RKD STUDIES

Less complicated and for our study more productive is the picture that landscape painting offers us. At the end of the 17th century we found many Dutch schooled landscapists in Bohemia and Vienna, such as Anton Faistenberger I, Frans de Paula Ferg, Wenzel Lorenz Reiner, Joseph Orient, Johann Jakob Hartmann and the group of Southern German painters.¹

This group found its continuation in Christian Hilfgott Brand (1694-1756), a pupil of Christoph Ludwig Agricola, who made many small landscapes in the taste of Jan Both and Claes Berchem [1-2]. Once he also copied a landscape etching by Adriaen van Ostade.² Von Frimmel attributes two little paintings to him, which are completely done in the landscape style of Claes Molenaer [3-4].³

Johann Franz Nepomuk Lauterer (1700-1733), a pupil of Joseph Orient, did the same in a charming way and in good taste [5].⁴ Franz Christoph Janneck (1703-1761) is more Flemish oriented in his landscapes [6-7] and genre paintings and Maximilian Joseph Schinnagl (1697-1762) picked up a wide variety of schools, without a particular preference for the Dutch [8-10].

5
Johann Franz Nepomuk Lauterer
Italianate landscape with travelers and herdsmen crossing a river
Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, inv./cat.nr. 5259

Norbert Grund (1717-1767) was primarily active in Bohemia.⁵ Although Franz de Paula Ferg was not his teacher, as was earlier presumed, Grund worked under his influence and received a good dose of French Rococo elegance from him [11-14]. Grund was versatile and well-travelled, so that the Dutch Berchem tradition very soon gave way to other impressions. There are especially many points of similarity with Venetian artists like Francesco Zuccarelli.

12
Norbert Grund
Year market scene
Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, inv./cat.nr. 2198

Johann Christian Brand (1722-1795),⁶ son of the aforementioned Christoph Hilfgott Brand, on the other hand, tends more towards the Dutch way [15-16], although he also copied David Teniers II.⁷ There are landscapes with ruins, which develop or restyle Berchem’s genre into the Rococo [17-18], river landscapes following the line of Herman Saftleven, Jan Griffier and Christian Georg Schütz [19] and drawings harking back to Jan Both [20]. If two paintings in the Liechtenstein Gallery are rightly attributed to Jakob Friedrich Leclerc (1717-after 1768) [21-22],⁸ he belongs to the Jan Brueghel imitators, like Johann Jakob Hartmann before him.

The German engraver Johann Georg Wille (1715-1808) in Paris repeatedly bought paintings by the young Brand.⁹ Two other Austrians, Franz Edmond Weirotter (1733-1771)¹⁰ and Jakob Matthias Schmutzer (1733-1811),¹¹ studied drawing and etching under Wille’s direction in Paris. Weirotter worked among others after Pieter de Molijn [23], Jan van Goyen [24], Aert van der Neer [25 ] -- and Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich. His own inventions are accordingly Dutch [26-28]. Schmutzer also drew and painted some landscapes to the old Dutch recipe [29-31].

23
Franz Edmund Weirotter after Pieter de Molijn
Bridge across a canal: The month May, c. 1760
Cambridge (Massachusetts), Harvard Art Museums, inv./cat.nr. M9618

Next to Nicolaes Berchem, Philips Wouwerman was a favourite examplar. August Querfurt (1696-1761) from Wolfenbüttel, ¹² who was in Vienna from 1763, stayed close to his example and furthermore seems to have schooled himself by copying [32-33].¹³ Looking carefully, we can see that Querfurt connected the feathery brushwork of the master’s late style to compositions deriving from early pictures, in the same way Pieter Wouwerman used to do [34-35]. Battle scenes tie into Jan Martsen de Jonghe and Jan Huchtenburg [36]. Apart from some elegant portraits, Querfurth has been thoroughly Dutchified, even in his rare still-lifes [37].

The well-travelled Francesco Casanova (1727-1802),¹⁴ settled in Vienna from 1783. He schooled himself in Dresden on the numerous works by Philip Wouwerman, which is clearly visible in his paintings, although his style can in no way be described as Wouwerman imitation [38-39]. In Munich we already noticed, how the taste for Wouwerman fell out of fashion at the end of the Rococo and how the ‘bourgeois realistic’ Potter took his place. Wilhelm Kobell worked precisely in this time of transition. In Vienna this stage is represented by Alexander von Dallinger (1783-1844), who apart from this, doesn’t give us cause to consider him further. Only so much needs to be said, that he found the way to nature through Potter’s cows [40-41], although he was more successful in painting horses than the ruminants.¹⁵