VIENNA.- What are the asserted "highlights" of a collection? How is it that specific works get exhibited ... and others not? One look at the history of such curatorial choices illustrates the Eurocentric bias often behind these decisions. With this in mind, the Belvedere now presents three remarkable works from its collection rarely shown before, painted by artists considered pioneers of modern painting in their native countries: Raden Saleh, Osman Hamdi Bey, and Hakob Hovnatanyan.

CEO Stella Rollig explains: „There is a good reason why diversity and plurality are playing an increasingly important role in museums today. With this exhibition, the Belvedere seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the many perspectives of historical works from artists at the crossroads of different cultures. With Saleh, Hamdi Bey, and Hovnatanyan, we find high-caliber artists on the cusp of modernity who have so far received little recognition in the context of our collection.“

Three 19th-century paintings from the Belvedere's collection – three artists of world renown who have long been held in high esteem in their native countries and who, in recent decades, have gradually conquered the international art scene: Raden Saleh from Java in today’s Indonesia, Osman Hamdi Bey from Turkey, and Armenian native Hakob Hovnatanyan, who worked in Georgia and Iran.

The IN-SIGHT exhibition opens up a new perspective on an era in which the European art world was undergoing radical change, and one that is at the heart of the museum's collection. At the center of the show are three large paintings: Tigers Fighting over a Dead Javanese (Saleh), Meditating on the Qur'an (Hamdi Bey), and Nāser ad-Din, the Shah of Persia (Hovnatanyan). The works arrived in Vienna shortly after their creation, either as gifts from the artists to Emperor Franz Joseph I (Saleh and Hovnatanyan) or through acquisition on behalf of the imperial painting collection (Hamdi Bey). Although they have since been part of the inventory of Viennese museums (initially the Kunsthistorisches Museum and later the Belvedere), they were stored away for most of the time. So how did these key works by artists who created their own artistic style through the interaction of European training and the painting traditions of their native countries remain "invisible"? Who in their native countries are considered pioneers of modern painting?




Curator Markus Fellinger notes: „Until a few years ago, these three works of non-European provenance were the only ones in the Belvedere collection that did not quite fit into the context of the collection. They are, however, museum masterpieces by important artists whose biographies are just as exciting as their paintings. Their works share in common the breakdown of assumed boundaries separating the culture of their native country from that of Europe. They represent a view of European art from the outside and allow us to challenge in many ways the familiar Eurocentric view of the world.“

Osman Hamdi Bey and Hakob Hovnatanyan lived to the east of Europe's centers. Hamdi Bey established the first state art academy in Istanbul in 1882, and in later years became the founding director of the Imperial Museum (Müze-i Hümayun) in Istanbul. Whereas Saleh and Hamdi Bey left their native lands for Europe, Hovnatanyan followed a different path. He was born in Tbilisi in 1806 and was initially trained in the local tradition. Later he devoted himself to European realism before, at an advanced age, embracing the traditions of the Persian school of painting. The artist thus merged the cultural and artistic traditions of Armenia, Georgia, Persia, and Russia.

The unusually large, life-size portrait of Nāser ad-Din, the Shah of Persia in the collection of the Belvedere in Vienna – the only known painting by Hovnatanyan in a European museum outside Russia – is regarded as the main work from his Persian period.

Raden Saleh's native island of Java was colonized by the Netherlands. His work was widely covered in contemporary cultural columns of the newspapers of Europe, where he lived from 1829 to 1851 and from 1875 to 1878. While his creativity and artistry were never called into question, both he and his work were continually examined through the lens of exoticism by contemporary media and art critics. In his native country, on the other hand, Saleh's originality was frequently called into question: he was labeled as "Europeanized" and criticized for his idealized depictions. Within this range of refraction, Raden Saleh continues to be a subject of debate.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the three paintings in the exhibition were transferred from the former holdings of the imperial painting collections to the Belvedere, presumably because they are oil paintings rendered essentially in a European technique and style. However, their classification in the canon of Eurocentric art history is still difficult today. In the meantime, works by the three artists fetch millions in the art trade.

The IN-SIGHT series takes a closer look at the works of these three personalities, shedding light on the greater context and placing a focus on the distinctive qualities of art that merge European and Asian cultural traditions.