INTO THE GREAT OUTDOORS
FROM WALDMÜLLER TO SCHINDLER

06.12.2018 - 28.04.2019

In the 19th century, the esthetical framework for the genre of landscape painting was exceedingly

broad. In Romanticism, the open country was captured on canvas either as a menacing backdrop or as an enchanted place of longing, while during the Biedermeier era it served as a light-flooded stage for renderings of rural life. The pictorial anecdotes of Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller and Friedrich Gauermann captivate with their hyper-realistic chiaroscuro, which elevated the depicted scenes to pieces of a parallel nature.

From 1860, the younger generation, whose spiritus movens and central figure was the “Austrian Corot” Emil Jakob Schindler, embarked on a different path. Using understated colors, this circle of artists paid homage to unheroic landscapes imbued with lyrical atmospheres. The idyllic environs of the Danube metropolis, as well as western France, Italy, Dalmatia, the Netherlands and Hungary, were the destinations of their extended painting excursions. Synergetic effects were derived from their exploration of the plein-air painting of the Barbizon School, the Hague School, the Munich School, as well as 17th century Dutch landscape painting. Exponents of Austrian Atmospheric Realism arrived at individual, at times highly idiosyncratic solutions. Often also referred to as “Atmospheric Impressionists”, they paid tribute to untouched nature in the age of industrialization, sharpened the eyes of beholders for the poetry of the ordinary and provided distinct counterdrafts to the ostentatious painting of Historicism.

The exhibition “Into the Great Outdoors” features works by Rudolf Ribarz, Robert Russ, Eugen Jettel, Otto von Thoren, Anton Romako and August von Pettenkofen. A special emphasis is on Tina Blau, who was able to assert herself in a male-dominated profession and worked as an art teacher. The presentation also touches upon interactions between the art metropolises Vienna and Paris, and explores the relationship of some painters with the young medium of photography. The exhibition features around 90 works.

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