Robert Janás

In the second half of the 19th century, the so-called schools of historical painting  occupied the most prestigious place among the painting studios at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. This structure fundamentally influenced the subsequent development of Viennese painting. In the artistic events, it was reflected in which of the schools the artists previously studied. Three factors had a fundamental influence. First, the young artists as students were drawn into the rivalries that prevailed between the professors of different studios. Secondly, professors of figurative painting  used different teaching methods and painted in different art styles, when painting methods existed side by side at the academy, which in theory should be separated from each other by several decades. Thirdly, friendly and collegial ties were created between the students on the basis of particular studios, which lasted long after graduating from the academy. All three factors strongly shaped the young artists and as a result manifested themselves at a time when they, as mature artists, were already determining what was happening on the Central European art scene.

In 1903 the Mährischer Kunstverein in Brno organised
an exhibition of the art group Klub der Wiener Künstlerinnen
(Acht Künstlerinnen), the first association of women artists
in the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After two
exhibitions in the private Viennese Salon Pisko, this was the first
exhibition of the club in an official institution. The article shows
how its members tried to overcome the limits and restrictions of
the time that prevented women artists from fully participating
in the art scene, especially in opportunities to study and present
their artworks in public. It analyses the impact that efforts to
overcome social barriers had on the artistic style of the female
artists and surveys contemporary reactions to women’s efforts
to pursue professional art careers. It contrasts them with the
very positive reception of Viennese women artists in Brno and
points to the forgotten Brno exhibition as a milestone in the
history of the emancipation of Central European women artists.

The year 1882 marked a significant turning point for painting in Moravia. The Mährischer Kunstverein was founded, regular art exhibitions began to be held in Brno, and a generation of first-rate painters who had studied at Viennese art schools entered the art scene. These impulses brought dynamism to Moravian painting, raising it to a higher level of quality in a very short time. For local artists of the older generation, this often meant the devastation of their professional careers. The Brno painter Franz Adolph Feilhammer (1817–1888) may serve as an example. Feilhammer represented a romantic landscape painter whose profile was more in line with the first half of the 19th century. He looked for real motifs in nature, which he combined in his studio into a final composition, in which
he modified reality to produce a more impressive artistic effect. Stylistically, he belonged to the circle of Viennese landscape artists as it had derived from Franz Steinfeld the Younger. Feilhammer’s source of inspiration came from a trip to the Alps in 1864 that he undertook with the help of a subsidy provided by the Moravian Provincial Committee (Moravský zemský výbor), for which he was the only applicant. In the Alps, he made 42 sketches, which he used as the basis for more than a hundred paintings in Brno during the following decade. With the gradual exhaustion of motifs, the quality of Feilhammer’s paintings declined, a fact of which the painter himself was aware. In 1876, he requested the committee grant him another subsidy for a trip to the Alps, which he did not receive since the number and quality of potential applicants for financial support had increased due to the emerging generation of Moravian painters studying in Vienna. In the 1880s, Feilhammer had to face the competition of painters represented at exhibitions of the Mährischer Kunstverein in Brno. In
addition to the higher quality of the artists, his situation was also complicated by the more modern artistic approaches of the exhibiting landscape painters. Late Romantic painters such as Eduard Peithner of Lichtenfels and representatives of atmospheric or “mood” impressionism (Stimmungsimpressionismus), including Hugo Charlemont and Robert Russ of the emerging generation of Moravian painters, appeared here. Both movements worked with plein air painting in varying degrees and tried to capture complete sections of real landscapes. Moreover, atmospheric Impressionists concentrated on natural-looking everyday
landscape compositions. Feilhammer continued with his conservative conception of landscape painting, which was not intended to be merely a documentary record of the natural landscape but to give it an air of grandeur. Combining different landscape elements into one composition seemed outdated in the competition with the plein air techniques. While the atmospheric Impressionists looked for motifs in their immediate surroundings, Feilhammer needed romantically attractive motifs from the Alps, which he could derive at that time only from his old sketches. The change in the conception of landscape painting, which took place in the German lands gradually over thirty years, occurred in Moravia in a short period of time. Feilhammer was unable to respond to it. The sudden change in artistic discourse led him into existential problems, which he
resolved by suicide.

