Hans Makart, Salzburg 1840 - 1884 Vienna, Back nude in landscape
Hans Makart
Salzburg 1840 - 1884 Vienna
"Back nude in landscape"
Oil on Canvas
32,5 x 47,5 cm, with frame 46 x 61 cm
Expertise: Dr. Nikolaus Schaffer, former Salzburg Museum
Hans Makart wasted his outstanding abilities not only on giant canvases populated with many figures and on no less respectful portraits. He also scattered them in small, all the more precious coin - as sketches, studies or etudes. Besides the tendency to the grandiose, there is in his painting a no less pronounced trait to the intimate. In this respect, the looseness, even fragrance of the execution was always perceived as an advantage over the stricter ductus of the main works. A disadvantage is that in these small formats, which could be described as splinters of Makart's Gesamtkunstwerk, there is usually no signature - as in the present small nude painting.
If it were not an ultimately too general characteristic, one could already see in the back view an indication of Makart's authorship, because he liked to use the deviation from the "show side", be it in the nude or in the portrait, as a means of art. Another typical Makart characteristic is that the artist even introduces a motif of movement into the classically still pose of his model, namely the stretching of the right arm, although he actually reaches into the indefinite - the static was not Makart's element. This motif is repeated - quite casually, but nevertheless - in the branches of the vegetal background, thus establishing a close connection between the figure and the surrounding nature. The reclining figure is thus identified as a creature of nature, interwoven with its vegetal surroundings, which in Makart's work, however, always have something artificial about them.
Very typical for his painting is the almost homely warm sepia tone of the entire picture space, here in transitions from the reddish ground to the autumnal pallor of the background. This uniform color mood is "disturbed" only by the cold sky blue breaking through the branches, which Makart - as in so many works - uses as a dramatic color effect against the homogeneous brown tone.The almost exaggeratedly supple curves of the nude could be explained by an eroticizing effect, but could also be cited as an indication of the alleged "bonelessness" of Makart's conception of the body - an argument often used against Makart, but which must lose out at this point in view of the immensely coherent composition.
There is actually nothing about this picture that does not speak for Makart, and it is therefore beyond doubt that it is a work by his hand; a cabinet piece, which despite the small format has a rounded character in itself, is an independent work. As far as the chronological classification is concerned, the years 1870/75 are the most likely.
Nikolaus Schaffer
Estimate
Time, Location
Auction House
Hans Makart
Salzburg 1840 - 1884 Vienna
"Back nude in landscape"
Oil on Canvas
32,5 x 47,5 cm, with frame 46 x 61 cm
Expertise: Dr. Nikolaus Schaffer, former Salzburg Museum
Hans Makart wasted his outstanding abilities not only on giant canvases populated with many figures and on no less respectful portraits. He also scattered them in small, all the more precious coin - as sketches, studies or etudes. Besides the tendency to the grandiose, there is in his painting a no less pronounced trait to the intimate. In this respect, the looseness, even fragrance of the execution was always perceived as an advantage over the stricter ductus of the main works. A disadvantage is that in these small formats, which could be described as splinters of Makart's Gesamtkunstwerk, there is usually no signature - as in the present small nude painting.
If it were not an ultimately too general characteristic, one could already see in the back view an indication of Makart's authorship, because he liked to use the deviation from the "show side", be it in the nude or in the portrait, as a means of art. Another typical Makart characteristic is that the artist even introduces a motif of movement into the classically still pose of his model, namely the stretching of the right arm, although he actually reaches into the indefinite - the static was not Makart's element. This motif is repeated - quite casually, but nevertheless - in the branches of the vegetal background, thus establishing a close connection between the figure and the surrounding nature. The reclining figure is thus identified as a creature of nature, interwoven with its vegetal surroundings, which in Makart's work, however, always have something artificial about them.
Very typical for his painting is the almost homely warm sepia tone of the entire picture space, here in transitions from the reddish ground to the autumnal pallor of the background. This uniform color mood is "disturbed" only by the cold sky blue breaking through the branches, which Makart - as in so many works - uses as a dramatic color effect against the homogeneous brown tone.The almost exaggeratedly supple curves of the nude could be explained by an eroticizing effect, but could also be cited as an indication of the alleged "bonelessness" of Makart's conception of the body - an argument often used against Makart, but which must lose out at this point in view of the immensely coherent composition.
There is actually nothing about this picture that does not speak for Makart, and it is therefore beyond doubt that it is a work by his hand; a cabinet piece, which despite the small format has a rounded character in itself, is an independent work. As far as the chronological classification is concerned, the years 1870/75 are the most likely.
Nikolaus Schaffer
Estimate
Time, Location
Auction House
