Lot 40

Anton Hartinger (1806 - 1890) FLORAL STILL LIFE

Anton Hartinger as an artist certainly belongs to the tradition of Viennese floral painting. His teachers included Sebastian Wegmayr, and the influence of the Biedermeier tradition is evident. In his work "Korrektor" at the Academy, of which he was a member until 1851, he also created numerous depictions of flowers and plants for scientific purposes. He also portrayed fruit still lifes. In 1812, he founded his own class of floral painting at the academy, which, together with the growing scientific interest in botany, played a key role in the continuity of this genre. The first generation of Viennese Biedermeier flower painters was still indebted to Dutch masters in terms of painting style and color choice. The still life with a rabbit and flowers is a very sophisticated work, where flowers and fruits from different seasons meet with botanical precision and butterflies, a bumblebee and an ant sit on them, and a white rabbit, which is completely unique in Hartiger's paintings, chews a juicy plum leaf. It symbolically accentuates the motif and its vital composition. The cloudy landscape in the background adds an unprecedented dramatic dimension to the still life genre.