is inspired by the decorations of Persian vases and oriental carpets, and especially delights in the gold and silver of his canvases…”

The work, with the title Die Tänzerin (Ria Munk II) – The Dancer (Ria Munk II), the title originating from Erich Lederer, remained in Klimt’s studio and he never sold it. It is now part of the collection of the Neue Galerie in New York.

Frauenbildnis (Ria Munk III) by Gustave Klimt (1918) — Frauenbildnis (Ria Munk III) by Gustav Klimt (1918)

The third portrait of Ria Munk, entitled Frauenbildnis ( Ria Munk III), which Klimt began around 1917, was one of the largest and greatest full-length female portraits by him. It was, like a number of Klimt’s later works found in his studio, unfinished, when he died in February 1918. The woman in the painting, with her pink cheeks and dark eyes is standing sideways on but is turning to face us, the viewer. Unlike the previous portrait, there is demureness in the way she holds her robe closed. She seems totally at ease. There is an aura of self-confidence about the young lady. She proffers us a dreamy smile. There is no hint of seductiveness about her expression that we saw in the earlier portrait. As was the case in many of his earlier full length female portraits of women from Vienna’s high society such as Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer II (1912), Portrait of Eugenia (Mäda) Primavesi (c.1914) and Friedericke Maria Beer (1916), he once again morphs his subject into a highly colourful and decorative background. The background of this work consists of a multitude of flowers such as roses and tulips, floral patterns and oriental-looking designs. The painting is incomplete, especially with regards the dress and the foreground, which we see are just traces of the charcoal preliminary sketch.

Shortly after Klimt’s death, and because her daughter’s portrait had been commissioned by Aranka Munk, it was given to her. Aranka, who had divorced her husband in 1913, was now living in the summer at her lakeside villa at Bad Aussee in the Austrian state of Styria and it was here that she kept this third portrait of her daughter Ria. It remained there until 1941. Aranka, being Jewish, was then forced to sell part of the property to neighbours in 1941. The Gestapo later seized her remaining property, and her apartment in Vienna, in 1942. Aranka was deported to Lodz in German-occupied Poland in October 1941 and was put to death on November 26^th, a day before her 79^th birthday. Her daughter, Lola, was also sent to a concentration camp, at Chelmno, Poland, where she died in September 1942.

The year the villa and its contents were seized by the National Socialists, the Frauenbildnis ( Ria Munk III), portrait passed into the hands of the art collector and dealer William Gurlitt. In 1953 the Frauenbildnis painting was among a number of important paintings that Gurlitt sold to the Neue Galerie der Stadt Linz, which in 2003 became known as the Lentos Museum. The painting subsequently remained in the Lentos Museum, Linz until June 2009. It was then, after years of legal challenges that Linz city council finally voted to return the Klimt painting to its rightful owners and it was thus given up by the Lentos Museum to Aranka Munk’s descendents, who were living in Europe and America. The following year, June 2010, the descendents put the work in Christie’s London auction where it sold for £18.8 million.

Whilst I was working on this blog news broke out about a $1 billion art hoard discovery at a Munich apartment of an 80-year-old recluse, Cornelius Gurlitt.

Does the surname ring a bell ??????

The Altarpiece of the Church Fathers by Michael Pacher

Altarpiece of the Church Fathers by Michael Pacher (1471-1475)

For My Daily Art Display today I am going to look at an altarpiece by the fifteenth century Austrian painter and sculptor Michael Pacher. As far as I can remember, I have only presented one other altarpiece in my blog and that was way back on December 7^th 2010 when I talked about the exquisite Isenheim Altarpiece crafted by Matthias Grünewald. Before I go into details of Pacher’s altarpiece let me talk in general about altarpieces.

Altarpieces are normally carvings, sculptures or paintings or a combination of all three. They can be split into two main categories. One type is known as the reredos. It is this type which is positioned behind the altar, rising from ground level and acting as a backdrop to the altar. The other category is known as the retable, and these altarpieces stand either on the back of the altar itself or on a pedestal behind it. In some churches, one can see both types of altarpieces. The actual positioning of the altarpieces is often dictated by their size.

