MASTERPIECES IN FOCUS FRIEDRICH LOOS An Artist‘s Life between Vienna, Rome and the North
Upper Belvedere 27 March to 12 July 2015
Friedrich Loos View from Mönchsberg Hill of the Hohensalzburg Fortress, around 1830 Oil on cardboard 30 x 40.5 cm © Belvedere, Vienna
MASTERPIECES IN FOCUS FRIEDRICH LOOS An Artist‘s Life between Vienna, Rome and the North
From 27 March, the Belvedere is devoting a Masterpieces in Focus exhibition to an unjustly forgotten Austrian painter – Friedrich Loos (1797–1890). It is the first solo show to be dedicated to this artist’s work. Nowadays Loos is most appreciated for his panoramic views, including the famous “Sattler Panorama” of Salzbu rg, to which he contributed in the 1820s. After this period in Salzburg, where he painted some of his most well-known works, Loos moved to Vienna and then to Rome in 1846. In Italy he continued to paint panoramas. He captured the city from Monte Celio and Monte Mario in two sequences of five paintings, creating vast panoramic views of classical and of contemporary Rome. In his cityscapes and landscapes depicting the Alps or rolling countryside, Friedrich Loos always made every effort to record exact topogra phies. Yet capturing atmosphere was equally important to him and this infuses his pictures with a special appeal that still enchants visitors today.
“Friedrich Loos’s subject is landscape – the landscapes of the Salzkammergut and the Alps as well as the Roman Campagna and the hills of eastern Holstein. Loos’s most prolific period as an artist was undoubtedly the 1830s and 1840s. In the midst of nature he painted numerous, usually small-scale oil sketches, with a freshness and immediacy that was already appreciated by contemporaries,” Agnes Husslein-Arco, Director of the Belvedere and 21er Haus stated.
“Landscape formations are rendered precisely in Friedrich Loos’s pictures, yet for all their ‘truth to nature’ and exactitude one never gains the impression of meticulous, painstaking detail. Rather, the scenes are imbued with a poetic mood that captivates viewers to this day as their eyes drift through the image,” said exhibition curator, Rolf H. Johannsen.
Like many landscape painters in the nineteenth century, Friedrich Loos led a very itinerant lifestyle. Born in Graz in 1797, he came to Vienna at a young age. While studying at the Academy of Fine Arts, several weeks in the region of the Schneeberg mountain during the autumn of 1817 made a strong impression on the young artist. Instructed by Joseph Mössmer, the students spent their time here drawing in the open air.
A few years later Loos enjoyed his first successes as an artist, although this was in the field of graphic art not painting. On his teacher’s advice, he learnt the technique of etching and later of lithography, but also started dabbling in oil painting. This became his passion although graphic art always remained an important mainstay in his work. In 1820 Loos made his first contribution of two etchings to an exhibition at the Vienna academy.
Travels for Art
In 1821 Friedrich Loos sold a printing plate to fund a walking tour through the Austrian Alps. On his return he continued working mainly as a graphic artist and also as a drawing teacher. In 1825/26 he worked for the art collector Maximilian Speck von Sternburg in Leipzig. Loos later returned to Vienna via Dresden and Prague, soon moving on to Salzburg where he achieved his breakthrough as a landscapist over the following years. He met Johann Michael Sattler and became his main collaborator on his famous panorama of Salzburg. By this time, Loos was a fully fledged realistic landscape painter, so he was virtually predestined to paint the landscape passages in the “Sattler Panorama”. Although not entirely in his hand, Loos painted the vast majority of the landscape sections in this panorama of Salzburg.
Return to Vienna and Move to Rome
In 1835 Friedrich Loos moved back to Vienna with his wife Juliane, whom he had married in Salzburg three years before. “Yet Loos did not find his subject matter in Vienna itself. It was not the streets, squares, and buildings that inspired the artist but the view of the entire city from a distance, as part of a cultural landscape that could be appreciated from the surrounding hills,” curator Rolf H. Johannsen explains. “With this aim, Loos climbed the hills Kahlenberg, Leopoldsberg, and Bisamberg and depicted what he saw in pencil, sometimes painting in oils in situ as well. He then used these oil sketches as resources for his large canvases that he painted in his studio,” Rolf H. Johannsen continues.
