|
|
| PORTRAIT ATLANTIS AT RUNDĀLE PALACE. DISCOVERIES AND PLENITUDE Eduards Kļaviņš Exhibition "19th Century Portrait in Latvia" at Rundāle Palace Museum from 24 May to 1 November | |
 Johann Samuel Grune. Family Portrait. 1820s | |
The tradition of large-scope historical exhibitions under the wing of Rundāle Palace continues, with the same grandeur, thoroughness, wealth of exhibits and brilliance as many times before. This time, from 24 May, attention is focused on the 19th-Century portrait in Latvia - as a continuation of the exhibitions devoted to portraits of the two preceding centuries. The curating, artwork selection and attribution, and the organising of the exhibition were in the hands of Inta Pujāte and Dainis Bruģis, with the involvement of conservators and people from numerous museums, as is usual in such occasions. There is no doubt that this event is also a reaffirmation of the Rundāle tradition of "discovery exhibitions". The 19th Century in Latvian visual arts has always been considered problematic, to say the least. "I remember a time," writes Janis Rozentāls in 1909, "just some 15 years ago, when a couple of photographic colourists were all there were in the way of artists..."1 His contemporary Wilhelm Neumann complained of the unfavourable conditions in local art in the 19th Century, which prevented it from attaining "a higher elevation" 2. The few art historians who later blundered into this "valley of tears" of Latvian art history were compelled to echo his lamentations. During the Soviet era this was just a period from which the first "progressive" realists of Latvian art had to be extracted. In more recent times, for a wider circle of interested audience, it meant - besides museum displays of Kārlis Hūns and Jūlijs Feders - an emptiness hidden behind fragmentary exhibits. Even to professional art historians the 19th Century was, in general, a terra incognita whose further exploration was inhibited by the inertia set by the politically ideological and aesthetic taboos (Baltic German art, naturalism, a lack of "stars"). This exhibition - 19th-Century Portrait in Latvia - is a wonderful example of how this inertia may be overcome. The metaphor of Atlantis is particularly suited for its general characterisation, as the astonishingly vast display can easily be imagined to resemble a once-lost great continent of culture and historical evidence, now slowly emerging from the ocean of obscurity. The spectacular plenitude (the particular trademark of the grand exhibitions at Rundāle) is a justifiable compensating reaction - grey emptiness replaced with a lavish showcase of the culture of centuries past. The portrait, produced in different techniques, was the most popular genre in 19th-Century Latvia, and as such fully outlines the terrain of the culture of this lost Atlantis. It used to lie hidden in the archive collections of Latvian museums, where an enormous volume of artefacts had accumulated over time, seemingly of no interest to anyone and known perhaps only to the keepers of the collections. A great many of these works needed tidying up, restoration work and appropriate mounting before they could be brought out into the light of an exhibition. All this was done - and more. Atlantis had to be explored, the unknown continent had to be investigated, determining the sitter and author of each portrait, the place and date of its creation; all earlier assumptions had to be checked and genre and exhibition boundaries had to be reinforced. The continent is too vast for these exploration pioneers to do it all. Numerous works by unknown painters, including very good ones, still promise years of research opportunities for those who would be interested in immersing themselves into the world which so manifestly materialises at Rundāle Palace. In accordance with the premise of "plenitude", this world is shown in as many of its aspects as possible. All portrait painting techniques and scales of the time are represented: large and small creations in oils, watercolours, pastel, gouache, tempera; engravings and lithographs, manual drawings, marble busts (and also one in bronze), reliefs in plaster and wax, miniatures on ivory, silhouette portraits, photo portraits and compilations thereof, reproductions in publications, even tiny portraits in scrapbooks, large-scale photographs of lost or inaccessible works. The concept of "portrait in Latvia" meant selecting not only works of those authors who worked in this territory permanently, but also the legacy of temporary residents and passers-through, as well as those artists from other centres and regions who depicted sitters who were in some way important to Latvia. History in