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DOI Artikel:Žerovc, Beti: Ivana Kobilca - a Career in the Context of Nineteenth-Century Women's Painting
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.70770#0540
Ivana Kobilca - a Career in the Context of Nineteenth-Century Women’s Painting
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sions and carrying out group activities; also, there is much evidence to suggest that the
four painters shared a strong bond of friendship.18
They were all, for example, very active in the pro-Austrian illustrated magazine Nada
[Hope], and Kobilca herself was its third most published artist in terms of reproductions.
The twenty-three reproductions of her work place her just behind the Croatian artists Vla-
ho Bukovac and Menci Clement Cmćić, who each had twenty-eight publications of their
work.19 As a club, the four painters also published in Vienna a portfolio of prints with
Bosnian subjects - the commercial Bilder-mappe der Sarajevo Maler-Clubs [Picture port-
folio from the Sarajevo Painters’ Club]. They also seem to have had successful exhibitions
as a club in Austria, Germany, and Hungary.20
Kobilca’s participation in the volume on Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Austro-Hun-
garian encyclopaedia is particularly interesting. Along with her club colleague Ewald
Arndt, she received an imperial award for her work in 1902. Although Kobilca did not in
fact do many illustrations for the volume, she did portray subjects for which, as a woman,
she was probably deemed a more suitable painter - given the Muslim practice of protec-
ting private family life - than her male colleagues.21 The encyclopaedia includes four pic-
tures by Kobilca: Mohammedanische Frauencostiime nebst Details [Mohammedan
women’s costumes with details], Besuch bei einer mohammedanischen Wbchnerin [A
visit to a Mohammedan woman after childbirth], Liebeswerben [Courting], and Verschle-
iern der mohammedanischen Braut [Veiling the Mohammedan bride].22 All in all, she
painted a large number of the most diverse Oriental subjects, but, unfortunately, we know
of most of them only from secondary sources, such as the magazine Nada. We do not
know where all these paintings are located today, nor do we know much about what inspi-
red their creation or how they were received. We can assume, however, that these pictures
were made mainly from a commercial impulse and that at least some of them travelled
westward and were sold (or presented for sale) in the provinces of Austria-Hungary (inc-
luding Camiola) and Germany. One such painting - which found its way to Slovenia -
18 Not a great deal is known about this club. See Ljubica MLADENOVIC, Gradansko slikarstvo u Bośni i Hercegovini
uXIX. veku (Sarajevo: IRO “Veselin Maslesa”, 00, izdavacka djelatnost, 1982), 101-103.
19 LIPA, “The Austro-Hungarian Period in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, 4.
20 Ljubica Mladenovic writes that, in early 1899, Leo Arndt exhibited paintings with Bosnian themes, previously publi-
shed in Nada, at the Verein Berliner Kiinstler. His success presumably encouraged Max Liebenwein and Kobilca to
suggest to Kosta Hórmann, the editor of Nada, that the original paintings and drawings for the magazine’s illustrations
be regularly collected and exhibited each year in the art centres of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Hórmann readily
agreed to the idea, since he saw at once that this would also be good advertising for the Austrian administration in
Bosnia. He signed a contract with the painters and with a transport company, which committed itself to equip and
transport ten travelling exhibitions a year for 500 gulden. Other than mentioning in passing the cities of Dresden, Berlin,
and Budapest, Mladenovic does not say exactly where the actual exhibitions were held (MLADENOVIC, Gradansko
slikarstvo u Bośni i Hercegovini, 102). Various brief references to the topic can also be found in Kobilca’s letters to her
sister Marija. In a letter dated 20 May 1900 (in private holdings), she writes about exhibiting in Dresden, her colleagues’
successful sales, and the hope that she too would sell something.
21 Because she was a woman, Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann (1819-1881), for example, was able to infiltrate harems and
even paint real Near Eastern princesses entirely in keeping with the Orientalist canon of the time and sexist fantasies
about harems and Oriental beauties. Lor a detailed study of this artist, see Mary ROBERTS, “Harem Portraiture: Elisa-
beth Jerichau-Baumann and the Egyptian Princess Nazli Hanim”, in Deborah CHERRY and Janice HELLAND, eds.,
Local/Global: Women Artists in the Nineteenth Century (Aidershot, UK, and Burlington, Vt., USA: Ashgate Publi-
shing, 2006), 77-98.
22 Die Ósterreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild, v. 22: Bosnien und Herzegovina (Vienna: Druck und
Verlag der kaiserlich-koniglichen Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1901), 315, 337, 355, 359. Lipa discusses the significance
of all four images (LIPA, “The Austro-Hungarian Period in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, 7-9).