The article discusses the painting Pieta by Hans Tichy, (1861–1925), a Moravian painter and one of the founding members of the Vienna Secession. In the work, dated 1888, he reacted to the rise of naturalism in contemporary sacred painting (Jules Bastien-Lepage, Jean Béraud, Fritz Uhde), which however in Central Europe combined the new naturalist elements with the traditional idealism of academic painting. Tichy was primarily influenced by the work of Munkácsy, in particular the Passion cycle Christ before Pilate – Golgotha – Ecce Homo: like Munkácsy he worked on monumentalising figures, the spatial design of the scene, appropriate positioning of minimised detail, complementary colour contrasts, and chiaroscuro effects. In terms of content, Tichy emphasised the female element and also stressed the association with the contemporary movement for women’s rights, which developed in Vienna from the 1880s onwards under the leadership of Rosa Mayreder and the painter Tina Blau-Lang. Tichy was among their supporters,  nd also taught at the Kunstschule für Frauen und Mädchen in Vienna.

The article analyses and puts into wider context the painting by Eduard Veith Winterflucht (The Flight of Winter), which can be found in the collections of the Moravian Gallery in Brno. Eduard Veith was one of the graduates of the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts Kunstgewerbeschule) and, similarly to his more famous schoolmates the brothers Klimt and Franz Matsch, is a representative of the graduates of an educational institution which, under the direction of Rudolf Eitelberger, led its students to the ideas of Gesamtkunstwerk and to a more profound theoretical education. Veith is an example of an artist who created on the boundary of the declining Neo‑Baroque Makart era and of the rising symbolism. Veith belongs among the artists who chose the position of symbolism as their painting style, which, despite its promising beginnings, turned out to be less vital than other symbolist movements from the long‑term point of view of history of art. The article follows these phenomena via the painting Winterflucht and analyses this work of art on the basis of the structure of three planes of meaning: pictorial, allegoric, and symbolic.

The article analyzes and puts into wider context the painting by Hans Temple Feast day at Professor Zumbusch’s (Ein Festtag beim Professor Zumbusch), which is located in the collections of the Moravian Gallery in Brno. Hans Temple brought the techniques of French naturalism, which he had got acquainted with during his scholarship stay in Paris in the late 1880s, to central Europe. Purely French painting form, as it was presented by Temple, was unusual in this region. In the 1880s Temple achieved great success in art exhibitions with paintings capturing views into the studios of contemporary Viennese artists. The author of the article believes that this success was due to the fact that Temple effectively linked pure French naturalism with historicism, which constituted a subsiding mainstream of contemporary painting in central Europe then. The article demonstrates the mixing of the elements of progressive naturalism and of traditional historism on a specific example of the painting Feast day at Professor Zumbusch’s. It also notes, via the period press, how the scheme of painting evaluation was changing in the last two decades of the 19th century, abandoning the traditional model accentuating the depiction of historical topics in favour of painting genres considered less valuable previously.

