Allegory on the Fate of Art, Franz Anton Maulbertsch (1770)

Here is a stunning painting by an artist we have not looked at before, Franz Anton Maulbertsch (1724-1796), Allegory on the Fate of Art, painted in 1770, currently in the Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna.

Maulbertsch was Austrian, working as both a painter and engraver.  Although he has been recognized in the Central European regions where he worked, Maulbertsch has remained outside the general canon of art history. His fame rests as one of the most famous rococo painters in and around Germany.  He was born in Langenargen, and studied in the Academy of Vienna.  His major influences were the Venetian painters Piazzetta and Giovanni Battista Pittoni (1682-1754 and 1687-1767, respectively). He also made a study of the frescoes by Sebastiano Ricci in the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, and frequented Giambattista Tiepolo, who was active in Würzburg starting from 1750.

Maulbertsch was especially adept at frescoes.  He painted frescoes for multiple churches in Bicske, Kalocsa, Vienna’s Michaelerkirche and Piaristenkirche Maria Treu. He also decorated the Porta Coeli in Moravia, the Kroměříž Archbishop's Palace and the villa of Halbturn.  He died in Vienna in 1796.

There is a champion book about Maulbertsch, Painterly Enlightenment, by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann.  It’s the only comprehensive overview of the artist in English, and essential reading for anyone interested in this neglected master.

What is most striking about Maulbertsch is his bold, striking use of color.  Maulbertsch was a fresco painter at a time of transition to easel painting, a colorist at a time when color was not fully appreciated by contemporary observers, and an interpreter of religious themes at a time when secular subjects were becoming more popular. It was because of these conflicting forces -- caught between the intellectual forces of the Enlightenment and the waning power of the traditional church – that Maulbertsch is perhaps historically neglected.  However, Kaufmann believes that he is one of the great painters of eighteenth-century Europe, and he may not be far wrong.

Which brings us to this work, which was Maulbertsch's reception piece in 1770 for the Engravers' Academy in Vienna, founded in 1766 by his eventual father-in-law Jacob Schmutzer (1733-1811). The Engravers' Academy would later be united with the Academy of Fine Arts in 1772, and remained an incredibly important guild until the 19th Century.  The picture is oil on wood, 105 x 72 cm, and highlights all the delirious wonder of Maulbertsch’s work. 

Like most Rococo masters, Maulbertsch’s intent was the not the meticulous life-like rendering found in Renaissance or Mannerist paintings.  The Rococo is more a study in style than anything else, and the style of this picture is infinitely more important than its substance.

The sweeping upward progression of the picture is what gives this picture is drama and emotional heft.  In the lower regions of the picture an artist, on the left, huddles bereft over the broken pieces of decorative urn he has created, to the right of the picture, bathed in a reddish light that is probably a glaze of vermillion over the body color, reaches an artist whose creation slowly floats away from him.  His creation, the woman rising upward with help of a putti, is emerging from her clothes (the art of the artist) to ascend into a nude purity on a loftier plane.

Behind that figure is yet another artist.  Note the expression of his face – loss, longing and disbelief.  He looks on as his creation, shed of her garments, join celestial figures bathed in a heavenly light.  Another work of art has been completed, only to escape the control (and ownership) of its creator.

Note the dramatic coloration of the figures and the spotlight quality of the lighting (the key figures move in-and-out of a hot white glare), and see how Maulbertsch uses these techniques to tell his story.  The broken-urn artist (beautifully drawn and painted) is in partial shadow, the white cloth by him and his leg and torso lit to move the eye upward.  Our other two artists, key to the composition but not the story, are lit in muted reds and grays.  The upper most figures enter the heavenly light of artistic excellence, spectacularly illuminating the female figure, the head and shoulders of her guiding angel and the putti hovering above.

Though certainly not to every taste, this is a spectacular picture.

Fêtes Vénitiennes, by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1718-19) at The Frick Collection

It is always a treat when one of New York’s major museums mounts a show that is scalable, smart and well-balanced, and that is what The Frick Collection in New York has done with its current Masterpieces From the Scottish National Gallery, on view through February 1, 2015.

The Frick has gathered 10 superb paintings from the collection, ranging from the Florentine Renaissance to 19^th Century society pictures.  It includes wonderful works by such masters as Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, El Greco and Velazquez.  It is a show not to be missed.

The Scottish National Gallery was founded in 1850 in Edinburgh, and is one of the finest museums in the world.  It has an extraordinary collection of paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings – and the question of what to show at a traveling exhibition must have been a mighty one.

However, this bite-size show rises to that challenge – there is not a piece in it that is not a masterpiece in its own right.  Those not in New York should rest easy – the show will also travel to the de Young, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. 

Between now and Thanksgiving I wanted to share my favorite pieces in the show in The Jade Sphinx.  We start with Fêtes Vénitiennes, painted by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), in 1718-19.

Watteau had a brief career, cut short by premature death, but his legacy has been long lasting and influential.  He veered away from the stuffy excesses of the prevalent Rococo style, and his use of color and movement was influential for decades after his death.

Watteau was deeply influenced by figures from commedia dell’arte while learning his craft in the workshop of Claude Gillot (1673-1722).  The actors from the commedia had been expelled from France for several years, but the costumes, masks and mummery were to loom large in his boyish imagination.

Watteau also created the genre of fêtes galantes, scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, suffused with a theatrical air. Some of his best known subjects were drawn from the world of Italian comedy and ballet. 

The picture on hand at the Frick is well within that tradition – and it is one before which I spent considerable time.  It is a picture that seems to generate feelings both celebratory and foreboding, as what is clearly a party also seems spooky and … uncanny.

The moody garden setting would not seem out-of-place in a pen-and-ink drawing by Edward Gorey, and the coloration seems both subtle and vibrant.

The figures, so clearly part of a costume party, add another note of the strange to the picture, where figures in fancy dress disport themselves in an atmosphere that is playfully erotic.

The air of erotic play is personified by the background statue that is blatantly sexualized, and by the two male figures on either side of the picture who gaze openly at the woman center-stage.  (I also like the blue-costumed figure in the back with a tricorn hat; an aesthete who looks on with a critical eye.)

There is also a private joke in the picture – the musette-playing fellow to the far right is Watteau himself, while the dancer in pantaloons and turban is Nicolas Vleughels, a Flemish painter, who was Watteau's friend and landlord.  The actual story of why they are represented in the painting has been lost to time.

Not easily seen in the reproduction here is the wonderful coloration – though painted in oil, it looks for all the world like pen and watercolor.  The dress of the central female figure is dazzling, and lightens up the whole picture, providing life and vitality to the proceedings.  The band of color that shimmers down her dress is almost the source of light in the piece, capturing, surely, the pearly rays of the moon.

This small picture (22x18) is a little master class in mood and tension through color and composition.  Be sure to see it.

Tomorrow:  Painting by Allan Ramsay!