533
sions and carrying out group activities; also, there is much evidence to suggest that the
four painters shared a strong bond of friendship.18
They were all, for example, very active in the pro-Austrian illustrated magazine Nada
[Hope], and Kobilca herself was its third most published artist in terms of reproductions.
The twenty-three reproductions of her work place her just behind the Croatian artists Vla-
ho Bukovac and Menci Clement Cmćić, who each had twenty-eight publications of their
work.19 As a club, the four painters also published in Vienna a portfolio of prints with
Bosnian subjects - the commercial Bilder-mappe der Sarajevo Maler-Clubs [Picture port-
folio from the Sarajevo Painters’ Club]. They also seem to have had successful exhibitions
as a club in Austria, Germany, and Hungary.20
Kobilca’s participation in the volume on Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Austro-Hun-
garian encyclopaedia is particularly interesting. Along with her club colleague Ewald
Arndt, she received an imperial award for her work in 1902. Although Kobilca did not in
fact do many illustrations for the volume, she did portray subjects for which, as a woman,
she was probably deemed a more suitable painter - given the Muslim practice of protec-
ting private family life - than her male colleagues.21 The encyclopaedia includes four pic-
tures by Kobilca: Mohammedanische Frauencostiime nebst Details [Mohammedan
women’s costumes with details], Besuch bei einer mohammedanischen Wbchnerin [A
visit to a Mohammedan woman after childbirth], Liebeswerben [Courting], and Verschle-
iern der mohammedanischen Braut [Veiling the Mohammedan bride].22 All in all, she
painted a large number of the most diverse Oriental subjects, but, unfortunately, we know
of most of them only from secondary sources, such as the magazine Nada. We do not
know where all these paintings are located today, nor do we know much about what inspi-
red their creation or how they were received. We can assume, however, that these pictures
were made mainly from a commercial impulse and that at least some of them travelled
westward and were sold (or presented for sale) in the provinces of Austria-Hungary (inc-
luding Camiola) and Germany. One such painting - which found its way to Slovenia -
18 Not a great deal is known about this club. See Ljubica MLADENOVIC, Gradansko slikarstvo u Bośni i Hercegovini
uXIX. veku (Sarajevo: IRO “Veselin Maslesa”, 00, izdavacka djelatnost, 1982), 101-103.
19 LIPA, “The Austro-Hungarian Period in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, 4.
20 Ljubica Mladenovic writes that, in early 1899, Leo Arndt exhibited paintings with Bosnian themes, previously publi-
shed in Nada, at the Verein Berliner Kiinstler. His success presumably encouraged Max Liebenwein and Kobilca to
suggest to Kosta Hórmann, the editor of Nada, that the original paintings and drawings for the magazine’s illustrations
be regularly collected and exhibited each year in the art centres of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Hórmann readily
agreed to the idea, since he saw at once that this would also be good advertising for the Austrian administration in
Bosnia. He signed a contract with the painters and with a transport company, which committed itself to equip and
transport ten travelling exhibitions a year for 500 gulden. Other than mentioning in passing the cities of Dresden, Berlin,
and Budapest, Mladenovic does not say exactly where the actual exhibitions were held (MLADENOVIC, Gradansko
slikarstvo u Bośni i Hercegovini, 102). Various brief references to the topic can also be found in Kobilca’s letters to her
sister Marija. In a letter dated 20 May 1900 (in private holdings), she writes about exhibiting in Dresden, her colleagues’
successful sales, and the hope that she too would sell something.
21 Because she was a woman, Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann (1819-1881), for example, was able to infiltrate harems and
even paint real Near Eastern princesses entirely in keeping with the Orientalist canon of the time and sexist fantasies
about harems and Oriental beauties. Lor a detailed study of this artist, see Mary ROBERTS, “Harem Portraiture: Elisa-
beth Jerichau-Baumann and the Egyptian Princess Nazli Hanim”, in Deborah CHERRY and Janice HELLAND, eds.,
Local/Global: Women Artists in the Nineteenth Century (Aidershot, UK, and Burlington, Vt., USA: Ashgate Publi-
shing, 2006), 77-98.
22 Die Ósterreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild, v. 22: Bosnien und Herzegovina (Vienna: Druck und
Verlag der kaiserlich-koniglichen Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1901), 315, 337, 355, 359. Lipa discusses the significance
of all four images (LIPA, “The Austro-Hungarian Period in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, 7-9).