Drawings of the romantic and late romantic school

Research project P 14563 Darwings of the Romantic and Late Romantic School Robert WAGNER 09.10.2000 In continuation of a project to record and review the significant inventory of drawings from German and Austrian Romanticism in the Graphic Collection at the Vienna-Academy of Fine Arts, the focus will be on artists who have not been dealt with so far. For the first time, large corpora of drawings by Leopold Schulz and Josef Mathias Trenkwald as well as by Führich students who were involved in major series of paintings for buildings in Vienna (Ringstrasse, Altlerchenfeld church) in the second half of the century will be systematically recorded and analysed. Another important group of works comprises drawings by Carl Rahl and his students Eduard Bitterlich, Christian Griepenkerl and August Eisenmenger, which are to shed light on the Rahl School, an element of great significance for the complex phenomenon of Austrian art in the second half of the century. In the context of Romantic Late Classicism, the large number of Anselm Feuerbach`s studies for the ceiling painting in the Great Hall of the Vienna Academy will also be recorded and investigated with a view to identifying the iconographic and stylistic development of this late major work by Feuerbach. Using the comprehensive source material available in the archives of the Academy of Fine Arts, the first analysis ever made of this high-quality inventory of drawings from the Austrian and German Schools of the nineteenth century may greatly contribute to an understanding of the complex and often inseparably linked phenomena of Romanticism and Classicism as two central modes of expression in nineteenth-century art. The continuation of the project aims at the publication of three catalogues listing the inventory of drawings in the Graphic Collection at the Vienna Academy which will review the comprehensive pictoral material and provide comments in the shape of scholarly essays.

Within the framework of the continued project to inventorize the significant collection of freehand drawings by German and Austrian artists from the era of Romanticism housed at the Graphic Arts Cabinet of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, material that had been entirely unknown to date was identified. New discoveries comprised large compendia of drawings by Leopold Schulz, including the cartoons for the decoration of the Residence in Munich, and the "Amor and Psyche" cycle executed in co-operation with Moritz von Schwind at Rüdigsdorf Palace near Altenburg in Saxonia. The uvre of drawings by Josef Mathias Trenkwald was used to document, in an exemplary way, how diametrically opposed modes of expression can be found in the works of one and the same artist dating from around the same time. The drawings by artists from the circle of Führich`s most noted students, including Franz Joseph Dobyaschofsky, Bonaventura Emler, Karl Joseph Geiger, and Carl Madjera, were also inventorized and analysed systematically. The material serves as proof that late Romanticism - supported by conservatives circles of higher nobility and clergy - was even handed down to the early twentieth century as an important mode of art production. In parallel, a "romanticising" form of late Classicism took shape, especially in the circle around Carl Rahl`s studio, and primarily characterised by Rahl`s personality. In the context of late Classicism, the comprehensive studies done by Anselm Feuerbach for the decoration of the great hall of the Vienna Academy were recorded and examined for the genesis of iconography and style in this main uvre created by Feuerbach late in his life. While making use of the extensive source material in the archive of the Academy of Fine Arts, the first project ever to capture the high-quality inventory of freehand drawings of the Austrian and German schools of the nineteenth century has made an important contribution to understanding the complex and often inseparably intertwined phenomena of Romanticism and Classicism as two central modes of expression in nineteenth-century art.