The Ringstrasse and Makart
When the city walls were demolished Vienna gained a new boulevard, the Ringstrasse, lined with opera, parliament, city hall and museums in borrowed styles. Hans Makart became the city’s prince of painters, and the landscape painters sought mood and light.
In 1857 the young Emperor Franz Joseph decided that Vienna’s fortifications should be torn down. On the freed land the Ringstrasse was laid out, a boulevard around the inner city, and along it the city’s most important buildings went up over four decades. Each building received a style suited to its function: Gothic for the City Hall and the Votivkirche, ancient Greek for the Parliament, Renaissance for the University, the Opera and the museums.
Hans Makart came to Vienna in 1869 and was given a studio by the state. His enormous, colourful paintings with naked bodies, velvet and flowers made him the most admired artist of the time, and his studio, filled with draperies, weapons and dried bouquets, became a sight to see. In 1879 he directed the pageant for the imperial couple’s silver wedding, in which thousands of participants in historical costume paraded along the Ringstrasse.
Alongside the grand history painting a quieter landscape painting grew. Emil Jakob Schindler, Tina Blau and Olga Wisinger-Florian painted atmospheric pictures of light, weather and the seasons, what is called Atmospheric Impressionism. Anton Romako went his own way with nervous, surprising portraits. Towards the end of the period young artists were tired of historicism’s borrowed forms and sought a style of their own time.