Studio: international art (53.1911)

Kunstler-Genossenschaft, Vienna

HE JUBILEE EXHIBITION OF
THE KUNSTLER-GENOSSEN-
SCHAFT, VIENNA.

It is fifty years since the Vienna Society of
Artists came into existence, and the present
moment is therefore opportune for giving a brief
sketch of its history and development before referring
to the jubilee exhibition which has just been held
at the Kunstlerhaus.

Though Vienna can boast good artists from the
end of the seventeenth century onwards, and
especially a century later when Fiiger ranked with
Isabey and Lawrence at the Vienna Congress, the
political events and internal disorganisation which
ensued drove art into oblivion for a time, and
artists in common with other men had to struggle
for their rights. The Metternich system was over-
thrown in the Revolution of 1848, the old Emperor

abdicated in favour of Francis Joseph, who, then but
eighteen years old, has survived to reach a vener-
able age. From 1848 till 1861 is but a small span
of thirteen years, yet during this short time much
was done to again bring art to its former high
standard. As early as 1858 there was an Art
Society known as " Eintracht," and shortly after-
wards another, the Albrecht Diirer Verein, was
founded. At the head of the former was Conrad
Grefe, an artist of some note as an etcher. It was
he who called the " Wiener Kiinstler Album " into
existence—a work containing all that was best in
lithography and etching by contemporary artists.
All the artists who contributed to this album are
now dead, but many of them still live in their works,
among them Kriehuber, whose lithograph portraits
mark an epoch in the art life of the period, and
Ender, a genre painter who went to seek his fortune
in London and died there.

'CHACON'NE" (HERR PRINZ THE PAINTER AND HARRIET ADAMS)

BY J. QUINCY ADAMS
187