In the early days, before the use of canvas was the norm for painting, altarpieces were usually constructed of two or more separate wooden panels on which a set of religious depictions would be painted. When the altarpiece comprised of just two panels, usually hinged together, it would be known as a diptych. If the altarpiece construction was made of three hinged panels, a central panel and two side panels, then it was known as a triptych. There were some altarpieces which consisted of many panels hinged together, side to side, but these side panels were also split horizontally giving small top and bottom independently hinged panels. These were known as polyptychs.

Within the anatomy of altarpieces with their central and side panels,there are also such things as roundels, spandrels, predellas and pilasters and I won’t go into great detail about each of these but suggest you look at the website below which graphically explains the various “add-ons” that artists used to give to their altarpieces. The website is:

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/anatomy-of-an-altarpiece

Today I want to concentrate on one particular altarpiece which Michael Pacher created for the Neustift Monastery high in the mountains close to Brixen, the south Tyrol town in northern Italy, known by the Italians as Bressanone. The altarpiece which is part painting and part sculpture is entitled The Altarpiece of the Church Fathers and Pacher completed it in 1483. Art historians have ranked this altarpiece as Pacher’s second most famous work, only being bested by the altarpiece he conjured up for the Church of St Wolfgang two years earlier. My reason for choosing the one I have is that I liked the various stories attributed to each of the panels. However before I look in detail at the altarpiece let me tell you a little bit about its creator.

Michael Pacher, an Austrian by birth, was born around 1435 in or around the town of Brixen, which presently lies on the southern slopes of the Italian Alps, close to the border with Austria. Little is known about his upbringing or his early life except that he is thought to have trained under the Tyrolean artist, Hans Von Brubeck, who had a painting school in the area. Records show that Michael Pacher set up his own workshop in the town of Bruneck (Italian: Brunico) in the southern Tyrol region about 35 kms from Brixen. It was here that he fashioned his altarpieces. In the days of Michael Pacher, the town of Bruneck, which lies in the Puster Valley, was on a well used trade route between Augsburg in Germany and Venice and the small town became a stopping off for both merchants and their goods and with that, came affluence and fame for the small town. The town of Bruneck is now often referred to as Michael-Pacher-Stadt.

Most of the work carried out by Michael Pacher was commissioned by the church and it was mainly his altarpieces which were in great demand. Pacher was not just a skilled painter but a master wood carver and his altarpieces often consisted of a beautifully carved figurative centrepiece flanked by religious paintings on the side panels. He spent most of his time in the area around Brixen and Bruneck although he did travel, on a couple of occasions, south to Mantua and Padua. It was when he was in his late fifties that he moved to Salzburg where he took on the large commission for the high altar of theFranziskanerkirche, the Franciscan church, but he was never to finish the commission, dying in Salzburg in 1498. Unfortunately what he did complete has not been preserved. Fortunately though , the statue of the Madonna with Child, one of Michael Pacher’s masterpieces, was integrated in the high altar designed two centuries later by Fischer von Erlach and has been preserved for posterity.

And so to My Daily Art Display featured work, The Altarpiece of the Church Fathers. The picture shows the internal panels of the Altarpiece, the ones seen when the altarpiece is fully opened. It is a combination of carved shrines and wood panel paintings. The altarpiece is divided into a centre panel which consist of two separate works and two hinged side panels, which have paintings on both sides. Each panel depicts one of the four Great Doctors of the Western Church. Each of the depictions serve to remind us of a legend attached to the depicted saint. The Catholic Church bestowed the title Great Doctors of the Western Churchon saints whose writings the whole Church is held to have derived great advantage from and to whom “eminent learning” and “great sanctity” have been attributed by a proclamation of a pope or of an ecumenical council. The four men we see on Michael Pacher’s altarpiece are Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome and Pope Gregory I all of whom were the original Doctors of the Church and were named as such in 1298. They were early and influential theologians, eminent Christian teachers and great bishops and are known collectively as the Great Doctors of the Western Church.

