Secessionists opened their first exhibition in a building erected
by Josef Olbrück on the Wienerzeil. At first the importance
of these exhibitions lay almost exclusively in the fact that the
Viennese were thus given an opportunity of making acquaintance
with the famous foreign masters, Puvis de Chavannes, Segantini,
Bcsnard, Brangwyn, Meunier, Khnopff, Henri Martin, Vischer,
who had until then been practically unknown in Austria, so
that the public only then realized the inferiority of their countrymen’s
artistic work. Thus while acquainting the Viennese public
with the striving of European art, the Secession endeavoured
at the same time to produce, in rivalry with foreigners,
works of equal artistic merit. Leading foreign masters now
joined the movement, and Vienna, which had so long stood
aside, through inability to be represented worthily at international
exhibitions, became once more a factor in contemporary
European art.
Among the painters of the Secession, Gustav Klint possesses, perhaps, the most powerful original talent. Refined portraits, subtle landscapes and decorative pictures, painted for the Tumba Palace and for the Vienna Hof Museum, first brought his name before the world. But he became famous in consequence of the controversy which arose around his picture “Philosophy.” He had been commissioned to paint the large ceiling piece for the “aula” of the Vienna University, and instead of selecting a classical subject he essayed an independent work. The heavens open; golden and silvery stars twinkle; sparks of light gleam; masses of green cloud and vapour form clusters; naked human forms float about; a fiery head, crowned with laurel, gazes on the scene with large, serious eyes. Science climbs down to the sources of Truth: yet Truth always remains the inscrutable Sphinx. Klint paid the penalty of his bold originality by his work remaining dark and incomprehensible to most people. It has, notwithstanding, an historical importance for Austria corresponding to that which similar works of Besnard have for France. It embodies the first attempt to place monumental painting upon a purely colouristic basis, and to portray allegorical subjects as pure visions of colour. After Klint, Josef Engelhart (b. 1864) is deserving of notice. He is the true painter of Viennese life. On his first appearance his art was centred in his native place, and was strong in local colour, which was lacking in refinement. To acquire subtlety, he studied the great foreign masters and became a clever juggler with the brush, showing as much dexterity as any of them. Yet this virtuosity meant, in his case, only a good schooling, which should enable him to return with improved means to those subjects best suited to his talent. His works are artistic, but at the same time distinctly local.
Carl Moll (b. 1861) understands how to render with equal skill the play of light in a room and that of the sunbeams upon the fresh green grass. The rural pictures of Rist produce a fresh, cool and sunny effect upon the eye; like a refreshing draught from a cool mountain spring—a piece of Norway on Austrian soil. Zettel’s landscapes are almost too markedly Swiss in colour and conception. Julius von Kollmann worked a long time in Paris and London, and acquired, in intercourse with the great foreign painters—notably Carrière and Watts—an exquisitely refined taste, an almost hyperaesthetical sense for discreetly toned-down colour and for the music of the line. In Friedrich König, M. von Schwind’s romantic vein is revived. Even the simplest scenes from nature appear under his hand as enchanted groves whispering secrets. Everything is true and, at the same time, dreamy and mysterious. The mythical beings of old German legends—dragons and enchanted princesses—peer through the forest thicket. Ernst Nowak (b. 1851), compared with him, is a sturdy painter, who knows his business well. He sings no delicate lyric. When one stands close by, his pictures appear like masonry—like reliefs. Seen from, a distance, the blotches of colour unite into large powerful forms. Bernatzik understands how to interpret with great subtlety twilight moods—moonshine struggling with the light of street lamps, or with the dawn. Ticky followed Henri Martin in painting solemn forest pictures. Ferdinand André leans towards the austere power of Millet. He tells us in his work of labour in the fields, of bronzed faces and hands callous with toil; and especially must his charcoal drawings be mentioned, in which the colour overlays the forms like light vapour, and which, small as they are, have a sculptural effect. Auchentelier—known for his female studies—and Hänisch and Otto Friedrich (b. 1862), refined and subtle as landscape painters, must also be mentioned.
In rivalry with the Secession, the “Künstlergenossenschaft” has taken a fresh upward flight. Among figure painters, Delug, Goltz (b. 1857), Hirschl and Veith are conspicuous; but still greater fascination is exercised by landscape painters such as Amesadan, Charlcmont, &c., whose works show Austrian art in its most amiable aspect. Apart from Austrians proper, there are also representatives of the other nationalities which compose “the monarchy of many tongues.” Bohemia takes the lead with a celebrity of European reputation—Gabriel Max (b. 1840), who, although of Piloty’s school and residing in Munich, never repudiated his Bohemian origin. The days of his youth were passed in Prague; and Prague, the medieval, with its narrow winding alleys, is the most mysterious of all Austrian cities, enveloped in the breath of old memories and bygone legends. From this soil Max drew the mysterious fragrance that characterizes his pictures. His earliest work, the “Female Martyr on the Cross” (1867), struck that sweetly painful, half-tormenting, half-enchanting keynote that has since remained distinctively his. Commonplace historical painting received at Max’s hands an entirely new nuance. The morbidness of the mortuary and the lunatic asylum, interspersed with spectres—something perverse, unnatural and heartrending—this is the true note of his art. His martyrs are never men—only delicate girls and helpless women. His colouring corresponds to his subjects. The sensations his pictures produce are akin to those which the sight of a beautiful girl lying in a mortuary, or the prison scene in Faust enacted in real life, might be expected to excite. He even applies the results of hypnotism and spiritualism to Biblical characters. In many of his pictures refinement in the selection of effects is missing. By over-production Max has himself vulgarized his art. Yet, despite his manner of depicting the mysteries of the realms of shadows, and the intrusion of the spirit-world into realism, he remains a modern master. A new province—the spectral—was opened up by him to art.
Hans Schwaiger is the real raconteur of Bohemian legends. He, likewise, passed his youth in a small Bohemian village, over which old memories still brooded. In Hradec, places upon which the gallows had stood were still pointed out. The lonely corridors and passages of the ruined castle were haunted by the shades of its old possessors. This is the mood that led Schwaiger to legend-painting. But underlying his fairy tales there are the gallows or the alchemy of Faust. The landscape with its gloomy skies, the wooden huts, turrets, dwarfed trees—such are ever the accompaniments of his figures.
Of the younger generation of painters, Emil Orlick (b. 1870) seems to be the most versatile. Having acquired technique in Paris and Munich, he practically discovered Old Prague to the world of art. The dark little alleys of the ancient town, swarming with life compressed within their narrow compass, fascinated him. In order to retain and convey all the impressions that crowded in upon him in such superabundant plenitude, he learned how to use the knife of the wood-carver, the needle of the etcher, and the pencil of the lithographer. His studio more resembles the workshop of a printer than the atelier of a painter. In the field of lithography he has attained remarkable results. Orlick has also made his own everything that can be learned from the Japanese. Besides these masters, Albert Hynais, the creator of decorative pictures almost Parisian in conception, must be mentioned. The landscape painters Wickener, Jansa, Slavicek, and Hudecek relate, in gentle melancholy tones of colour, the atmosphere and solitude of the wide plains of Bohemia.
In Poland, painting has its home at Cracow. Down to the year 1893 Johann Matejko was living there, in the capacity
