Studio: international art (34.1905)

Two Austrian Painters

TWO AUSTRIAN PAINTERS: beautiful. Such cloaks are heirlooms, and are
KARL MEDIZ AND EM I LIE °^ leatrier grown all shades with age, so that it
seems to be a mixture of yellows, browns and
MEDIZ - P ELI KAN BY A. S. greenS; which lend a soft tone_ Thg ornamental

LEVETUS. bands, lengthwise and across, are also of leather

of varying green tinges, and the border and collar

These two artists are man and wife; they have of beaver heighten the beauty. Below, peeping

wandered in many places together, over the highest out, is a bit of her blue-and-white spotted peasant's

mountains and across glaciers, on the banks of dress. But the face interests us more: it is

deep rivers, and on their pilgrimages have painted old and weather-worn, as is her , cloak. The

scenery and portraits and everything else between, deep wrinkles and close-shut mouth seem as if

They have endured the greatest hardships together she were trying to repress that grief which her

and have worked together; they have chosen the deep blue eyes betray. She is seated on an old

same subjects for their canvases, yet their in- wooden seat of the kind peculiar to Hungary. No

dividualities remain, and in similar subjects also detail has been forgotten, and the picture tells its

there is great variety of treatment. own tale. Notice the clasped hands and finger-

Of the two, Karl Mediz is more monumental; nails worn from hard work, the troubled face, the
he works with a great and massive concentration, and grey hair and eyebrows, the colour repeated in the
yet with a poetry of expression, a real German grey background of the wall upon which her beads
energy, an energy which he has inherited from his and saint's picture are hanging. The blue of the
forefathers, who settled on Austrian territory, in the eyes has its counterpart in the blue silk handker-
Duchyof Gottschee, in South Carinola, centuries ago, chief knotted at her throat, all browns and greys,
but who yet keep to their old German traditions. only a very few other shades, for her life has
The artist himself was
born in Vienna, and his
wife is the daughter of
Styrian peasants. Frau
Mediz-Pelikan also has
immense energy, com-
bined with poetry of ex- ^SJ§mHP ■
pression more delicate \T&-wL.
than that of her husband; . iffll Wt*
she loves to paint lavenders j4HLjfiSH HL.
and silver greys, to bring JB/SSm Sf
out the very depths of that M A.
which she is depicting.

Yet sometimes, at first JB^HMMHQHflBHHHk tf,\

glance, one can hardly dMgtKKBBaS&SwBUmL '

tell which of them has - ^^^^^^HH|^^H|

created one or the other JaSaiiBt'

particular picture. Again, ■^m&mmKp*'

there are some which can

be recognised at once as

his or hers. In personal

appearance these two are,

as different as their works ;

in nature the}' are one ; he B«I^^J

considers her the greater
artist, and she him. The
Widow, by Karl Mediz, is
the picture of an old Hun-
garian, seventy years and
upwards, in her widow

weeds, which are very '-'the widow". by karl mediz

XXXIV. No. 144.—March, 1905. 95