On the inner left side panel of the altarpiece we have Saint Jerome. Jerome of Stridonium, who was born around 347AD, is best known for the legend in which he drew a thorn from a lion’s paw, and in Michael Pacher’s depiction of the saint, we see him draped in the red robes of a cardinal, stroking the lion. Jerome was also a great scholar and was the translator of the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into Latin. Jerome’s edition of the Bible, the Vulgate, is still an important text of Catholicism. Jerome was a noted Christian apologist, a term given to people who present a rational basis for the Christian faith, and who defend the faith against objections, and by doing so attempt to expose the errors of other world views.

If we move to the right of the St Jerome panel we come to the central part of the altarpiece which is formed by two separate panels. The left hand side of this central panel depicts St Augustine. Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo Regius (now the Algerian town of Annaba), was born around 355AD. He was a philosopher and theologian. Augustine is looked upon as one of the most important figures in the development of Western Christianity. Augustine was greatly influenced by the writings of the great Classical Greek philosopher, Plato. He framed the concepts of original sin and just wars as they are understood in the West. If you look closely at the panel painting you will see a small child sat at the feet of St Augustine. The reason for the child’s inclusion harks back to the legend regarding St Augustine and his struggle to understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity, which goes as follows:

The scene is the seashore, where there is a small pool, a little boy with a seashell, and a sandy beach on which St. Augustine, clad in his Episcopal robes, is walking, pondering with difficulty the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity.

“Father, Son, Holy Spirit; three in one!” he muttered, shaking his head.

As he approached the little boy who was running back and forth between the sea and the pool with a seashell of water, Augustine craned his neck and asked him: “Son, what are you doing?”

“Can’t you see?” said the boy. “I’m emptying the sea into this pool!”

“Son, you can’t do that!” Augustine countered. “I will sooner empty the sea into this pool than you will manage to get the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity into your head!”

Upon saying that, the boy, who was an angel according to legend, quickly disappeared, leaving Augustine alone with the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity.

The right hand side of the central panel depicts Pope Gregory I. Saint Gregory, or Gregory the Great as he was known, was born around 540AD and was made pope in 590AD and held that high office until his death in 604. He was also known as Gregorius Dialogus (Gregory the Dialogist) because of his four-volume Dialogues, in which he wrote of the lives and miracles of the saints of Italy and of the afterlife. In the panel painting we see him seated in conversation with a man wearing a crown and who appears to be standing in the middle of a fire. So what is this all about?

The legend surrounding Pope Gregory the Great, was that while he was walking through the Forum of Trajan, he thought of the justice of that emperor towards a poor widow deprived of her only son by a violent death. On entering St. Peter’s he prayed that the soul of so virtuous an emperor might not be forever lost, and his prayers were answered. The panel painting depicts Gregory rescuing the Roman Emperor Trajan from Purgatory by the power of prayer.

The right hand side panel is of Aurelius Ambrosius, who would later be known as St. Ambrose of Milan, Ambrose, who was born around 330AD, was the bishop of Milan and who became one of the most influential ecclesiastical figures of the 4th century . In the side panel we see Ambrose sitting at writing desk but more interestingly at his feet is a baby in a cradle. Once again there is a reason for the baby’s inclusion and, like the other wood panel depictions, it is all about a legend, which is attributed to the main character in the painting. In this case it is a legend about Ambrose when he was a baby. Legend has it that a swarm of bees settled on Ambrose’s his face while he lay in his cradle, leaving behind a drop of honey. His father considered this a sign of his future eloquence and “honeyed tongued”. For this reason, bees and beehives often appear in depictions of St Ambrose.

