Johann Baptist Reiter

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Self-portrait
Johann Baptist Reiter, contemplation in negligee

Johann Baptist Reiter (born May 28, 1813 in Urfahr , today Linz , Upper Austria , † January 10, 1890 in Vienna ) was an Austrian portrait and genre painter .

Life

Johann Baptist Reiter was the son of a master carpenter . In his father's company he completed a three-year apprenticeship in Linz, after which he wrote “ life-size company signs based on copperplate engravings - just as signs for old people and cutlery dealers ”. He probably received his first training from the painter Franz Xaver Bobleter , who worked in Linz . Encouraged by the art dealer Josef Hafner , Reiter went to Vienna with his friend Leopold Zinnögger , with whom he lived and studied at the Vienna Academy . Both first attended the engraving school . According to his own statements, Reiter's teachers were Anton Petter , Joseph Redl and Johann Nepomuk Ender. Leopold Kupelwieser , who supported him and got him early portrait commissions , also had a strong influence . An occasional traditional activity as a porcelain painter cannot be proven.

Through the mediation of Leopold Kupelwieser, Reiter was granted a scholarship from the Upper Austrian provincial government between 1834 and 1837 . From this time he also took part in exhibitions and in 1836 won the Lampi Prize for model drawing. In 1839 he married Maria Anna Hofstötter from Linz. Since about 1842 he had increasing success with his paintings and earned well. But it is legend that he ran a large house in Vienna with four horses and a Moor as a servant. In 1848 he sympathized with the revolutionaries and portrayed himself and his wife as digging workers. The couple later separated, and in 1853 at the latest, Reiter met Anna Josefa Theresia Brayer, a 23-year-old seamstress from Zruč in Bohemia, who became his favorite model and lover. He had their son Moritz with her in 1862 and their daughter Alexandrine (Lexi) in 1864, but he could only marry Anna after the death of his first wife in 1866. Between 1850 and 1870 Reiter exhibited regularly at the Austrian Art Association . After his beloved daughter Lexi died of pneumonia in 1883, he almost completely gave up painting.

Honorary grave in the Vienna Central Cemetery

He died a year later as his second wife and was buried in an honorary grave in the Vienna Central Cemetery (Group 41 D, Row 11, No. 5). The house where he was born in Urfahr (Im Tal 12) was demolished in 2007, the Reiter-Haus on the Upper Donaulände in Linz had to give way to the Römerberg Tunnel as early as 1962, while the house where he died in Vienna, Rechts Wienzeile 15, has remained unchanged, but does not have a plaque.

power

Johann Baptist Reiter was artistically influenced primarily by Johann Peter Krafft , Leopold Kupelwieser and Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller , with whom he increasingly competed in the 1840s. After trying his hand at altarpieces and religious history paintings, he turned to realistic portrait and genre painting. Studying the Dutch in the 17th century helped him develop a sophisticated technique. With his lifelike portraits and genre pictures from the lives of ordinary people and workers, Reiter finally found his subject which made him one of the most successful Biedermeier painters in Vienna. Highlights of his work are his vivid depictions of children, but also the portraits of extraordinary women such as the writer and suffragette Louise Aston . In his later work, too, he stuck to a realism that occasionally approaches that of Gustave Courbet . This applies in particular to his lost main work, The Landpartie , in which he - without having been proven to have been in France - comes very close to the French. Among the later works, some soulful portraits in particular achieved national significance, including that of the geologist Ami Boué and several self-portraits.

Works

Girl with an amber necklace (1847)
Girl at the breakfast table
Slumbering Woman , 1849, Belvedere , Vienna

Exhibitions

From June 12 to November 3, 2013, the most comprehensive retrospectives to date were held in the Schlossmuseum Linz and in the Nordico in Linz to mark his 200th birthday . The two exhibitions were conceived together and complemented each other. The collections of the Upper Austrian State Museum and the museums of the city of Linz (Nordico and Lentos ) contain around 170 works by the artist. The exhibitions curated by Lothar Schultes , Elisabeth Nowak-Thaller and Kathrin Hausberger were complemented by loans from the Belvedere , the Wien Museum , the Leopold Museum , the Museum of Fine Arts Budapest and other private collections and galleries from Germany and abroad. The exhibition architect was Thomas Pauli.

literature

Web links

Commons : Johann Baptist Reiter  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

orf.at "Image bought by Johann Baptist Reiter" ("Girl with an amber necklace")

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schultes, Reiter, p. 19
  2. ↑ Schultes, Reiter, pp. 22–28
  3. ↑ Schultes, Reiter, pp. 73–82
  4. ↑ Schultes, Reiter, p. 183 ff.
  5. ↑ Schultes, Reiter, 17 f.
  6. ↑ Schultes, Reiter, p. 262 f.
  7. ^ Johann Baptist Reiter (1813 Linz - 1890 Vienna), in: Web presence of the Norcico Stadtmuseum Linz
personal data
SURNAME Reiter, Johann Baptist
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian painter
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1813
PLACE OF BIRTH Urfahr
DATE OF DEATH January 10, 1890
Place of death Vienna