problems into the beauty-loving Hellenic worship of the
senses. Stuck’s art is, also, almost classical in its insensibility
and petrified coldness. In his first picture (1889) “The
Guardian of Paradise” he painted a slim wiry angel, who, like
Donatello’s “St George,” in calm confidence and self-assurance
points the sword before him. And similar rigid figures standing
erect in steadiness—always portraits of himself—recur again
and again in his works. Even his religious pictures—the
“Pietà” and “The Crucifixion”—are, in reality, antique.
One would seek in vain in them for the piety of the old masters
or the Germanic fervour of Uhde. Grand in style and line,
firm, solemn, serious in arrangement, they are yet hard and cold
in conception.
Ludwig von Hoffmann (b. 1861) stands next to him, a gentle, dreamy German. In Stuck’s work everything is strong and rugged: here all is soft and round. There the massiveness of sculpture and stiff heraldic lines: here all dissolved into variegated fairy tales, glowing harmonies. However classical he may appear, yet it is only the old yearning of the Germani for Hesperia—the song of Mignon—that rings throughout his works; the longing to emerge from the mist and the fog into the light, from the humdrum of everyday Life into the remote fabulous world of fairydom, the longing to escape from sin and attain perfect innocence.
There are numerous others deserving of mention besides those already discussed. Josef Sattler (d. 1867), Melchior Lechter (b. 1871), and Otto Greiner (b. 1869), and likewise those who, such as Von Berlepsch (b. 1852) and Otto Eckmann (b. 1865), devoted their energies again to “applied art.”
See R. Muther, The History of Modern Painting (London, 1895); Deutsches Künstler-Lexikon der Gegenwart in biographischen Skizzen (Leipzig, 1898); Mrs de la Mazelière, La Peinture allemande au XIXᵉ siècle (Paris, 1900). (R. Mr.)
Austria-Hungary
In Austria the influence of Makart (1840–1884) was predominant in the school of painting during the last quarter of the 10th century. He personified the classical expression of an epoch, when a long period of colour-blindness was followed by an intoxication of colour. Whilst Piloty’s ambition stopped short at the presentation of correct historical pictures, his pupil, Makart felt himself a real painter. He does not interpret either deep thought or historical events, nor does he group his pictures together to suit the views of the art student. His work is essentially that of a colourist. Whatever his subject may be, whether he depicts “The Plague in Florence,” “The Nuptials of Caterina Cornaro,” “The Triumphal Entry of Charles V.,” “The Bark of Cleopatra,” or “The Five Senses,” “The Chase of Diana,” or “The Chase of the Amazons,” his pictures are romances of brilliant dresses and human flesh. A few studies of the nude and sketches of colour, in which he merely touched the notes that were to be combined into chords, were the sole preliminaries he required for his historical paintings. Draperies, jewels, and voluptuous female forms, flowers, fruit, fishes and marble—everything that is full of life and sensuous emotion, and shines and glitters, he heaps together into gorgeous still-life. And because by this picturesque sensuousness he restored to Austrian art a long-lost national peculiarity, his appearance on the scene was as epoch-making as if some strong power had shifted the centre of gravity of all current views and ideas.
In estimating Makart, however, we must not dwell on his pictures alone. He did more than merely paint—he lived them. Almost prematurely he dreamed the beautiful dream which in later days came nearer realization, that no art can exist apart from life—that life itself must be made an art. His studio, not without reason, was called his most beautiful work of art. Whithersoever his travels led him—to Granada, Algiers, or Cairo—he made extensive purchases, and refreshed his eye with the luscious splendour of rich silks and the soft lustrous hues of velvets. He made collections of carved ivory and Egyptian mummies. Gobelins, armour and weapons, old chests, antique sculpture, golden brocades with glittering embroideries, encrusted coverlets and the precious textures of the East, columns, pictures, trophies of all ages and all climes. He scattered money broadcast in striving to realize his dream of beauty—to pass one night, one hour, in the world of Rubens, so bright in colour, so princely in splendour.
Uniting as he did these artistic qualities in his own person not only because he was a painter, but because in no other besides did the great yearning for aesthetic culture find such powerful utterance—Makart exercised an influence in Austria far transcending the actual sphere of the painter’s art. An intense fascination went forth from the little man with the black beard and penetrating glance. At that time Makart dominated not merely Viennese art, but likewise the whole cultured life of the capital. Not only the Makart hat and the Makart bouquet made their pilgrimage through the world, he became also the motive power in all intellectual spheres. When Charlotte Wolter acted Cleopatra or Messalina on the stage, she not only wore dresses specially sketched for her by Makart, but she also spoke in Makart’s style, just as Hamerling wrote in it. A veritable Makart fever had, indeed, taken possession of Vienna. No other painter of the 19th century was so popular, the life of none other was surrounded by such princely sumptuousness. The scene when, during the festivals of 1879, he headed the procession of artists past the imperial box, mounted on a white steed glittering with gold, the Rubens hat with white feathers on his head, amidst the boisterous acclamations of the populace, is unique in the modern history of art. It is the greatest homage that a Philistine century ever offered an artist.
The life of August von Pettenkofen (1821–1889), who should, after Makart, be accounted the greatest Austrian painter of the last quarter of the 19th century, was passed much more modestly and serenely. He had grown up on one of his father’s estates in Galicia, and had been a cavalry officer before becoming a painter. His place in Austria is that of Menzel in Germany. With Pettenkofen a new style appeared. The representation of modern subjects now began to take the place of historical painting, which had for so long a time been the ruling taste; not in the sense of the old-fashioned genre picture, but in that of artistic refined painting. Here, again, the distinctive Austrian note can be easily recognized. Pettenkofen’s people are lazy, and yawn. All is contemplative and peaceful, full of dreamy, sleepy repose.
But neither Pettenkofen nor Makart has found followers. The great movement which, originating with Manet, took place in other centres of art, passed Austria by without leaving a trace. Hans Canon (b. 1829), who in his pictures transported the characters of the “Gründerzeit” to Venice of bygone days, and reproduced them as Venetian nobles and ladies of quality, is also a painter of note. So likewise is Rudolf Alt (b. 1812), still active with the brush in 1902. a refined painter in water-colours, who reproduces the beauties of Old Vienna in his subtle architectural sketches. Leopold Karl Müller (1834–1892), who had lived in Cairo with Makart, found his sphere of art in the variegated world of the Nile, and his ethnographical exactness, combined with his delicate colouring, made him for a long while much in request as a painter of Oriental scenes, and a popular illustrator of Egyptological works. Emil Schindler was a great landscape painter, who often rose from faithful interpretation of nature to an almost heroic height. Heinrich von Angeli (b. 1840), again, furnished—as he continued to do—the European courts with his representative pictures, combining refined conception with smooth elegant technique. These are the only artists who during the ’eighties rose above local mediocrity. After Makart died in 1884, the sun of Austrian art seemed to have set. Stagnation reigned supreme.
Only since the “Secession” from the old Society of Artists (Künstlergenossenschaft), which took place in 1896, has the former artistic life recommenced in Vienna. Theodor von Hermann, long domiciled in Paris, was the gifted initiator of the new movement, and succeeded in rousing a storm of discontent among the rising school of Viennese artists. They found a literary champion in their hero’s father, who pleaded in eloquent language for a new Austrian culture. In November 1898 the