The territorial concept of one united Moravian nation, prevailing until the end of 19th century, perceived all residents of the territory as Moravian regardless their mother tongue, Czech or German. Big cities were dominantly German-speaking, so was the language of artists and intellectual class. Moravia was typical for its significant inclination to the Austrian Monarchy and close ties to Vienna. An alternative viewpoint of what was supposed to represent the contemporary Moravian fine art started to form at the turn of 19th and 20th century in Eastern Moravia,
especially in the Moravian Slovakia. That´s where the activities of Czech-speaking artists, led by Joža Uprka (1861–1940), concentrated. They accepted the situation as well as the fact that the art of Moravian urban elites was German. However, they managed to reserve the position of
Moravian folk art representatives for themselves.
For Uprka, the folklorisms of the Moravian Slovakia happened to be a lifelong subject of his primary choice, encouraged by the success of his painting, the Pilgrimage to the Chapel of Saint Anthony, exhibited and awarded with an Mention honorable at the Paris Salon in 1894. The interest in Moravian people was not an exclusive subject for Czech-speaking artists only and it wasn´t focused on the Moravian-Slovakian region only. The German-speaking artists were also interested in the Moravian countryside and its traditions, Josef Kinzel (1852–1925) or Kostantin Stoitzner (1863–1933) could serve as an example. However, unlike their Czech-speaking contemporaries, the German Moravian artists have never been considered Moravian folk art proponents. There were two main factors involved. Given the fact the German-speaking artists saw the whole Habsburg monarchy as their homeland, their interest in folk culture possessed the character of national patriotism which wasn´t limited to particular Moravian regions. Stoitzner painted rural motifs not only from Moravia but from other regions of the Monarchy as well. In contrast to Uprka, he has never painted any programme-confirming monumental works focusing on significant manifestations of folk culture related to the Moravian Slovakia, such as Uprka´s Pilgrimage to the Chapel of Saint Anthony (1893) or the Ride of the Kings (1897). Both Stoitzner and Kinzel used to paint small and middle formats emphasizing topics of everyday life depicting the villagers in civil clothing rather than in festive folk costumes. The particular region could be sometimes difficult to identify.
The Slavic Moravian painters took control of the territory of Moravian folk art. During the period of Austria-Hungary they did not attempt to conquer Brno, where all exhibitions and social activities taking place at the art scene concentrated, neither strip the German Moravian authors
of their position of representatives of the Moravian “high“ culture. In the same time they kept on building the image of Brno as a stranger city under control of a foreign German element. Before World War I the rhetoric of representatives of the Slavic political and cultural movement
in Moravia changed. In 1910, the deputy Tomáš Šilingr mentioned both artistic corporations of Moravia, having the Czech-speaking Society of Friends of Fine Arts and the Association of Fine Artists of Moravia on his mind, although there were Moravian German societies active in the region as well. The breakthrough came with the formation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, when the art of the Czech-speaking Moravians started to be perceived as native, while the art by Moravian Germans was branded art of the Moravian German minority.
Even though the Czech-speaking Moravian painters had always presented themselves as pure documentators of Moravian folk culture, they used to adjust the reality to their ideological intentions. In the painting Pilgrimage to the Chapel of Saint Anthony Uprka depicts a large group of pilgrims sitting in front of the chapel considered an important place of pilgrimage, located on the border of two sub-regions of the Moravian Slovakia, lower Dolňácko and upper Horňácko. Dozens of figures in the painting are wearing various folk costumes from Dolňácko. Only two men featured in the right section of the composition are wearing a folk costume from Horňácko. This does not correspond to the reality as it is known that equally numerous groups of residents
of both regions used to attend the pilgrimage. The visual aspect of Dolňácko folk costumes is remarkably colourful and rich in shapes, while the Horňácko ones are simple and moderate. At the Paris Salon, where rustic scenes depicting country life used to be very popular, the
Dolňácko folk costumes especially stood out. In competition of motifs from Bretagne or Upper Loire exhibited there in 1894, Uprka succeeded thanks to the exotic impression of his painting. In the painting called Ride of the Kings he focused on the tradition of Dolňácko again. None
of Uprka´s key works was dedicated to the Horňácko region. He painted several paintings of Horňácko motifs, however those were only small or middle format works. The way he was using it, folklore constituted a visual element which he used to modify to suit his complex cultural and
political purpose. No German Moravian painter has created a folklore-inspired artwork of similar monumentality such as the Pilgrimage to the Chapel of Saint Anthony. Their work was limited to portrayal of country life characters or simple genre scenes depicting everyday life, while Uprka created impressive folkloristic scenes capable of addressing a foreign spectator with its exclusiveness.

The article analyses and puts into wider context the personality of painter Josef Straka on the background of his painting V domě smutku (In the House of Mourning) and other subsequent paintings. Josef Straka entered the visual arts scene at the turn of the 1890’s, and shortly after graduating from his academic studies he was seen as one of the most promising and up‑and‑coming Moravian painters of his time. He obtained important painting commissions for the decoration of
public buildings in Vienna and Trieste. In the further course of his painting career he failed to fully meet the expectations other people had of him, although it cannot be said that the technical quality of the works of Straka decreased. The visual arts scene experienced radical changes, the turn of the century bringing rapid development in the area of painting. The article seeks links between these processes and
Straka’s work. It follows the change of the ideological discourse of contemporary art. It analyses Straka’s fine art techniques and looks into their adaptability to the above mentioned change of discourse.