Friedrich Loos continued to exhibit at the Vienna academy shows. Always in quest of new subject matter, the artist’s walking tours and travels led him to Lake Neusiedl, Styria, and Istria, among other destinations. Loos and his wife then settled in Klosterneuburg, later moving to Rome in 1846. By this time, Loos was almost fifty and could look back on an impressive oeuvre of paintings and prints. Various factors inspired him to go south. Firstly, he wanted to meet the much-esteemed older landscapist Johann Christian Reinhart (1761–1847) in person, and secondly he aimed to expand his subject matter and appeal to new buyers.
His two Rome panoramas were the most significant works from his years in Rome and he painted them around 1850. Loos subsequently showed these in cities in northern Germany and Scandinavia including Düsseldorf, Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Copenhagen, and Oslo.
“Friedrich Loos started off in various landscape genres: the intimate rural idyll, the city view, and the heroic landscape. Vienna had a transformative effect, as it was here that the panoramic landscape viewed from afar became his true subject. This is demonstrated by distant views of the city and of Klosterneuburg and his two Rome panoramas, each comprising five paintings, that represent a further highlight in the artist’s work,” Belvedere Director Agnes Husslein-Arco stated.
In November 1855, Loos and his wife finally settled in Kiel. The painter embarked on his last great journey to Norway in 1856 from here. This was followed by walking tours in the hilly region of eastern Holstein (so-called Holstein Switzerland) almost every year, an area Loos and other artists helped to explore, and also to Sylt in the North Sea and the bathing resort Sankt Peter-Ording.
Loos continued travelling until the early 1880s. Friedrich Loos died on 9 May 1890 in Kiel.
The exhibition Masterpieces in Focus: Friedrich Loos – An Artist’s Life between Vienna, Rome, and the North features works from every phase in the painter’s oeuvre and invites visitors to rediscover Friedrich Loos and see his work in a new light.
Exhibitions held within the series Masterpieces in Focus are made possible through the generous support of the Dorotheum.
A PDF of the catalogue is available for download at: www.belvedere.at/press (login: pr2015)
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY Friedrich Loos
1797 Friedrich Loos is born in Graz on 29 October. His parents are the leather-dyer Friedrich Adam Loos and his wife Susanna Regina. c. 1800 The Loos family moves to Vienna c. 1805–1816 Until the age of 14, Loos attends the evangelical school in Vienna, where Joseph Rebell (1787–1828) is a drawing teacher. This is followed by two years at secondary school. Loos studies for one term at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts in 1812/13. In around 1815 he becomes an assistant teacher at the evangelical school.
1816–1821 Loos attends Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts. His first works, especially etchings, date from this period. For the first time Loos contributes two etchings to the exhibition at the Vienna academy in 1820.
1821 Loos funds a walking tour through the Austrian Alps by selling a printing plate to the Akademische Kunsthandlung. He resigns from his post as teacher at the evangelical school and gives private tuition instead.
1822 Loos contributes to the Vienna academy’s exhibition again.
1823 Loos becomes the drawing teacher for Count Zichy. He accompanies the count to the Little Carpathians in present-day Slovakia. An inscription on a drawing of a standing figure with a sketchbook and palette reveals that Loos was in Pressburg/Bratislava.
1824 Loos returns to Vienna. Loos comes to the attention of the entrepreneur, agricultural reformer, and art collector Maximilian Speck von Sternburg (1776–1856) from Leipzig. He engages the artist to work on the catalogue of his painting collection.
