FRANZ VON MATSCH | PORTRAIT OF A MAN

Private Collection, Vienna

Shepherd Gallery, New York 

Winthrop K. Edey, New York (acquired from the above)

Franz von Matsch met the brothers Gustave and Ernst Klimt during their studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) in Vienna. The trio shared a studio and by 1880 launched a business, the Künstler Compagnie (The Painter’s Company), which was perfectly positioned to respond to the city’s economic boom and a surge in building construction. The artists began to receive commissions for the decoration of grand, private residences such as the Villa Hermes, which they decorated with scenes from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1884-5), and public spaces, like the Burgtheater and its frescoes of the history of theater (1886) and the Kunsthistorische Museum, with forty paintings illustrating art history from ancient Egypt through the Renaissance (1890-1). These vibrant, intricate decorative campaigns demonstrated the trio’s academic training and the influence of Vienna’s most important artist of the era, Hans Makart, who made opulent, complex paintings from history, literature, and allegory. While these commissions established the artists’ reputation and earned them accolades, in 1894 Matsch left the studio, in part due to Gustave Klimt’s increasing disinterest with academic painting, and turned to teaching at the Kunstgewerbeschule. The present, enigmatic portrait aligns with Matsch’s bold and brilliant work that remains on display at the Burgtheater and in Vienna’s museums; while it has yet to be determined when Portrait of a Man was painted, the artist’s later turn to landscapes and still-lifes suggests this work is more closely aligned with his earlier projects. Matsch’s subject commands the viewer’s eye and compels further study and appreciation of its artist.