Waldmüller: Landscape Review – The rule-breaking radical whose “gentle fingers” drove bourgeois Austria crazy | coloring

FErdinand Georg Waldmüller (1793-1865) is considered one of the most important figures in nineteenth-century Austrian art. An influential and impressive teacher, and a somewhat radical figure in relation to the established Vienna Academy. He worked during the Biedermeier Movement which extended from the end of the Napoleonic Wars until 1848 when various revolutions shook the ruling Habsburg Empire and the Austrian political elite. Biedermeier reflects the tastes and aspirations of the rising bourgeois society. Very beautiful landscapes, genre scenes, floral and portrait pieces for the mobile drawing room. Within these gentler limits, Waldmüller focused intently on a more rigorous pictorial style, caring more about accuracy and integrity than the sentimental efforts of his peers, while also criticizing the academy’s teaching methods and eventually calling in 1857 for the abolition of all academies.

If this collection of relatively small, finely detailed landscapes represents an enthusiastic, extreme painter tearing up the rule book, it is far from straightforward in its tightly controlled, somewhat crude visual appearance. Each shows a view of a particular site – the ruins of the temple of Juno Lacinia near Agrigento (1846), a view of the Dachstein River from Sofin-Duppellick near Ischl (1835) – accompanied by captions systematically listing noteworthy topographical details, followed by some light technical analysis: for the latter, “Waldmüller has distinguished the successive elements of the scene with clear changes of tones, from the soft green of the valley to The blue-gray of distant mountains. In the only picture in the exhibition, a self-portrait as a young man in 1828, which by the way dwarfs everything else here in size, the caption calls attention to his “delicate fingers declaring his sensitivity and talent”: delicacy and sensitivity are the practical descriptors of the entire show.

It should be noted that Waldmüller originally taught himself by imitating 17th-century Dutch artists such as Jacob van Ruysdael, abandoning this practice in favor of studying directly from nature. While Ruisdael conjures expressive landscapes of palpable mood and vitality, Waldmüller strips his landscapes of dramatic effect and overt character in search of military precision. He applies leaf, bark, grass and foliage ingredients to his compositions with the calculated, precise precision of a chef applying delicate garnishes with a pair of tweezers.

Waldmüller’s use of white ground rather than structure in his paintings is unusual in itself. Applying oil paint in a thin glaze over a white ground makes the color shine. a practice that was also adopted in parallel by the Pre-Raphaelites, whom he may have met during a trip to London in 1856. However, the Pre-Raphaelites’ efforts are an artistic riot of astonishing intensity perfectly in keeping with their fanciful, slightly trippy characters of myth and legend; Once again, in confining himself to the exact reproduction of the trees around him, Waldmüller’s visual impact was relatively reduced to the muted colors found in nature.

It is difficult to fully understand Waldmüller’s pioneering status within the narrow parameters of landscape painting, and in isolation from contemporary contextual examples; What is the difference between it and the field of topographical or botanical paintings that serve primarily as an academic record? The evidence lies in one landscape inhabited by a group of smiling children collecting violets in early spring in the Vienna Woods (1861), which gives a glimpse into Biedermeier’s broader trend of beautiful genre scenes with allegorical content, here referring to the spring yet to come. Thanks to her sarcastic presence, one can relatively understand Waldmüller’s desire to do away with such unserious fantasy and focus on the “unwavering honesty” of the actual world.

The choice to limit the UK presentation of Waldmüller to landscapes may be attributed to the National Gallery’s collaboration with the Belvedere in Vienna, which had previously exhibited an expanded version of this collection and loaned the majority of the paintings. It is part of a concerted effort to fill gaps in his holdings of 19th-century German, Swiss, and Austrian Romantic paintings. After all, there is only one Caspar David Friedrich in its permanent collection. This exhibition space is dedicated to bringing these underrepresented artists to its audience. Blockbuster films featuring Van Gogh certainly have the greatest popular appeal, but credit goes to the National for truly seeking to provide a fuller geographical and historical view of other artists and movements. To that end, this Waldmüller offering is the art-historical equivalent of eating your vegetables: it may not quicken the heartbeat but it is nonetheless a healthy exercise that shapes a perfectly balanced palate.