an Enfilade of Halls and, Of Course, Mimesis In many ways the exhibition holds a heritage value; it presents plenty to interest not only the art lover but also the explorer of Latvia's past. The social iconography of the exhibition shows the social structure, hierarchy, institutions, professions and aspects of private life of the era as thoroughly as the period's portrait consumption conditions allow. Imperial and local political, economic and cultural elite (tsars, governors-general, Baltic German nobility, bourgeoisie, burgomasters, guild aldermen, the so-called literates, i.e. academically educated people, doctors, teachers, actors, artists, wives, daughters and children of all the gentlemen of this patriarchal society) alternates with portraits of the lower classes - peasants, country dwellers (however, these works are still more of an ethnographic record). Here you can peruse the faces of local and world dignitaries: Michael Barclay de Tolly, Russian Field-Marshal of Baltic descent, one of the vanquishers of Napoleon; the socalled liberal vicegerents, Governors-General Philippo Pauluccio and Alexander Suvorov; crusher of the Polish uprising Count Friedrich von Berg; eminent fortification engineer Eduard von Totleben; defender of the rights of Latvian peasants Baron Hamilkar von Fölkersahm; the cream of the Baltic aristocracy (the Pahlens, the Lievens, the Medems, the Siverses), whose role locally and at the centre of the empire was so significant. Next to them, the enlighteners of the beginning of the century: theologian Karl Sonntag and ethnographer Johann Cristoph Brotze; champion of Latvians, publicist Garlieb Merkel; Johann von Recke, director of the Kurzeme Museum of Local History; ethnographer Georg Schweinfurth; activists of the Young Latvians movement - Krišjānis Valdemārs and the chairmen of the Riga Latvian Society; the famous Russian writer Ivan Turgenev, whose works were translated and published in the Baltics, and so on. The rich quantity of material provides opportunities for sociological and anthropological studies, observation of different types of people from various social circles, comparison of fashionable attire and hair styles of different decades. However, most of all it is a historically and chronologically arranged presentation of art and this specific genre - portrait painting. The curators admit their traditional approach to the subject (linear development as the general principle of arrangement), but in this case it is not only justifiable but also the only possible solution, if a serious exhibition is to be created. Attribution and chronological placement of undated works alone posed a significant problem, and its solution became the logic of the entire exhibit. Fashionable games based on subjective concepts of exhibition arrangement could only lead to a frivolous chaos. And the enfilade of the palace rooms proved well suited to the chronologically progressing layout. The wall behind the most impressive works in each hall was covered in patterned fabric from the particular historical period; the other walls were left light and neutral, thus delicately balancing references to the period-specific interior with the functional necessity of viewing the exhibits without strong collateral impressions. The richness of portrait characters, stylistic formulae and the represented schools of art somehow creates itself, as the exhibition includes authors of different geneses and involves different aesthetic criteria. This is not, however, to be considered eclecticism by any means. On the contrary - the heterogeneous exhibition is a convincing, realistic, Latvia-specific look at the art life of that time, where virtuosos of the academic portrait were working alongside established but primitive craftsmen, masters admired in capitals - next to dilettantes and "Naïvists", where travellers and adventurers turned into commission artists and became stuck in a provincial rut, where the traditions of high art were easily subjugated to a practicality born of technological innovations. The many facets of the exhibition are, however, brought together by the well-known orientation of 19th-Century European art and especially portrait art towards escalating mimesis (the so-called simulated representation of "nature"), which presumed the effect of convincing and highly detailed likeness. No matter that this growing naturalism coexisted with stylisation of composition and other formal elements, with conspicuous or less noticeable idealisation. Habits of perception let the people of the era accept these deviations from "nature" as long as there was a large number of visually identifiable traits of the character. As far