VIENNA.- The Albertina is presenting 150 masterpieces of Austrian watercolour painting from the prestigious collection of Archduke John (1782–1859). The Habsburg visionary commissioned the artists Johann Kniep, Karl Ruß, Jakob Gauermann, Matthäus Loder, and Thomas Ender as his ‘chamber painters’ to produce topographical views of Styria, Salzburg, and Tyrol. This led to the compilation of a high-quality collection comprising vedute, depictions of traditional costumes, and pictorial documents of early industrial plants.
Archduke John’s ambitions were multifaceted and diverse: starting out from his political and military career, he proceeded to comprehensive endeavours in science, education, and the arts and devoted himself to economic and social initiatives by launching a number of seminal projects. The complexity of his thinking and of his actions is also reflected in the collections the ‘Prince of Styria’ commissioned and amassed, including a compilation of 1400 watercolours and drawings of mainly Alpine regions that was begun in 1802. Archduke John employed his ‘chamber painters’ in the manner of court painters over a period of forty years. They accompanied the archduke on his missions and journeys and received a monthly salary as members of his household.
Johann Kniep, a student of Laurenz Janscha, painted the first views of Styria for the archduke in 1802. The activity of Karl Ruß, who primarily rendered traditional costumes of the local population, lasted from 1810 to 1818. The ‘Styrian prospects’ by Jakob Gauermann, who was appointed chamber painter in 1818, constitute the main body of topographical landscape views of Styria. Matthäus Loder, who entered into the archduke’s service in 1816, sensitively described stations in his patron’s private life – first and foremost the famous love story between the archduke and Anna Plochl, the postmaster’s daughter from Aussee. Thomas Ender, the last in the succession of chamber painters, was employed in 1828 as Loder’s successor. In 1837 he accompanied the archduke on his journey to the Crimea, with stopovers in Odessa, Constantinople, Smyrna, Athens, and Trieste. His pictorial documentation comprised more than 300 watercolours.
Although the works differ in terms of approach and style, they are nevertheless homogeneous in character: the artists knew how to do justice to the archduke’s intentions and comply with his ideas and values. John was primarily interested in conserving regional ethnic traditions and in documenting the country and its inhabitants. Moreover, it was important to him to counter the threat of uprooting caused by industrialisation and present Styria as a land of balance between past and future, between tradition and progress. On the other hand, Thomas Ender’s pictures of glaciers in particular can be interpreted as both documents of and incentives for Alpine tourism and its rapid development.
Many of the works are characterised by idealisation, but are authentic when it comes to detail. Truthful renderings of nature and settlements in the Alpine regions at the dawn of major industrial transformations, they were and still are a basis for such multifarious scientific disciplines as historiography, geology, and ethnology. Made during the period of Biedermeier and Vormärz, these watercolours attest to the complex stylistic simultaneity of neo-classicism and realism. They are unique documents of the evolution of landscape painting during the first half of the nineteenth century.
The exhibition highlights 150 masterpieces from the important collection of Archduke John, which is still owned by his descendants and has now been made accessible to the public on such a large scale for the first time.
The exhibition also presents several exemplary models of agricultural implements
