Collection: Art prints by Theodor von Hörmann

Theodor von Hörmann was an Austrian painter and is considered one of the most tragic figures in Austrian painting at the end of the 19th century - an artist whose work renewed Austrian landscape painting with an energy and consistency that surprised and irritated his contemporaries, and whose early death cut short an oeuvre that had by no means reached the end of its development. He was born in Imst in Tyrol in 1840 and initially embarked on a military career before turning to painting comparatively late and with all the greater determination. He received his artistic training at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, but the decisive influence on his style did not come in Vienna, but in Paris, where he came into direct contact with the open-air painting of the Barbizon School and Impressionism in the 1880s and absorbed impressions that led his work down a path that was unparalleled in Austrian painting of his time.

After his return from Paris, Hörmann developed a style of painting that had an irritating and novel effect within the Viennese art scene. While many of his Austrian contemporaries accepted Emil Jakob Schindler's Mood Impressionism as a benchmark, Hörmann went one step further: he adopted the directness and freedom of French open-air painting with a consistency that clearly distinguished his paintings from the muted tones of Austrian Mood Impressionism in their open, sometimes raw brushwork and intense colors. Village scenes, fields, gardens, rural workers and views of the Lower Austrian and Upper Austrian countryside were the focus of his work, treated with an immediacy and energy that seemed unusual and provocative to the Austrian public.

From the late 1880s onwards, Hörmann exhibited regularly and found himself in an ambivalent relationship with Viennese art critics and the exhibition business. A central feature of his work is the combination of impressionistic freedom and a robust, gripping style of painting, which clearly sets his pictures apart from the lyrical delicacy of many of his contemporaries. His depictions of rural life and the summer landscape in bright midday light are among the most impressive achievements of Austrian painting of his generation: they combine impasto, energetic brushwork, a bright and colorful palette and a direct, unadorned view of nature to create pictures that gave Austrian Impressionism a face that was clearly different from its German and French counterparts. However, he remained a marginal figure in the Viennese art scene, finding neither the institutional support nor the wider public that his work deserved.

In addition to his work as a painter, Hörmann was an uncomfortable, controversial personality who was unwilling and unable to conform to the conventions of the Viennese art scene. His application for membership of the Vienna Künstlerhaus was rejected, his exhibition successes remained modest, and the financial hardship that accompanied him throughout his life left deep scars on his personality and his work. Theodor von Hörmann died in Graz in 1895, aged just fifty-five, poor and largely ignored by the official art world. It was only after his death, when the Vienna Secession organized an important memorial exhibition of his work, that his significance for Austrian painting was more fully recognized. Today he is considered one of the key figures of Austrian Impressionism, whose works are preserved and increasingly appreciated in Austrian museums for their painterly boldness, coloristic freshness and astonishing modernity.