Eduard Veith, L'allégorie de l'automne Lot n° 24

Eduard Veith Neutitschein 1858 - 1925 Vienna The Allegory of Autumn Oil on canvas 139 x 80 cm signed On the reverse: Inscribed & dated 1907 Wonderful frame in the style of the Viennese Secession. Eduard Veith was born on 30 March 1858 in Neutitschein and grew up in the crown land of Moravia. In Vienna he studied at the Imperial and Royal School of Applied Arts of the Imperial and Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry and, like Gustav Klimt, Franz Matsch and Ernst Klimt, was a pupil of Ferdinand Laufberger. Study trips took Veith to Paris, Italy, Belgium and North Africa, among other places._x000B_Stilistically, the painter is in the historicist succession of Hans Makart, Carl von Piloty or Anselm Feuerbach, who also worked in Vienna for several years. Like them, Veith belongs to the decorative painting of the Viennese Gründerzeit. However, while Makart drew on Baroque models and Feuerbach on Venetian painting, Veith's often mythologically motivated history painting was oriented towards Symbolism and Rococo and led to the painting of Viennese Art Nouveau, in which he occupied a leading position. After Klimt and Matsch, Eduard Veith rose to become one of the busiest painters. The paintings Huldigung der Vindobona (Homage to the Vindobona), Bekränzung des Poets Raimund (Adornment of the Poet Raimund) and the Hauptvorhang (Main Curtain), all in the (German) Volkstheater built in 1889, are among his most important works. Murals and decorations in the Ronacher Theatre, numerous ceiling paintings in the Maria-Theresien-Saal of the Neue Hofburg and the swimming hall ceiling of the Dianabad were executed by Veith. He also created important works for the Prague Deutsches Theater and the Theater Unter den Linden in Berlin._x000B_However, Veith not only gained recognition for his applied painting, which was entrusted to him by the famous theater architects Fellner and Helmer, but also for his many private commissions. He paints for Gutmann and Rothschild, for Dobner and Seilern, leading families of the imperial and royal monarchy._x000B_In addition to the Reichel Prize, awarded in the Vienna Künstlerhaus by the College of the Academy, Veith receives the Kaiser Prize, which Emperor Franz Joseph I himself endows from the Allerhöchsten Privat- und Familienfonds. Veith wins gold medals at international art exhibitions in Antwerp, Berlin and Vienna, as well as gold and bronze medals in Paris. He becomes a member of the Vienna Künstlerhaus and full professor of watercolour and landscape drawing at the Technical University. On 18 March 1925 Eduard Veith dies at his residence in Vienna-Döbling. Both from a stylistic point of view and with regard to the extraordinarily large format and painting style, the Family Feast is undoubtedly one of the artist's major works. In the life and work of Eduard Veith, similar tasks dominate as for the neo-baroque painting of Hans Makart, the predominant painter in Vienna until 1884. Veith's painting style, however, shows a historicizing specificity. In the liberal mood of the Fin de Siècle, styles such as Romanticism and Biedermeier revive, as does the Neurococo. This pluralism runs not only through the painter's oeuvre, but also through Austrian painting in the first decade of the twentieth century. In the present picture, Veith knows how to combine elements of the Rococo with allegorical personification, with a symbolist charge. The spatial depth of the landscape vistas and the decorative reference to the surface become one. Even the style ranges from detail-realistic painting to visible strokes. Stylistically, a relevant aspect of Viennese painting is revealed. The symbiosis of "Third" Rococo with the current Art Nouveau. (Dr. Bernhard Barta) Literature: Silvia Freimann, Eduard Veith (1858-1925). Kommentierter Werkkatalog mit Werkverzeichnis, Berlin 2011Silvia Freimann, Eduard Veith (1858-1925). Studies on decorative monumental painting at the end of the 19th century.Dissertation,Salzburg 2006Heinz Schöny, Wiener Künstler-Ahnen. Genealogical data and lists of ancestors. Viennese painters. Volume 3: Art Nouveau (Symbolism), Vienna 1987, p. 83.