Photo Motif: Hallstatt

From Waldmüller to Holzmeister

After all that you have read and seen about Hallstatt so far, who is still surprised that this Hallstatt has also fascinated artists at all times? "Now your hand will be seized by the involuntary urge to draw. You will want to preserve for eternity the images that enchanted your senses and filled your soul." This is how one of the first travel writers of the Salzkammergut, Joseph August Schultes, put it around the year 1800.

Some of these images, which I hope will also enchant your senses and fill your soul, would like to introduce you here. The selection goes across all styles - and that's exactly what makes it so appealing. Every time, every artist sees Hallstatt differently, discovers something different here. The oldest exact depictions of Hallstatt are those in the "Topographia provinciarum Austriacarum", 1649: copper engravings by Matthäus Merian. The painters and draughtsmen who chose Hallstatt as their motif more than a century later were all amateurs: the saltworks draughtsmen.

What we admire about her work is the accuracy and attention to detail. A short time later, the travelling painters came to Hallstatt to report on their "Picturesque Journeys through the Most Beautiful Alpine Regions of the Austrian Imperial State" (this is a title from those days). Hallstatt sheets appeared more and more frequently in the Viennese art exhibitions: in 1832 by Ernst Welker, one of the most successful watercolourists of the time. Jakob Alt and his son Rudolf von Alt preferred Hallstatt motifs. It is no exaggeration to say that Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, who is still Austria's most popular landscape painter, was in love with Hallstatt. Waldmüller came to Hallstatt for the first time in 1831 and in the following years brought back 15 paintings from his stays in Hallstatt, which art historians describe as the indisputable highlight of his work.

Even earlier, however, three wandering Berlin artists had discovered Hallstatt. Their names were Julius Schoppe, Carl Wilhelm Gropius and Carl Friedrich Zimmermann and they gave their series of pictures the resounding name "Picturesque views of different regions and curiosities on a journey through Austria, Styria, Tyrol, Switzerland, Upper and Lower Italy, taken after nature and drawn on stone by J. Schoppe and C. Gropius, accompanied by nature-romantic poems by G. A. Frh. von Maltitz". The first sheet of this series was entitled "The Painters on the Hallstatt Glacier in the Austrian Salzkammergut". The artists portrayed themselves: with two mountain guides, they take a break in old German painter's costume against the background of the Dachstein.

Connected to Hallstatt

For the eye of the beholder, this roof stone has not changed since 1823, when this picture was created, but it has changed for that of the artist. The leap over one and a half centuries is made clear to us by a sheet from the hand of Clemens Holzmeister. He is the best key witness to the fact that this landscape also inspires a modern artist of international standing and inspires him to create pictures of delicate poetry, in which only the formal unity is reminiscent of the world-famous architect. In between is Fritz Lach, one of the best-known and most popular landscape painters before and after the First World War. Karl Hayd, who was particularly connected to the landscape of Upper Austria, was also drawn to Hallstatt again and again.

The artists of today, for whom the motif of Hallstatt is part of the fixed repertoire, are represented by many names in addition to Clemens Holzmeister. Three of them were selected for this volume because they belong to different generations, but also because they take fundamentally different stylistic paths: Hans Franta, Fritz Störk and Anton Watzl Hans Franta's pictures are a true expression of the subjective experience of the landscape. Franta does not care about clichés, neither the conservative nor the modern painters. He sees Lake Hallstatt and the Dachstein according to his personal opinion, partly romantic, partly heroic. In Fritz Störk's work, realistic freehand painting has been replaced by the contemporary principle of condensation and abbreviation. Anton Watzl is primarily concerned with the graphic concept. Nevertheless, the past of this place also comes alive in his Hallstatt sheets.

The motif of Hallstatt is not only the visual arts but also poetry

Once again, Hallstatt is allowed to reach for the highest: Austria's greatest linguistic artist, Adalbert Stifter, stayed in Hallstatt several times. During a walk in Hallstatt with Friedrich Simony, the idea for one of his most beautiful stories emerged, which takes place in Hallstatt and in the cave world of the Dachstein: "Rock Crystal". In the "Feldblumen", the town of Hallstatt is called by its real name. After all, Stifter also painted some pictures in Hallstatt. Hallstatt was and is a motif for the greatest painters and poets of our country. But also for every single visitor to Hallstatt. Because there is no one who would not return home from Hallstatt with an abundance of pictures - pictures in cameras, on films and postcards. But above all: images in the memory and images in the heart.

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