as the local press was concerned, the main criterion of a portrait painter's success was solely a likeness that "corresponded to nature", was "pronounced" and "incomparable"; such likeness was to be achieved by any possible means available to the artists. This naïve naturalism, not just the realm of Naïvists so derisively rejected by the Modernists, now merits a more differentiated view. Modernist dogmas are no longer relevant, and, as it turns out, the visual realism of the 19th Century contains not just art that can be graciously tolerated, but also some truly impressive treasures. The aesthetics, traditions and typological banalities of the dominant styles and movements (early Sentimentalist and later severe Classicism, Romanticism, Biedermeier, Retrospective Academicism) are overruled by the pathos of exploring reality, brought on by the influence of the Enlightenment and scientific thinking. In the genre of portrait painting it manifested as an engaging record of personalities. The Beginning of the Promenade: the Turn of the Century A review of the exhibition begs a stroll through its physical space and historical time. Chronologically the discovery of Atlantis starts with the early 19th Century, when art life in Latvia seems especially unsettled and chequered, when its backdrop shows the just-passed and existing political changes that followed the ultimate subjugation of the Latvian regions to the imperial power of Russia, the effects of Napoleon's campaigns, the initial liberalism and later reaction of the rule of Alexander I, the activities of the local enlighteners, reform-provoked peasant unrest, changes in the relationship of artists and their patrons after the ceding of the Duchy of Courland. The known contingent of academically educated portrait painters consists of immigrants from Germany, some of them settling in Latvia for a longer time, others simply making a career stop before higher ascent in Saint Petersburg or the major centres of Germany. The form structuring of the dominant style of the era - Classicism - with its regularity and balance affects the shaping of the figures, but there are also some early, truly Romanticist sitter interpretations. Large oils alternate with still-popular miniatures and silhouette portraits, delicate pastels with archaically solid metal-plate engravings. This part of the Atlantis terrain is shaped by summits - both recognised and explored ones, and ones unknown on a European scale - and striking lowlands of local primitives. The efficient and skilful portraits of the eminent Tartu professor Karl August Senff represent the realist undercurrents of the Enlightenment, which seep into the form of the classical tradition. The same can be said of the little-known creations of Johann Friedrich Tielker, Carl Wilhelm Seeliger, Joseph Dominicus Oechs. Against this backdrop, a perplexing surprise: the wonderful portrait of Heinrich von Offenberg by a complete unknown - Gottlieb Schwencke from Jelgava (no later than 1820; MHRN). The regalia depicted in the portrait place an even greater emphasis on the physically and psychologically varied vivacity of the rich central figure. Right next to it, a clever balancing between Classicism and Romanticism in several oils by Franz Gerhard von Kügelgen, friend of the famous Caspar David Friedrich and portraitist of rulers and aristocrats, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller; next to those, a Sentimentalist portrait of an unnamed family by Johann Samuel Grune, a romantic immersed in the provincial life of Courland. There is at least some information on this "fallen genius" (Julius Döring), while absolutely nothing is known about Johann Peter Pfab from Riga - except for the fact that he died in Paris in 1811. This obscurity is in paradoxical contrast with the quality of his self-portrait (no later than 1811, MHRN): the laconically composed image of a pensive dreamer is not much surpassed by the portraits of the "new Romantics", the legacy of the likes of Théodore Géricault or Philipp Otto Runge. The indisputable culmination of early 19th-Century Naïvists at the exhibition is Johann Heinrich Baumann's outstanding portrayal of jovial merchant Nestor en plein air (early 19th Century, LNMA). The Apparent Euphony of Biedermeier In the panorama of portraits from the second quarter and the middle of the century there is a more discernible dominant. The ideals of Classicism and Romanticism were still influencing the interpretation of sitters, with the proportion of meticulously descriptive realism continuously rising at the same time. This, in conjunction with the idyllic feel and a more intimate scale, was named the Biedermeier