AND ANOTHER THING
Splendid artistic reasons why the Austrians should tell the EU to get lost
PAUL JOHNSON
The cold-shouldering of Austria by the other EU governments since the Haider affair seems to me childish but also sinister. It implies that electorates in EU states are permitted to vote only within certain limits, that they must `converge', to use a favourite Brussels word, around the centre. This sug- gests that the EU will eventually become not merely a single state but also a one- party state, and thus inevitably a police state. I hope the Austrians insist on their right to vote as they think fit.
My fondness for Austria has increased since I discovered the existence of the out- standing Viennese school of watercolour painting which flourished in the Bieder- meier years, after the Congress of 1815: Vienna's centrality in the development of music during and before this time has long been recognised. Sir Henry Hadow, in his Oxford History of Music, wrote, 'If I had to cite the the greatest artistic periods in the history of the world, I should name Peri- clean Athens in the first place, Elizabethan England in second place and, in third place, without a doubt, Vienna in the second half of the 18th century and the first quarter of the 19th.' But Vienna was thought, at the time, to lag behind in the visual arts. When Bonaparte's troops took Vienna in 1809, his art-boss, Vivant Denon, personally selected 400 outstanding paintings from the royal collections for removal to Paris, on the grounds that Austrians were incapable of appreciating them: 'They lack the eyes to see them properly. France will always prove, through her superiority in the arts, that such masterpieces are better seen [in Paris] than anywhere else.'
In fact, the Viennese school of open-air painters was already in existence a genera- tion before it took root in France. As in England, it was associated with the new romantic spirit and the accompanying rise of strong feelings about mountain scenery. It developed later than in England for a particular reason. In 18th-century Austria no one was free to travel around the coun- try without specific permission of authority. In the reign of Joseph II, an 'enlightened despot' who banned the use of make-up, the professor of landscape painting at the Vienna Academy and his three star pupils were arrested and locked up as spies for doing on-the-spot sketching in the country- side. This changed under the influence of Archduke John (1781-1859), an enthusias- tic patron who gave royal Habsburg approval to the romantic movement.
It was Archduke John's appointment in 1801 to oversee the defence of the Alpine passes which introduced him to mountain scenery. He was overwhelmed by its beauty. He not only climbed alps but hired artists to paint them, setting them to work on sys- tematic commissions to record the topogra- phy of the Tyrol, the architecture of its towns, villages and farms, and the costumes of its inhabitants. At one time or another, all the outstanding watercolourists of the school — Joseph Rebell, Carl Russ, Matthaus Loder, Jakob Alt and the great Thomas Ender — worked for John, pro- ducing literally thousands of fine sheets, both in pure watercolour and in body- colour. The archduke fell in love not just with the mountains, but with their peasants, who put up a much stiffer resistance to the rapacious French than the lowlanders of the Danube plain. He was the first Habs- burg prince to identify himself with the common people, not in any spirit of ambi- tion but because he admired (like Wordsworth) their moral qualities. It is not surprising that, in the turbulent year 1848, though he was then in his late sixties, the Frankfurt parliament elected him Reichsverweser, or imperial administrator, `not because of, but in spite of, his being an imperial prince', as the speaker of the par- liament put it.
The archduke had earlier identified him- self with the people in a more personal sense. In 1819 he met and fell in love with a teenage alpine maid called Anna Plocht, daughter of a village postmaster. The Habs- burgs considered themselves the purest blood in Europe and their expansion had been due largely to their successful mar- riage policies, for they were not particularly good at winning battles. Imagine, then, the consternation when John, instead of making Anna his mistress, determined to marry her. He first got on his side his brother, the Emperor Francis, whom he had already per- suaded to become a collector of water- colours on a grand scale. Then he set about swinging round family, Church and public opinion. At the end of a ten-year campaign, assisted by Anna's beauty, charm and radi- ant modesty, he married her in triumph, and to wide approval. They raised a large and distinguished family and their love- affair continued to his death in 1859. She long survived him as a Viennese grande dame and institution, and thanks to her hus- band's patronage she figures in many fine watercolours. It is a delightful tale, which I suspect contains many curious details yet to be brought to light, and I would love to read a well-researched biography of the pair, copiously illustrated in colour, Jakob Alt, one of the finest water- colourists that the archduke patronised, had a little boy, Rudolf, of prodigious talent, who from the age of six accompanied his father on sketching expeditions. The pair worked together for many years (Jakob lived into his eighties) and sometimes col- laborated on the same sheet, so that their work, when not inscribed and signed, is dif- ficult to distinguish. But Rudolf, by unremitting toil right to the end of a very long life, became incomparably the greater artist. Indeed, it would be hard to name his superior in the particular form of landscape and townscape (and spectacularly grand interiors) which he made his own.
The English watercolourists had begun to move away from strict topography during the first decade of the 19th century, under the influence first of Turner and Girtin, then of Bonington and Constable. Rudolf Alt stuck to the broad topographical frame- work; but within it he developed such an astonishing variety of techniques, such an ability to capture distance, breadth, sun- light, freshness, atmosphere and tone, as to raise the genre to a new height, and to make himself a true European master. He worked swiftly all his life, and was in con- tinuous employment — no easy matter, then as now. He was still at it the month before his death, aged 92, in 1905, surviving into a different era when the archduke and his struggles, and the wars of Bonaparte, were the distant past, and mankind was already embarked on the catastrophes of the 20th century. Hence Alt's oeuvre is enormous in quantity, as well as of high quality, and forms a wonderful visual record of Europe over several generations of the 19th century. There is a full study of him by Walter Koschatzky (in German), who has also produced a general book on the Viennese watercolour school, which has been translated. The work of Alt and his brethren is then another reason why we should respect the individuality and genius of the Austrians, and allow them to work out their destiny in their own way.
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