The subject of the halted or interrupted pilgrimage occupied Waldmüller twice during his artistic career. Two different versions of this genre were painted in 1853 and 1858.
Pilgrimages from the surroundings of Vienna along the "Via Sacra" to Mariazell experienced a renaissance during the Biedermeier age. Accounts in contemporary chronicles report that an annual pilgrimage was led along the "Via Sacra" to Mariazell on 19 August. On the long march devotions were performed at Heiligenkreuz, Hafnerberg, Kleinmariazell and Lilienfeld.
Acquired recently for the Princely Collections and dating from 1853, this painting shows a group of pilgrims walking along a narrow grassy path on a high plateau. They seem to have a long march behind them and a long way still to go ahead of them. Although the sun is already blazing down on them, they are wearing warm clothing against the cool air of the early morning. Their faces are already reddened by the warm morning sunshine.
While the men and women following are still deep in their prayers, at the head of the troop of pilgrims a woman has collapsed from exhaustion. With her right hand she attempts to hold fast to her pilgrim’s staff while her left hand falls lifelessly to the ground. She sits on a bare rock, with nothing underneath to protect her from the rock’s jagged edges. Her eyes are shut in exhaustion, desperation written on her face. All her strength seems to have left her body. Two women and a man are bending over her in concern. Waldmüller represents the point immediately following her collapse, expressed in the concerned faces of the figures attempting to help her. The man is handing the woman a bottle of medicine.
Here Waldmüller has chosen a low-lying point of view and composed the group together with the rock into a triangular pyramid whose point is formed by the four protagonists. The gentle plateau is bathed in soft morning light, modelling the rocks in warm hues of brown and ochre which blend into the green of the high plateau. Emplying almost impressionistic light effects he paints light and shade, hard rocks, the thin, soft turf of the stony plateau and the sparse vegetation of the tableland. The high horizon suggests the laborious ascent of the pilgrims, which was evidently proved too much for the young woman who has collapsed.
With this scene Waldmüller has painted a milieu study which on the one hand expresses the deep religiosity of the rural population and on the other perhaps also refers to the weak physical constitution caused by the inadequate diet of this stratum of society. In this painting the artist shows himself to be at the pinnacle of his painterly abilities. Concerned as an artist with painting out of doors, he here shows how he has managed to capture and reproduce an extreme light situation. The painterly realism he is aiming at has arrived at its pinnacle; each head is a perfect portrait study, the rock is modelled such that it seems real enough to touch. The stereotypy in the faces so often encountered in his work is nowhere to be sensed in this painting, and thus can be counted among the most important works in his oeuvre. |
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Oil on cradeled panel
height 46 cm, width 58 cm
signed / dated on bottom left: Waldmüller 1853
Inv.-No. GE2391
Provenance: Private Austrian property until 2005; auctioned at the Dorotheum Wien on November 30, 2005, lot 86; 2005 acquired by Prince Hans-Adam II von und zu Liechtenstein
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| 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 | |
| | The Ruins of the Greek Theatre at Taormina on Sicily, 1844 | |
| | 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 | |
| | Roses, 1843 | |
| | Flowers in a Porcelain Vase with Candlestick and Silver Vessels, 1839 |
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| Related themes |
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