Rudolf von Alt

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Rudolf von Alt, self-portrait 1890
St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna , 1832, Belvedere , Vienna
Portrait of a lady, 1838
Spinner on the Cross (Vienna)
View of the Imperial and Royal Weapons Museum . Watercolor, 1857
St. Mark's Square in Venice with the Austrian military, around 1860 ( HGM ).

Rudolf Ritter von Alt (born August 28, 1812 in Alservorstadt , today Vienna , † March 12, 1905 in Vienna) was an Austrian painter and watercolorist .

Life

Rudolf von Alt was the son of the painter Jakob Alt (1789–1872) and his wife Maria Anna Schaller (1790–1872). He was born in the former Viennese suburb of Alservorstadt 136 (today Alser Straße 8). His younger brother Franz Alt (1821–1914) was also a painter. He learned from his father's workshop and colored his lithographs as a child . The father often took him with him on his travels. At Christmas 1817 there was already a completely new decorated Christmas tree in the Alt house .

1825-1832 was Old students of the Vienna Academy , since 1826 in the landscape class of Josef Mössmer . He soon received first prize there and exhibited there for the first time in 1830. Father and son made outbound trips through the countries of the monarchy and worked so closely together that it is often impossible to decide by whom a particular image was created. The high point of their collaboration were the so-called "peep box pictures" for the later Emperor Ferdinand I.

In 1835 Alt met Moritz von Schwind and the Bavarian King Ludwig I on a study trip to Italy . From 1841 until her death in 1843 he was married to Hermine Oswald from Vienna, in 1846 he married his second wife Berta Malitschek from Opava . In the revolutionary year of 1848 , Rudolf von Alt volunteered as a citizen guard in Vienna. As a precaution, he sent his family to his in-laws in Troppau . When in mid-October 1848 the events in the capital became too radical for the citizen guard Alt, he fled Vienna with the then sixteen-year-old Ludwig Passini (1832–1903). In Traismauer , Lower Austria , they took emergency quarters together at the Hofkirchner inn (today Gasthof zum Schwan). In his memoirs he wrote, "I was a National Guard in 1848, but very soon I went to Traismauer, where my people lived". He quickly sketched the situation on an envelope and also painted farmhouses in Traismauer in two documented works.

In 1848 he also became a member of the academy, which was only confirmed by the imperial authorities in 1866.

Alt went on study trips all over Europe, for example to the Crimea in 1863 , to Germany in 1864 and to Italy in 1867 . In 1867 he became a member of the Berlin Academy , and in 1879 professor at the Vienna Academy. Even in old age he was interested in the latest developments in art and was therefore one of the founding members of the Vienna Secession in 1897 , of which he became honorary president in the same year. It was not until this year that he applied to be raised to the nobility and was allowed to prefix his name with that of .

Rudolf von Alt liked to hang out in the "Golden Lion" in Josefstadt, where he frequented the writers Ludwig Anzengruber and Vinzenz Chiavacci .

From 1841 he lived at Skodagasse 11, where he also died. There is a memorial plaque for him on the house. He received a grave of honor in the Vienna Central Cemetery (group 14 A, number 52), which was designed by Josef Engelhart .

The Austrian painter spent the summer months from 1886 to 1899 in Bad Gastein in the state of Salzburg and completed a number of his masterful landscape paintings. Today the Rudolf von Alt-Weg named after him and the house located there reminds of this time with a corresponding inscription.

power

Rudolf von Alt is one of the most popular artists of the 19th century in Vienna. His achievement lies in his masterful control of the watercolor . He created more than 1000 watercolors, the topographically exact and atmospherically atmospheric depicting Austria of the time, both landscapes and, above all, architecture . He depicted St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna 100 times alone . His studio pictures by the painter Hans Makart also became famous . Apart from his watercolors, Alt only painted relatively few oil paintings . It was not until 2011 that a catalog raisonné of around 150 oil paintings was published. The art collector Jakob Gsell was one of his sponsors .

Honors

Honorary grave in the Vienna Central Cemetery
Monument to Rudolf von Alt on Minoritenplatz in Vienna
  • 1875 Reichel Prize of the Academy for his complete works
  • 1877 Archduke Carl Ludwig Medal
  • 1892 Iron Crown III. Class and honorary membership of the academies of Vienna and Berlin
  • 1894 Great gold state medal
  • 1897 Honorary President of the Vienna Secession
  • 1897 Elevation to the nobility as "Ritter von Alt"
  • 1907 naming of Rudolf-von-Alt-Platz in Vienna- Landstrasse
  • 1908 Honorary grave at the Vienna Central Cemetery, designed by Josef Engelhart
  • 1912 monument at Vienna Minoritenplatz from Hans Scherpe designed

Works (excerpt)

  • St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna (Vienna, Belvedere , inv.no.2081), 1832, oil on canvas, 46 × 58 cm
  • St. Stephen's Cathedral ( Vienna Museum ), 1834, oil on canvas
  • View of the Strada Nuova towards the Giardini Publicci in Venice (Vienna, Belvedere, inv. No. 2082), 1834, oil on canvas, 46 × 63.5 cm
  • Portrait of a lady, 1838, watercolor on paper, 22 × 17 cm
  • View of Kremsier , (Vienna, Albertina ), 1842, watercolor, 40.6 × 52 cm
  • The portal of the collegiate church Nonnberg (Vienna, Belvedere), 1848, oil on canvas, 36 × 27 cm
  • View of the Imperial and Royal Arms Museum in the Arsenal (Vienna, Heeresgeschichtliches Museum ), 1857, watercolor on cardboard
  • St. Mark's Square in Venice with the Austrian military (Vienna, Heeresgeschichtliches Museum), around 1860, oil on paper laid down on canvas, 35 × 44 cm
  • The Temple of Vesta in Rome (Vienna, Belvedere, inv.no.3800), after 1867, oil on canvas, 53 × 78.5 cm
  • "Self-portrait" (Vienna, private collection), 1890, watercolor on wood (fan), 30 × 40 cm

literature

Web links

Commons : Rudolf Ritter von Alt  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Walter Koschatzky: Rudolf von Alt: with a collection of works by the Alt painter family of Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich AG , Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 2001, p. 225 ff.
  2. ^ Manfried Rauchsteiner , Manfred Litscher: The Heeresgeschichtliche Museum in Vienna. Verlag Styria, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-222-12834-0 , p. 3.
personal data
SURNAME Alt, Rudolf von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Alt, Rudolf Ritter von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian painter and watercolorist
DATE OF BIRTH August 28, 1812
PLACE OF BIRTH Alservorstadt
DATE OF DEATH March 12, 1905
Place of death Vienna