Anton Romako

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Anton Romako, around 1875

Anton Romako (born October 20, 1832 in Atzgersdorf , † March 8, 1889 in Vienna ) was an Austrian painter .

Life

Anton Romako was the illegitimate son of the manufacturer Josef Lepper and his housekeeper Elisabeth Maria Anna Romako. Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller had denied the young man any talent at the Vienna Academy , where he first studied. After studying in Munich with Wilhelm Kaulbach and Venice , Rome and London , he stayed in Vienna again in the 1850s, where he was a private student with Carl Rahl . From 1857 settled in Rome, he was as busy portraitist and genre painter acquire wealth and prestige. A contemporary critic said in a necrology that his “addiction to originality” led him to “peculiarities in drawing and the treatment of colors”, which encouraged the public to turn away and reduced the artist's material circumstances. so that Romako, abandoned by his wife, could no longer stay in Rome. In 1876 he returned to Vienna , since 1861 a member of the Vienna Fine Arts Cooperative , where the Ringstrasse was being built and Hans Makart's taste prevailed. Romako was unable to assert himself locally with his history pictures and undertook further study trips, including to Hungary , Italy and France .

Romako had been married to Sophie Köbel since 1862, who left him again in 1875. The marriage had five children. The daughters Mathilde and Mary, who remained in Rome, committed suicide in 1887.

“Troubled by illness and food worries”, Anton Romako became lonely in the last years of his life. He died of a stroke in his apartment at 11 Heumarkt , Vienna-Landstrasse . On March 10, 1889, the artist was buried in an honorary grave in the Vienna Central Cemetery (Group 41 F, Row 12, No. 15). In 1953, in recognition of his person, a traffic area in Vienna-Atzgersdorf, Rosenhügel settlement , was renamed Romakogasse .

His brother, Josef Ritter von Romako, was the chief shipbuilding engineer in the Austrian Navy and designed, among other things, the tank frigates that were used in the naval battle of Lissa .

Works

Countess Maria Magda Kuefstein (1878–1880)
Roman spinner (before 1889)
Tegethoff in the naval battle of Lissa I , 1878–1880, Belvedere , Vienna
Empress Elisabeth with St. Bernard dog , 1883, Belvedere , Vienna

In addition to his numerous landscape paintings (for example from the Gastein Valley ), which reveal an influence of the Barbizon School , he is best known as a painter of portraits and historical pictures.

His portraits are in a nervous, almost early expressionist style that deeply disturbed his contemporaries.

His famous portrait of Empress Elisabeth shows the whole eccentricity of her personality and was generally rejected, as was his undoubtedly best-known work, Tegetthoff in the sea ​​battle of Lissa I , which shows the admiral with his officers and some sailors at the moment in which his Ship Archduke Ferdinand Max rams the Italian flagship. The usual heroism in such depictions is almost completely dispensed with, you can see the tension of the situation and the hectic pace of the actors. (This painting was included in the patriotic work of Austria's Hort in 1908 for the 60th anniversary of the reign of Emperor Franz Joseph I. )

Nowadays he is considered the most interesting and pioneering artist of the Ringstrasse era.

Paintings by Anton Romako can mainly be found in the Belvedere in Vienna.

  • Vanity - Portrait of his Brau Sophie Köbel (Salzburg, Residenzgalerie), around 1860, oil on canvas, 124 × 91 cm
  • Columbus and Isabella ( private property), around 1870, oil on canvas, 128 × 97 cm
  • Fisherman's boy on the beach (Vienna, Belvedere, inv. No. 5552), around 1873–75, oil on panel, 90 × 70 cm
  • Girl with a rabbit (St. Pölten, Museum Niederösterreich , inv. No. 6670), around 1877, oil on canvas, 72.7 × 60.6 cm
  • Tegetthoff in the sea battle at Lissa I (Vienna, Belvedere, inv. No. 5032), 1878–1880, oil on panel, 86.5 × 47.5 cm
  • At the waterfall (Vienna, Leopold Museum ), 1881, oil on canvas, 89.3 × 63 cm
  • Empress Elisabeth with St. Bernard dog (Vienna, Belvedere, inv.no.4419), 1883, oil on panel, 135 × 85 cm
  • The Rose Pickers (Vienna, Belvedere, inv.no.1832), 1883, oil on canvas, 89 × 66 cm
  • Mother and Child (private property), 1883, oil on canvas, 161 × 130 cm
  • Young woman in front of a wayside shrine (private property), 1883, oil on panel, 54.4 × 45.5 cm
  • South French / Breton farmer (Graz, Landesmuseum Joanneum - is being restituted), 1884, oil on canvas, 50.5 × 38.5 cm
  • Girl attracting a finch (St. Pölten, Museum Niederösterreich, inv.no.7518), around 1884/85, oil on panel, 45.2 × 28 cm
  • Portrait of Isabella Reisser (Vienna, Leopold Museum, Inv.No. 2116), 1885, oil on canvas, 130.5 × 90 cm
  • Lord and Lady in the Salon (Museums of the City of Vienna), 1887, oil on panel
  • Roman spinner (several versions), before 1889, oil on canvas, 61.5 × 59 cm
  • Lady in a Red Dress (Vienna, Belvedere, Inv.No. 5966), 1889, oil on canvas, 78 × 63 cm

literature

Web links

Commons : Anton Romako  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Little Chronicle. (...) † Painter Anton Romako. In:  Neue Freie Presse , Morgenblatt, No. 8815/1889, March 9, 1889, p. 4, center right. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nfp.
  2. ^ Romako, Anton . In: Richard Bamberger (Hrsg.), Franz Maier-Bruck (Hrsg.): Austria Lexicon in two volumes . Volume 2: L - Z . Austrian Federal Publishing House for Education, Science and Art, Vienna 1967, p. 967. - Text online .
  3. ↑ Daily Chronicle. (...) Anton Romako's funeral. In:  Extrapost , No. 374/1889, March 11, 1889, p. 3, top center. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / exp.
  4. ↑ Hedwig Abraham: Anton Romako . In: viennatouristguide.at , accessed on June 23, 2013.
  5. ↑ Joseph of Romako. In:  Neue Illustrirte Zeitung / Neue Illustrirte Zeitung. Illustrirtes Familienblatt , June 18, 1882, p. 06 (online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / niz.
personal data
SURNAME Romako, Anton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian painter
DATE OF BIRTH October 20, 1832
PLACE OF BIRTH Atzgersdorf
DATE OF DEATH March 8, 1889
Place of death Vienna