Csornay Boldizsár - Dobos Zsuzsa - Varga Ágota - Zakariás János szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 97. (Budapest, 2002)
The Year 2002
Friedrich von Amerling (1803-1887) with portraits, Franz Eybl (1806-1880) and Josef Danhauser (1805-1845) with genre pieces, and Friedrich Gauermann (1807-1862) with landscapes of the Alps. While the portraits served for family remembrance, the enormous canvas by Johann Baptist Lampi the Younger (1775-1837) depicting Emperor Francis I in the ceremonial dress of the Order of the Golden Fleece had official representative purposes. In the Atelier of a Painter, Danhauser presented the distance he and his generation felt from historical painting, as well as their simultaneously growing preference for everyday subject matter from real life, understandable to all. The young artist, instead of finishing his work depicting Jeanne d'Arc, kneels down to confess his love to the pretty model dressed in armour. Probably also genre pieces have or will have their historical prospect. In the pair of pieces signed in 1848, Johann Baptist Reiter (1813-1890) showed himself and his wife labouring at diggings organized to alleviate unemployment during the revolution. A curiosity is the sign-board with the mischievous Cupid figure by Leopold Kupclwieser (1796-1862), which invited shoppers to the fashion store standing at the corner of the Seilergasse from 1826. No biedermeier exhibition can be complete without still lifes. In the panel by Sebastian Wegmayr (1776-1857), exquisite butterflies flutter over figs and clusters of grapes. The first Viennese exponent of the "Stimmungsmalerei", August von Pettenkofen (1822-1889) travelled to Szolnok eleven times over the time of three decades to record the colourful fairs there, as is seen in the exhibited work. It is one of the most beautiful paintings from the entire oeuvre of Hans Canon (1829-1885) that best represented the times of historicism. The subject matter and the manner of the Fish Market derive from the seventeenth-century Flemish masters. Some portraits represented the art of Carl Rahl (1812-1865). Anton Romako's (1832-1889) outstanding portrait of Jeromos Stein, a grain merchant from Győr, already points towards modern Viennese painting. The collection of German works of arts gathered headway in the middle of the century, a fact that was perceptible also in the exhibition room. Friedrich August Kaulbach's (1850-1920) half-length portrait of Mrs. Mihály Munkácsy and a landscape by Eduard Schleich the Elder (1812-1874) illustrate the best production of the Munich School. The Italian Landscape by Osvald Achenbach (1827-1905) from Düsseldorf and the Seashore by Fritz Bamberger (1814-1873) from Würzburg greatly differ in the represented features of nature from the Austrian mountains. The three-figure statue of Maternal Love, which dominated the hall on account of its size, is a work of the Viennese Hans Bitterlich (1860-1949). Its carving in marble took place in 1909, more than ten years after the original modelling. The Austrian bronze collection consists of little more than the portraits of prominent figures from the common Austrian-Hungarian history. Hans Gasser's (1817-1868) Count István Széchényi represented the Hungarian side; opposite from him the adversary was present in Franz Högler's (1802-1855) statue of General Radetzky, the leader who suppressed the revolution with bloodshed. The superb bust of the elderly Emperor and King Francis Joseph, a work by Viktor Tilgner (1844-1896), evoked the Austro-Hungarian compromise. Josef
