| The highpoint of the engagement of Austrian painters with the light of the South was, without doubt, to be found in the work of the aforementioned Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, whose views of the ancient temples in Sicily are among the most striking ever to be painted by a northern artist working under the southern sun. From 1825 onwards, Waldmüller spent the summer of almost every year in Italy, and in 1841 he travelled for the first time to Sicily, thereafter continuing to visit the island. In Waldmüller’s view of Taormina he lays out before us the stage scenery of the ancient theatre. It is stage scenery in a double sense, for behind the ruins of the original stage wall there unfolds the most beautiful of all possible stage sets: the Gulf of Taormina with Mount Etna gently rising in the background, a small plume of smoke ascending from its crater and merging with the sky. The portrayal of the view – very well known at the time – of the sea, the landscape and the proscenium wall from the upper-most levels of the audience area, contrasts sharply with early Romantic views, which were much freer in their depiction of the scene |
 |
|
|
|
Oil on panel
height 38 cm, width 60 cm
Signed and dated at centre of lower edge: Waldmüller 1844
Inv.-No. GE1595
Provenance: before 1872 at the Galerie Gsell, Vienna; in the possession of M. J. Kohn; acquired in 1891 by Prince Johann II von Liechtenstein from the Viennese art dealer Siegmund Lebel
|
|
|
|
| Further works on display |
 | | Mountain Landscape with the Ruin of Liechtenstein near Mödling, 1859 | |
| | View of Mödling, 1848 | |
| | Lime-kiln in the Hinterbrühl, c. 1845 | |
| | Portrait of the architect Charles de Moreau (1758-1841), 1822 | |
| | The Ruins of the Temple of Juno Lacinia at Agrigento, c. 1845 | |
| | Lake Fuschl with the Schafberg, c. 1835 | |
| | Portrait of Thiery, Landlord of the Wolf-in-the-Meadow Inn, 1833 | |
| | Portrait of the Future Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria (1830-1916) as a Grenadier with Toy Soldiers, 1832 | |
| | Revival to New Life, 1852 | |
| | Maternal Admonition, 1850 | |
| | The lesson, 1837 | |
| | Ruines of the greek theater in Taormina towards the straits of Messina, 1844 | |
| | The halted Pilgrimage, 1853 | |
| | Roses, 1843 | |
| | Flowers in a Porcelain Vase with Candlestick and Silver Vessels, 1839 |
|
|
|
|
| Related themes |
|
|
|
|
|
