Eugen von Ransonnet-Villez

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Eugen Freiherr Ransonnet von Villez

Eugen Freiherr von Ransonnet-Villez (born June 7, 1838 in Hietzing near Vienna , † June 28, 1926 in Nussdorf am Attersee ) was an Austrian diplomat , painter , lithographer , biologist and explorer .

Life

Submarine rocks with green corals. Color lithograph by Eugen von Ransonnet-Villez
Diving bell by Eugen von Ransonnet-Villez, Natural History Museum Vienna

He was the son of the privy councilor Karl Freiherr Ransonnet von Villez, Vice President of the Supreme Audit Office, and Margarethe, daughter of Lieutenant Field Marshal Franz Ludwig Graf von Bigot de Saint-Quentin . He began studying at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna at the age of eleven . From 1855 to 1858 he studied law in Vienna and in 1858 joined the Austro-Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a ministerial official. This also began his diplomatic career. In his spare time he was passionate about the natural sciences, photography and painting, but above all color lithography .

From 1860 he traveled to Palestine , Egypt , India and Japan , where he began diving in addition to his diplomatic work. According to him, he had a diving bell built for him to make sketches for his paintings underwater. The bell had an air supply from a boat, a porthole, a seat and six cannonballs for weighting. This made Ransonnet the first underwater artist. He used the bell in relatively shallow water and gives, in his publication: Sketches of the inhabitants, animal life and vegetation in the lowlands and high mountains of Ceylon, as well as the submarine scenery near the coast, taken in a diving bell. (Vienna, printed for the author by Gerold, 1867) detailed information on how colors appear alienated under water. In addition to the waters off Ceylon , he also dived in the Red Sea , in the Gulf of Aqaba , off the coast of Dalmatia and in the Attersee . The baron was the first summer guest in Nussdorf am Attersee and left important traces here. From 1871 to 1873 he had a mansion built there in a bourgeois feudal style, in whose park-like gardens he planted exotic trees and plants that he had brought back from his travels and in 1886 founded the "Union Yacht Club Attersee". He is considered to be the founder of tourism on the Attersee. As a souvenir, the Ransonnet themed trail was laid out and signposted with seven boards that provide information about the artist's life and work. He also built a villa in Dalmatia.

On his travels he painted landscapes and made sketches for lithographs for his books and publications by other authors. Among other things, he published Journey from Cairo to Tor to the Coral Banks of the Red Sea (Vienna 1863), Unterseeische Landschaft , several pictures painted on coated paper under a diving bell with the fauna and flora of the coral reefs of the Indian Ocean (around 1864/65), Sketches of the Inhabitants, Animal Life and Vegetation… of Ceylon , with 22 toned and four colored lithographs (Vienna, 1867; German: Braunschweig, 1868), sketches from Singapore and Johor (1868) as well as travel pictures from East India, Siam, China and Japan ( Graz 1912). He also created lithographs on plant life by Anton Kerner von Marilaun (Leipzig & Vienna 1890–91). He donated the only underwater oil painting to the Natural History Museum in Vienna in 1892, along with over 5000 zoological artifacts that he had collected during his explorations.

During his time as a diplomat, he brought the first piano ( Bösendorfer ) to Japan in 1869 and played the Tenno .

His one-man diving bell with adjustable anchor weights was based on the invention of Franz Kessler . A true-to-scale replica of the bell is exhibited in the Natural History Museum in Vienna.

family

Eugen married Agathe, daughter of Johann Heinrich Freiherren von Geymüller on October 15, 1870 . Of their four children, only Eugénie-Caroline (1880–1971) survived childhood or adolescence. After Ransonnet's death, she inherited the property. She remained single. In her will in 1956 she decreed that the property should go to the Linz seminary as a rest home for theologians. The artist Sigmund Walter Hampel also lived in the villa of Freiin Ransonnet until 1949 . It was created with the Society of the Vienna Avant-garde and also with the Hagenbund , founded in 1900 , three years after the Vienna Secession , and died in the villa in 1949.

literature

Web links

Commons : Eugen von Ransonnet-Villez  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ransonnet - themed trail. Tourist office Attersee-Attergau, accessed on November 14, 2017.
  2. ↑ 3. ZA Inv. No. 111-1-04.
  3. ^ Heinrich Marenzi: My family - an attempt to preserve history and memories. Self-published, 2006, 413 pages.
  4. ^ The first Bösendorfer in Japan. News entry on the Bösendorfer website ( memento from April 7, 2013 in the archive.today web archive ).
  5. ↑ Klimt and the VIPs at the Attersee. ReiseTravel.eu ( Memento from January 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).
personal data
SURNAME Ransonnet-Villez, Eugen von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ransonnet von Villez, Eugen Freiherr; Ransonnet-Villez, Eugen Freiherr von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian painter and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH June 7, 1838
PLACE OF BIRTH Hietzing
DATE OF DEATH June 28, 1926
Place of death Nussdorf am Attersee