FIVE VIENNESE PORCELAIN RECTANGULAR PLAUQES, CIRCA 1890

Hans Makart (1840-1884) was an Austrian artist who gave his name to an artistic style (Makartstil) which dominated Vienna in the late 19th century and would influence followers such as Gustav Klimt. His colourful, sensuous and theatrical style of history painting was matched only by his equally flamboyant personality making him both celebrated and criticised in equal measure during his lifetime and beyond. His magnetism and penchant for self-publicity as well as his ability to court controversy give him a very modern air of the celebrity artist. His work owed much to Titian and Rubens and anticipated the Vienna Secession and art nouveau as well as including elements of Orientalism and Symbolism.

Born in Salzburg in 1840 he moved to Vienna at the age of only eleven to study at the Academy of Fine Arts. Although he was dismissed from the Academy after only a year, he continued his studies in Munich and soon found success with aristocratic and Imperial patronage in the late 1860s. By the 1870s he was Vienna’s arbiter of good taste and his studio was a Salon for Viennese society. Makart also turned his hand to interior, furniture and theatrical design and was at the centre of a renaissance of fine and decorative arts in the city. His five canvases of the Five Senses (1872-1879) depict five female nudes from various perspectives in wooded settings each representing one of the senses through action or with the use of attributes. They epitomise his work as a bridge between the Renaissance masters and the modern and his idealisation of the female form.

Vienna, as the Imperial capital was at the centre of the early development of porcelain production in Europe. By the turn of the 18th/19th centuries the porcelain factory acquired a reputation for exceptional painting, particularly through work from the studio of Anton Kothgasser and his contemporaries. It ranked on a par with the best of its rivals at Sèvres and the Berlin K.P.M. for depictions of contemporary topographical views, flower painting, history and mythological scenes and noble and Imperial portraiture. Relatively simple ornamental forms and large plaques allowed the skill of the painter to take precedence. Following the closure of the Imperial factory the style of decoration from the Sorgenthal and Biedermeier periods of the factory remained popular and by the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries items of antique porcelain had become appreciated by Viennese collectors. It was inevitable that the porcelain decorators of the late 19th century would adapt the earlier tradition to more contemporary tastes. The notoriety and international reputation of artists such as Makart would have made them ideal graphic sources for porcelain decorators.