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Johann Jacob Hartmann (Kuttenberg ca. 1680 - after 1728 Prague)

Currency:EUR Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:230,000.00 - 300,000.00 EUR
Johann Jacob Hartmann (Kuttenberg ca. 1680 - after 1728 Prague)
Johann Jacob Hartmann (Kuttenberg ca. 1680 - after 1728 Prague) Forested River Landscape with numerous figures, fishes, and boats (Allegory of Water), & Forested River Landscape with numerous figures and boats (Allegory of Earth), matching paintings, oil on copper, each 83,6 x 118 cm, w/ frame,(Wo).€ 230.000 - 300.000 US $ 227.700 - 297.000 These two, so far unpublished, matching pieces constitute the major paintings of the most important 18th century Bohemian painter, Johann Jacob Hartmann, also referred to as the "Bohemian Brueghel", as well as being the largest known examples of his work. The wealth of their composition and their virtuosity makes them superior to the smaller Four Elements at the Österreichische Galerie Vienna, likewise painted on copper, the matching paintings at the Landesmuseum Johanneum Graz, as well as to the Hartmann landscapes at the Prague National Gallery. Motifs such as these enjoyed great popularity around the middle of the 16th century, and Hartmann uses them as a means to demonstrate the beneficial powers of the elements. "The Earth, mother of all life, is portrayed in her role as the provider of nourishment" (Elfriede Baum). The right foreground features the fruits of the earth: crops, fruit, game, as well as the preparation of food at a fire. In the background, a fountain symbolises the life-giving liquid. Christ and Magdalene are at the centre of the image while in the left background, surrounded by the green of forests, one can see the buildings of a city. Water: The painting's foreground is dominated by a large catch of fish, as "a sign of water's own fecundity" and "its welcome gifts to mankind" (E. Baum). In the right foreground are Christ and the disciples in boats. In the absence of the sustained development of Bohemian landscape painting during the 17th century, Johann Jacob Hartmann, probably the most significant European successor of Jan Brueghel the Elder, turned his attention to the nature paintings of Dutch artists that Emperor Rudolf II. had attracted to his court in Prague 100 years earlier. The two compositions above, in their technique and colour perspective - the perception of depth created by the dark browns in the foreground, the greens of the middle distance, and the blue of the distant background, along with the light's vibrant quality - all hark back to Jan Brueghel the Elder and Roelant Savery. The bare and gnarly tree defining the right edge of the Allegory of Water is distinguished by a bizarre 'Mannerism' that might come straight out of a work by Savery"; the ant-like figures meanwhile achieve a painterly quality that comes close to that of Jan Brueghel the Elder. Despite a variety of guiding images, the landscapes never appear merely pieced together. On the contrary, Hartmann successfully combines different artistic traditions into an atmospheric, fascinating, and far-reaching gaze across nature and human activity (Reinhold Baumstark). Provenance: European nobility; private collection, Vienna; private collection Germany Literature: Cf. Elfriede Baum, Katalog des österreichischen Barockmuseums im Unteren Belvedere in Wien, Vienna 1980, p. 236-242; Kurt Woisetschläger, Meisterwerke der österreichischen und deutschen Barockmalerei in der Alten Galerie im Landesmuseum Johanneum in Graz, p. 58,59; Reinhold Baumstark, Deutsche Malerei aus den Sammlungen des Regierenden Fürsten von Liechtenstein 1979, p. 19,60,61; Anton Matejicek, Norbert Grund, Jahrbuch des kunsthistorischen Instituts der K. k. Zentralkommission für Denkmalpflege, vol. VIII, 1914, supplement 18 ff.
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