style. Historically it corresponds to the era of the police regime of Nicholas I, the conservatism and surface calm of its social life, when the ruling circles and, therefore, those who commissioned portraits, "seemed to have all inherited forms of life assured to them, and enjoyed the advantages of privileged existence with limited daily work and in careless comfort" (R. Wittram). The official sphere of the empire is represented by openly representative creations of entirely stylised composition, which the authors have tried to enliven by using effects of theatrically dramatised "official Romanticism", adhering to examples set by George Dawe in Saint Petersburg (portrait of Nicholas I by Georg Wilhelm Timm, 1843, LNMA). The primitively artisan and stiff portrayals of guild aldermen present functionally similar yet socially completely different circles. The tradition of Classicism is without doubt best preserved in the marble busts (portrait of General Eduard von Totleben, attributed to Eduard Schmidt von der Launitz; stylised figures of three ladies by the French Academicist Jean-Baptiste Clésinger), while Romanticism is expressed most in more or less dramatised self-portraits (by August Georg Pezold, Leonhard Bülow, Alexander Heubel a.o.) or individualised versions of exotic characters (Karl Ernst von Baer's depictions of an old Roman woman and a Javan prince). The rooms of the Biedermeier era, however, are mostly filled with calm, decorously polite gentlemen and ladies of the privileged circles, dressed in neat, fashionable outfits. The diversity of their portrait individualities is better seen in the physical sphere of the images (paintings by Robert Konstantin Schwede, Johann Karl Maddaus a.o.). Among these, one in particular stands out - the grandest Biedermeier portrait in Latvian context, Ernst Gotthilf Bosse's depiction of Anna Wöhrmann (1820-1821, MRHN); the features of the sentimentally kindly-looking elderly lady, the motifs of the splendid frilly bonnet, the flower vase etc. can be read like an encyclopaedia of this style and a reminder of some European counterparts (for instance, the chrestomathic Biedermeier of Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller). Three portraits by another little-known immigrant, J. H. Hüber, stand out for the plasticity of their volumes, but among the creations of anonymous local Naïvists, the traits of style typology reach the pinnacle of grotesque deformation in a watercolour and gouache portrait of Malvina Krüger (1840s, LNMA). Admittedly, the so-far best known painter from the early half of the century, Johann Leberecht Eggink, while conforming to the Biedermeier aesthetic in his portraits, was still able to create varied and more keenly described characters (portraits of Luise Rönne and her son, 1830s, FAM). In turn, the amateurish ethnographic portrayals of the lower classes by Helene von Brüggen and Anton Bosse provide a glimpse of actual Latvian peasants of the time. The close of the Biedermeier phase and the transition to the following period and the following room is best marked by the generous helping of works by the highly prolific artist Julius Döring. The rather jovial character of the portrait of Friedrich von Klein (1859, FAM) is still representative of the "good old times", while in other cases the idyll is lost in insistently objectivised recording of the actual realities of the sitters (portrait of Johann Friedrich von Hahn, 1849, LNHM). Döring's portraits seem to be the best illustration of the most typical trend of the era - to preserve the form structuring of classical art and bring it as close as possible to the qualities of visual reality. This is in keeping with the personal nature of Döring, a pedantic record keeper: he never tired of capturing - verbally, in numbers and graphically - all aspects of his experience. The Triumph of Photography, and Symptoms of Radical Transformations The exhibition features numerous lithographic portraits, a technique which gained popularity in Latvia around the 1820s and 1830s and seemed to anticipate the next technological breakthrough in portrait creation - photography, which appeared here in the 1840s and was quickly perfected over the following decades. Photography irreversibly affected the arts of the painted and print portrait, exterminated miniatures and silhouettes, and pushed artists into hasty retraining. The exhibition clearly shows the dramatic change in media - a crisis of the genre, in fact. Portraits were now en masse being painted from photographs by enlarging them - actually were simply coloured in. The physical aspect of the sitters was being recorded in even more homogeneous detail than before; formal