In each of the paintings the four Church Fathers are depicted with a dove, which symbolised the presence of the Holy Spirit so as to represent their holiness. All four are set inside beautifully decorated individual recesses, but appear to jut out from the picture plane into the viewer’s space. One gets a feel of deep perspective as we look at the altarpiece and this is due to the way Pacher has foreshortened the floor tiles and by the way in which he has given the four overhead canopies a feeling of depth which make them appear as they are jutting out towards us.

On the reverse sides of the two wing panels there are two further paintings which can only be viewed when the altarpiece is closed. One of these depicts St Augustine liberating a prisoner whilst the other depicts the Vision of St Sigisbert.

Three Ages of Woman by Gustav Klimt

I have already featured paintings by two of the great Austrian artists, Egon Schiele (May 26^th and 27^th) and Oskar Kokoschka (Dec 10^th), and today I would like to present a painting by an artist, who has been termed by many, as the greatest Austrian painter who ever lived. Between 1900 and his death in 1918, Klimt dominated the art scene in Vienna.

The featured painting in My Daily Art Display today is entitled Three Ages of Woman which he painted in 1905. It is also sometimes referred to as Mother and Child. The painting is housed in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome. This was one of the artist’s most beloved paintings. For Klimt, although he had painted smaller allegorical pictures, this was to be his first and one of his last multi-figured large-scale allegorical painting, which simply put, is a painting in which there is a pictorial representation of abstract ideas by the depiction of the characters or events in the painting. It is a visual symbolic representation. This painting by Klimt is about the transience of life and the permanence of death.

In the painting we see three women at different stages of life. The youngest is the baby, representing infancy, who in turn is being cradled in the arms of the mother, who although is an adult, is a young adult, representing motherhood. The third figure, on the left of the group is the old woman who represents old age. These three figures have appeared before, slightly altered in form, in some of his earlier and later paintings, such as Medicine which he first exhibited at the 10^th exhibition of the Secession Group in Vienna in 1901 and Death and Life which he completed in 1911.

The background of this is a sea of silver bubbles but the three figures are closely surrounded by unusual shapes. So what are the shapes? It is believed that Klimt had a great interest in the science of microbiology and the shapes floating above the head of the younger women resemble colonies of bacteria, whilst the older woman stands amid the elongated protozoa, which is associated with death and decomposition. This painting is about transition – birth to death. It reminds me of the words uttered at a graveside when the coffin is being lowered “while we are in life we are in death”. It is the thought that on the day you are born you start the dying process.

Let us first concentrate our gaze on Klimt’s portrayal of the old woman. There is nothing endearing about his depiction of the woman. Some would have us believe that Klimt based his depiction of the old woman on Rodin’s sculpture called The Old Woman. In the painting, the head of the elderly woman is bowed as if she has lost all her strength, both physically and mentally, and the will to carry on with life. She is withering away. Her right arm lies limply by her side. Her breasts have sagged. Her stomach muscles can no longer hold in her belly. The veins and arteries in her hand and arm stand out. Her left hand covers her face and by this gesture we take it that she wants to see no more of life. She wants to close it out. She has had enough. She just wants to hide away from all the trials and tribulations that come with life. In her mind she has lived too long.

The mother with the child in the middle of the group represents beauty and the way she lovingly cradles the baby is a representation of the unconditional love of a mother. See how she rests her head on the head of the child. She is the personification of contentment and this look of contentment is mirrored in the face of the baby as she peacefully sleeps in the knowledge that the arms that hold him and the sound of his mother’s heartbeat offer him safety and affection.

So did the painting receive with universal acclaim? Not really. Many feminists viewed the painting with disdain pointing out that Klimt’s “message” is that a woman’s life is over after the young motherhood stage of life. The overall feel to this painting is one of isolation. The three women look as if they are trapped inside a column surrounded on both sides by a void. After the death of his baby son, Otto, in 1902, Klimt became preoccupied with the subject of death and the passage of life on its unstoppable journey towards death.