The article analyses and puts into wider context the paintings by Josef
Kinzel Old Age Does Not Prevent Folly (Stáří se nebrání pošetilosti ) and by Josef Gisela The Day of the Draw (Den tahu), which are in the collections of the Moravian Gallery in Brno. These paintings were created in the 1880’s, when naturalism was gradually gaining prominence in genre painting. Kinzel and Gisela show how the
influence of Biedermeier was still surviving in the contemporary Central European painting. This influence was further enhanced by the nostalgic interest in the culture of “Alt Wien” (Old Vienna) — which disappeared with the commencement of metropolitan urbanization at the end of the 19th century. Kinzel and Gisela represent artists who connected the Biedermeier tradition with the influence of the painting techniques of naturalism. In terms of content, they enriched the Biedermeier with
allegoric planes which were not typical of this style. The article uses the example of the two paintings to show the nonlinearity of the development of art history, when one style of painting kept surviving well into the period which already belonged to a different visual artistic movement. This phenomenon is especially prominent in the work by Josef Kinzel who created works of art in archaic style for half a century
after the artistic movement had been replaced by others in art.

The article analyzes and puts into wider context the painting by Hans
Temple Feast day at Professor Zumbusch’s (Ein Festtag beim Professor Zumbusch), which is located in the collections of the Moravian Gallery in Brno. Hans Temple brought the techniques of French naturalism, which he had got acquainted with during his scholarship stay in Paris in the late 1880s, to central Europe. Purely French painting form, as it was presented by Temple, was unusual in this region. In the 1880s Temple achieved great success in art exhibitions with paintings capturing
views into the studios of contemporary Viennese artists. The author of the article believes that this success was due to the fact that Temple effectively linked pure French naturalism with historicism, which constituted a subsiding mainstream of contemporary painting in central Europe then. The article demonstrates the mixing of the elements of progressive naturalism and of traditional historism on a specific
example of the painting Feast day at Professor Zumbusch’s. It also notes, via the period press, how the scheme of painting evaluation was changing in the last two decades of the 19th century, abandoning the traditional model accentuating the depiction of historical topics in favour of painting genres considered less valuable previously.

The article analyses and puts into wider context the painting by Eduard
Veith Winterflucht (The Flight of Winter), which can be found in the collections of the Moravian Gallery in Brno. Eduard Veith was one of the graduates of the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts Kunstgewerbeschule) and, similarly to his more famous schoolmates the brothers Klimt and Franz Matsch, is a representative of the graduates of an educational institution which, under the direction of Rudolf Eitelberger, led its students to the ideas of Gesamtkunstwerk and to a more profound theoretical education. Veith is an example of an artist who created on the boundary of the declining Neo‑Baroque Makart era and of the rising symbolism. Veith belongs among the artists who chose the position of symbolism as their painting style, which, despite its promising beginnings, turned out to be less vital than other symbolist
movements from the long‑term point of view of history of art. The article follows these phenomena via the painting Winterflucht and analyses this work of art on the basis of the structure of three planes of meaning: pictorial, allegoric, and symbolic.

The article deals with the situation of Brno painting in the first two decades of the 20th century. By the establishment of the Club of Friends of Art (Klub přátel umění) in 1900, a Czech alternative of the German association MährischerKunstverein came into existence. Brno painting, which up to that point had been German, was divided into Czech and German branches. Brno German painting was traditionallyshaped by Viennese influence. Brno Czech painting leaned towards Prague. From 1900 the influence of the Art Nouveau movement appeared in Brno
painting, mainly in the form of impressionist and symbolist tendencies. The German branch of Brno painting tended towards more conservative manifestations, mainly symbolist naturalism and impressionism. Young figural painters were influenced mainly by the works of the Viennesee Alois Delug. After 1910 the Czech branch of Brno painting moved towards more modern styles, in some cases also to the rising
avant‑garde.

The article deals with the situation of Brno painting in the 1880s and
1890s. The founding of the Mährischer Kunstverein in 1882 and the entrance of a strong generation of Moravian painters onto the contemporary visual arts scene were crucial for the development of Brno painting. Brno visual arts were traditionally molded by Viennese influences. Contemporary figure painters were influenced
mainly by the works of Viennese Carl Rahl, which managed to minimize the influences
of Hans Makart‘s Neo-Baroque style. From the 80s, strong Biedermeier influences
in genre painting were suppressed by naturalism, which prevailed completely
in the 90s, when impressionism started to appear. The founding of the Friends’ of
Art Club in 1900 ushered in the advent of Czech speaking visual artists focused
on Prague, who in the following period provided a counterbalance to the painters
influenced by Vienna.