1825/26 Loos lives in Leipzig and at the Speck von Sternburg family estate in Lützschena, not far from the city. He also practises figure drawing (probably at the Leipzig drawing academy) and works
on anatomical studies at the university. In May/June 1826, Loos returns to Vienna via Dresden and Prague, where he stays for several weeks. Remembering his time with the Speck von Sternburg family, a book of eight etchings showing the estate with its gardens is published in 1826 (Lützschena mit einem Theil seiner Anlagen und Gartenverzierungen).
1826–1835 Loos arrives in Salzburg in mid-August 1826. He works on Johann Michael Sattler’s (1786– 1847) “Salzburg Panorama”. After the panorama is finished in 1829, Loos stays in the city and finds his most important patron in Prince Friedrich zu Schwarzenberg (1809–1885). He travels to Munich. He also goes on walking tours in the Hohe Tauern and Berchtesgadener Land and other regions. Loos is successful both as a graphic artist and painter. In 1832 he contributes five paintings from Salzburg province to the Vienna academy exhibition. That year Loos also marries Juliane Zaunrith from a well-known family of booksellers in Salzburg.
1835–1846 Friedrich and Juliane Loos move to Vienna in 1835. Loos generally contributes between three and four works to the Vienna academy exhibitions. In 1836 the Imperial Picture Gallery acquires a painting by Loos. Loos continues his travels: 1838 to Lake Neusiedl, 1839 to Styria, and 1840 to Istria. From 1842/43 to 1846, Loos and his wife live in Klosterneuburg.
1846–1852 Loos and his wife live in Rome. In around 1850 he paints his two panoramas of Rome, the most important works from this time. He also works on other paintings and a few prints.
1852–1855 In June 1852, Loos and his wife leave Rome for northern Germany. His Rome panoramas are shown (with an admission charge) in Düsseldorf, Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Kiel, and Christiania (Oslo), among other cities. Loos and his wife live in Bremen from 1853 to 1855. He comes to the attention of Grand Duke Peter II of Oldenburg (1827 –1900) who invites him to show the panoramas at his nearby residential city. This is followed by further exhibitions of Loos’s work in Oldenburg in 1854, 1855 (ten paintings), 1859 (eleven drawings, views of Eutin), 1867 and later (probably mainly featuring landscapes from Holstein).
1855–1889 In November 1855, Loos and his wife finally settle in Kiel. One year later, Loos embarks on his last great journey to Norway. After that he travels almost every year to “Holstein Switzerland”, where he works for the local aristocracy, especially for Peter II of Oldenburg. One of his last graphic works is a series of five etchings published in 1858 depicting the most important stations in Loos’s life as an artist: Salzburg, Vienna, Italy (Lago Maggiore), Norway, and eastern Holstein (Eutin). Loos often exhibits his work, including the two Rome panoramas, in Kiel. The artist embarks on longer trips to Vienna (probably in 1860) and Dresden (in 1868). Named and dated drawings are evidence of other excursions and walking tours including Sylt in 1874, Sonderburg and Düppel in 1875, and Sankt Peter-Ording on the North Sea in 1877. Loos stops travelling in the early 1880s.
In 1882, on his eight-fifth birthday, he is awarded the Prussian Order of the Crown, 4th class.
1890 Friedrich Loos dies on 9 May 1890 in Kiel at the age of ninety -two. His wife Juliane is mentioned for the last time in 1868.
GENERAL INFORMATION
Exhibition Title Masterpieces in Focus: Friedrich Loos An Artist‘s Life between Vienna, Rome and the North
Exhibition Duration 27 March to 12 July 2015
Venue Upper Belvedere
Exhibits 34
Artist Friedrich Loos
Curator Rolf H. Johannsen
Catalogue Friedrich Loos Ein Künstlerleben zwischen Wien, Rom und dem Norden (German Version) Editors: Agnes Husslein-Arco, Rolf H. Johannsen Belvedere, Hardcover, 136 pages, 19.5 x 25 cm ISBN: 978-3-902805-69-0, € 21,-
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