This is a truly wonderful and yet disturbing painting and once again I would like to have been in the head of the artist as he painted this picture so as to understand what was going through his mind.

The Artist’s Studio by Johann Georg Platzer

My featured artist for My Daily Arty Display is the Austrian painter and draughtsman, Johann Georg Platzer, who was born in 1704 in St Paul in Eppan, a small village in the South Tyrol, Austria. He came from a family of painters and was tutored, when young, by his stepfather Josef Anton Kessler and then later by his uncle Christoph Platzer, who was the court painter in Passau. In 1724 at the age of twenty, he painted an altarpiece for the church of St Helena in Deutschnofen. Probably after 1726 he went to Vienna, where he enrolled at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste and became a friend of Franz Christoph Janneck, one of the leading lights of Austrian Rococo art. Perhaps because of a stroke that impeded his work, he returned to St Michael in Eppan by 1755. In 1761 Platzer died aged 57.

Platzer produced a great number of small paintings, mostly on copper. He was the most important master of the informal group portraits, known as conversation pieces in 18th-century Austria. His cultivated embourgeoisé public was fascinated by the skilful manner, lively colours and countless details of his compositions. According to the principles of modesty and good manners, he chose his models and style to suit the subject-matter: for histories and allegories he took his models from antiquity, the Renaissance and Italian and Flemish Baroque art, as in Samson’s Revenge which hangs in the Belvedere in Vienna. In his genre scenes and more so his conversation pieces, one can detect the inspiration of the French Rococo and the Netherlandish cabinet painters, while in his scenes of today’s featured painting, The Artist’s Studio, his academic knowledge is revealed.

My Daily Art Display is, as I have just said, The Artist’s Studio by Johann Georg Platzer . This oil on copper painting shows the interior of an artist’s studio. If we look at the painting we see the various stages in the production of a painting. In an arched recess in the right background, behind the figure of the man grinding pigments, we can see a group of young students intently drawing the anatomy of an écorché, a figure drawn, painted, or sculpted showing the muscles of the body without skin. Their silent work ethic provides a telling contrast with the outspoken and garrulous ways of the old art critic. Above the heads of the students Platzer has introduced one of his own history paintings: The Samnites before Curius Dentatus.

In the centre foreground we are witnesses to the animated conversation which is taking place between the old critic seated on a stool and the artist himself. The artist, who has been at work on a freely-painted picture of a Bacchanale in the Venetian style, has interrupted his painting to listen to his elderly visitor, who gestures towards the picture on the easel, as though providing a critique of the painting, or maybe he is just talking about art in general because in his lap we see a book which may be a theoretical tome. The inclusion of the book could well be Platzer’s condemnation of art critics by pointing out to us that the critic has probably gained all his artistic knowledge from books and has little or no practical experience of painting.

To the left of the artist and the critic stand an elegant and aristocratic couple wearing seventeenth-century costume, probably patrons of the artist. While her husband strikes a swaggering pose reminiscent of a full-length portrait by Van Dyck, his wife, also wearing a Van Dyck dress, looks out of the picture, as though coolly appraising us, the viewers, with an air of scornful disdain. The addition of paintings on the walls reminds one of the 17^th century Flemish paintings which depicted collector’s picture galleries which of course alluded to their wealth. In the middle of the back wall hangs a genre painting in the style of Teniers, an artist who was very popular with 18th-century collectors. If we look above the top left corner of the easel we can see a copy of Holbein’s Portrait of Erasmus. To the left, by the window, there is an engraving after Van Dyck’s Portrait of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden pinned to the wall. His costume reflects that of the elegantly dressed visitors below. Just below the engraving, in an elaborate carved and gilded frame we can see a picture, which has a self-portrait of Platzer looking over the shoulder of a beautiful young woman as she offers a scrap of food to a parrot. This double representation, male with female, is in the tradition of marital portraits, but strangely Platzer himself never married, so we can only wonder at his reasoning for the inclusion of this painting. Could she be his favourite model or even his mistress?