expression took on an eclectic looseness. In rare cases there were some apparent values of colour or plasticity, as in the slightly decorativist form structuring of the portrait of Cornelia von Fircks (1861, LNHM) by John Clark. The overall impression is that of growing wide-scope businesslike efficiency in portrait production. Such technicism degrades the portrait as an art genre, but an attentive viewer may find satisfaction in observing the abstractedly captured "real" people of the era. The representative rhetoric is still present here, but the optically passive documenting hampers external idealisation which used to be so easy to attain; the sitter's inner life is also more easily inferred from the inevitable echoes of the basic psychological character that shows in the fixed features. Latvian Jānis Staņislavs Roze and Baltic German Julius Siegmund were the most typical producers of the painted photographic portrait, but it was, of course, also done by many if not all artists of the latter half of the century. The backdrop of these technological changes in Latvian history is formed by the flourishing of capitalism, industrialisation, greater democratisation, confrontations of various political and national forces, the Young Latvians movement, whose leaders Roze, naturally, painted from their photographs. In contrast to considerable quantities of this "cheap lot", the exhibition presents some manual portraits, which now acquire the status of elite art. Their authors are two aestheticisers of dark, warm hues and brilliantly skilful painting style, both schooled in Paris - the brightest star of the Latvian school, Kārlis Hūns, with his obligatory "Portrait of a Woman in Black" (1871, LNMA), and the darling of German aristocracy Gustav Richter, with the figure of little nobleman Alexis von Shoepingk at ease in a salon-like interior (1864, FAM). On the opposite end of the social and artistic value scale was another author of manual portraits who has also been provided with a respectable spot at the exhibition: the craftsmanlike Naïvist Kārlis Ludvigs Zēbode, who with great affection and pragmatic diligence painted the peasant people of Vidzeme until finally giving in to the technological age and becoming a photographer. This stroll across the Atlantis of portrait art should be concluded in the final hall of the exhibition, which is filled with better known summits of Latvian art, ones formed at the very end of the 19th Century. The ethnographic figures of Latvian farmers, painted in the broader lines and looser watercolours of the founders of the national school of art - Ādams Alksnis, Janis Rozentāls, Johans Valters - at times reach greater heights than their more conventional "true portraits". The latter do, on momentum, still betray the familiar habits of banal idealisation (the salonish full-figure portrait of Meranville de Saint-Clair by Jūlijs Feders, 1897, LNMA), or even return to Biedermeier (Janis Rozentāls' portrait of Princess Charlotte von Lieven, 1899, LNMA), but at the same time there are undeniable signs of the great change which heralds the arrival of 20th-Century Modernism. The presence of colour and texture as values in themselves can already be felt, the mimetic detailed elaboration starts to disappear, the classically solid plasticity of the volumes retains its importance only in the displayed reliefs by Academicists August Volz and Karl Starck. In the Neo-Romantic "mood portraits" by Janis Rozentāls (portrait of Malvīne Vīgnere-Grīnberga, 1898, LNMA) and Johans Valters (portrait of unknown man, 1899, LNMA), preceded at the exhibition by another little-known Riga artist Ida Fielitz's image of mother en plein air (1886, FAM), the sitters' figures are melting into a soft haze, turning into ethereal apparitions. The impressionistic light, well-defined brush stroke and decorativist stylisation is also starting to appear in commissioned works (Rozentāls' portraits of Pēteris Lindbergs and Anna Lindberga, both 1898, LNMA). There is anticipation of further change, but it is not yet harsh and does not disrupt the overall image of 19th-Century Latvian portrait as a mysterious Atlantis - which, it seems, the authors of the exhibition wished to preserve. A guide to this continent, a catalogue raisonné, is being prepared and will hopefully be published. 1 Rozentāls, J. Baltijas mākslinieku izstāde. Latvija, 1909, No. 42, 21.02 (06.03). 2 Neumann, W. Baltische Maler und Bildhauer des XIX Jahrhunderts. Riga: 1902 [introduction]. Abbreviations: FAM - Foreign Art Museum LNMA - Latvian National Museum of Art LNHM - Latvian National History Museum MHRN- Museum of the History of Riga and Navigation | |
| go back | |
