National Gallery of Slovenia

Marko Pernhart

(Mieger bei Völkermarkt, 1824 − Klagenfurt, 1871)

The Sava River with Šmarna gora
1851, oil, canvas, 39,5 x 47,5 cm
signed and dated lower right: Bernhart 851.

NG S 298, National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana

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The painting features the Sava River, winding its way into the depths of the painting past the slopes towards the mountain scenery of the Kamnik Alps. There is Šmarna gora on the left with a church on its top. The scene is peaceful and idyllic, without any hint of human presence, which is further emphasised by the driftwood on the shore – a popular detail in 19th-century painting. The painting demonstrates Pernhart's typical Biedermeier style with thin layers of paint, special attention to their harmony, realistic persuasiveness and a touch of eternity. Despite this, the freshness of the colours and the effects of light bring it closer to later realism.

Pernhart’s painting created a prototype for all subsequent depictions of this motif which became a constant in Slovene painting, especially in the works of France Pavlovec, who deliberately painted from exactly the same angle.

ABOUT THE PERIOD

Biedermeier and Romanticism

Heavily censored public life between the Congress of Vienna and the Spring of Nations in 1848, weakened Church patronage, and the ascending middle class marked the era when life focused on the privacy of the family circle, individual dignity and the sense of belonging; this is expressed in the Central European art as the style of Biedermeier which coexisted with a Romantic view of nature.

Portraiture was the genre of painting that saw its heyday in this era. Matevž Langus, Jožef Tominc, Mihael Stroj and Anton Karinger established themselves as individually formed portraitists who demonstrated their self-confidence as artists also through their self-portraits. The painters initially relied on formal characteristics of Neoclassicism. Stroj’s late portraits and particularly those by Karinger abandoned the Biedermeier manner and adopted a more realistic approach.

Interest in landscape first appeared as the background of portraits; towards the mid-century first autonomous city vedute emerged. The Biedermaier landscape is idyllic, descriptive, and furnished with staffage figures. Painters were attracted by tourist destinations and locations that were related to homeland identity: Mt. Triglav, Lake Bohinj, Bled. Anton Karinger and Marko Pernhart established themselves as explicit landscapists. The latter became famous for his multi-part panoramas from mountain peaks.

Still lifes became an attractive decoration of a middle-class home, and they also found favour with amateur women painters, one of whom was Countess Maria Auersperg Attems.

ARTISTS

Owner	Birth - death
Anonymous	-
Marija Auersperg Attems	(Graz, 1816−1880)
Friedrich Gauermann	(Miesenbach, 1807 – Vienna, 1862)
Anton Karinger	(Ljubljana, 1829–1870)
Pavel Künl	(Mladá Boleslav, 1817 – Ljubljana, 1871)
Franz Kurz von Goldenstein	(Sankt Michael im Lungau, 1807 − Baden bei Wien, 1878)
Matevž Langus	(Kamna Gorica, 1792 – Ljubljana, 1855)
Henrika Langus	(Ljubljana, 1836−1876)
Ernst Christian Moser	(Graz, 1815−1867)
Marko Pernhart	(Mieger bei Völkermarkt, 1824 − Klagenfurt, 1871)
Georg Johann Seitz	(Nuremberg?, 1810 − Vienna, 1870)
Mihael Stroj	(Ljubno, Radovljica, 1803 – Ljubljana, 1871)
Wilhelm Ternite	(Neustrelitz, 1786 – Potsdam, 1871)
Jožef Tominc	(Gorizia, 1790 – Gradišče nad Prvačino, 1866)
Cornelis Johannes van Hulstijn	(Jutphaas, 1813 – Celje, 1879)
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun	(Paris, 1755–1842)