Veljko Marton, Museum Marton
Five Stars Croatia Issue 2 — April 01, 2007.

The importance of art on our territories, but also anywhere else, appears the best in research of various forms of the same objects through various periods.The changes of color, objects and the manner of work in the course of various time periods are an evidence of development of society in general.

For the Croatian territory the period of Biedermayer is interesting which began to develop in the 19th century and to follow ever bigger bourgeois development and interest for art and certain materials, among which we may set apart art of painting, glass manufacture and glass shaping.

In portraying the artist most often concentrated on a head and shoulders of the portrayed person positioned in front of a neutral background, without superfluous adornment.

The Biedermayer discontinues the distance between the artist and the portrayed person, their social status is equal, which also makes possible the more complete psychological contact with no pandering to audiences.

The most often type of a portrait in the Biedermayer painting is the frontal half-length portrait, slightly smaller than the real size of the portrayed person. The portrayed person is passive on the painting. If would be difficult to assert that the beginning of the Biedermayer in the European centers was immediately also felt in Croatia, which at that time was a receptive region.

The need for painting production existed, but it rested content predominantly with import or works of art of the traveling artists who, mostly from Austria, and to a smaller extent from Czech, were passing through Croatia. The full breakthrough of the Biedermayer painting into Croatia showed itself not earlier than in the thirty years of the 19th century.

In the Biedermayer period in Croatia Antun Keller and Franz Jaschke were active, the painters who, unlike the number of other traveling artists, remained some time longer in Croatia and left a larger number of signed works or art and these attributed to someone having the transitional style features.

In their works of art the strong presence of the classicistic morphology still becomes shown, the influences of the Empire, but also the first Biedermayer elements are recognized, especially in the Keller's portraits. In the first period of introduction of the Biedermayer painting in Croatia (until 1830) the type of portrait having significant late baroque features is still often. By changing the impostation, fashion details and other accessories it slowly hands over its place to the more realistic Biedermayer portrait, which in the main features corresponds to the style frameworks of the Vienna Biedermayer, limited by the personal possibilities of the specific traveling painter. The situation was similar, within the regional specific qualities, in all areas of, in that time still disunited, Croatia: the deficiency of the authentic domestic art production, with the absolutely dominating role of traveling painters. In the higher society circles this was compensated with direct import of paintings from Vienna and other middle-European art centers.

The record on the arrival of Mihael Story to Zagreb in 1830 indicates that the situation at the beginning of the thirties in Croatia started to change to a certain degree. His longer stay here, until 1842, clearly suggests the need and possibilities of the milieu to accept and domesticate this artist. In a large part Story fills the space until then covered by direct import of works of higher quality foreign artists. His clientele make the higher social circles in the town and its close and wide surrounding. The earliest known Story's works of art were created in Croatia in 1830.

They are already completely defined by style characteristics of Biedermayer painting, which remains to be his framework during his entire work in Croatia. At the same time Stroy's arrival to Croatia indicates also a definite introduction of Biedermayer painting, as also its domination in the following next decades. "The forties" in Osijek, the most important Biedermayer painting center in Croatia, begin characterized by two key persons: Franjo Pfalz and Hugo Conrad von Hötzendorf. These two artists determine the atmosphere of painting in this town during several following decades. The glass objects from the period of Biedermayer were attracting attention with the luxury of their colors and forms. It is valid to give prominence to glass invented and protected by patent in the thirty years of the 19th century by Friedrich Egermann.

The subject is the non-translucent colored glass imitating semi-precious stone, which explains its name lithyalin derived from the Greek word for the stone - lithos, and was produced in the wide spectrum of colors. It has been already pointed out that the adornment and colors in preparing Biedermayer glass were more important that the shape itself. The thirty years were characterized by affection to glass colored in a lot: in blue, emerald, ruby, purple, yellow or green. The wide spectrum of colors we may also find on the samples from the collection. The uranium glass, the invention of Joseph Riedel, also begins to be very looked-for due to its "poisonously" green and yellow nuances.

The most recognizable for the period of Biedermayer were, maybe, the glasses decorated by technique of coating, which was witnessed by the large abundance of samples in the collection decorated in such manner. In any case, the most typical Biedermayer objects were exactly these made for the special purpose: for giving as a present or remembrance. They were made with attention and love for details, whereas lots of them also bear individual marks, owners' names, occasional verses, dates or just monograms. In spite of the popularity of colored glass, the polishing remains further the most significant decorative method, which requested, unlike other manners of decorating, significantly larger technical skill completed with the artistic affinity.

In the period of Rococo prior to Biedermayer demand for silver table ware became ever more prevalent, since the silver was not any more regarded as the proof of its owner's status and power exhibited in a cabinet or on the table itself, than it was really used at serving food. The completely new shapes of silver dishes followed like a dip bowl, coffee and tea cups, at that time already available in houses of the middle class, to the gorgeous soup bowls and luxurious trays of "epergne" type completing precious china services of wealthy aristocratic tables.

The esthetic canons are one of the fundamental form-relevant postulates of early Biedermayer, i.e. its early, classicizing phase. A sugar server and salt server in shape of a small boat, then candlesticks of Josef Ignaz Wirth, as also jugs of J. G. Laubenbacher, are clear representatives of the style of the early beginning of the 19th century.

The Austrian silver of Rococo and Classicism, and especially the one from the Napoleon period, has been preserved today in smaller number, since the Habsburg Monarchy during the first decades of the 19th century introduced a set of additional taxes and other duties for silver on sale, as also for the one in private or church ownership. The objects made of precious metals, not including some legally permitted exceptions, should have been confiscated and remelted, except in case when they were repurchased from the owners exclusively for the countervalue in coinage, which was in the circumstances of that time extremely difficult.

Apart from Vienna which in this period remains to be a production center of silver of the highest quality of working and forming, gradually and in small centers it came to alignment of silver production levels, since by the decree of Maria Theresa on the whole area of the Monarchy the prescribed obligatory drawing schools started to operate, the so called "Risarske škole" for the apprentices of all crafts. In Zagreb such school was established in 1781. By establishing schools the efforts were made and the success achieved in improvement and alignment of level of crafts, as also of the silver production. Besides, there were strict guild rules prescribing obligatory "vandrovanja/wandering", i.e. the expert journeys and improvement of apprentices in other towns out of the place of education, which contributed to a quick widening of new form-based trends and style tendencies.

The result of complying with the rules was a very good quality of silver in the area of the entire Monarchy, mostly classicistic and under the influence of Classicism. The Biedermayer achieved in terms of style very diverse form-based realizations in silver, but between 1815 and 1835 the forms were developed which esthetically, by cleanness of form and respect of quality and preciousness of material were set apart as a separate whole, and are according to some authors the only one named to be Biedermayer in the proper sense of the word. Namely, already from the end of the 18th century in German countries the first manufactures were established, i.e. the factories of fancy goods with the semi-finished products intended for the further silversmith work which gradually were getting through to the market of the Monarchy, too.

Besides, in the first decades of the 19th century it came to improvement of various machines for pressing, impressing and guilloching; the new possibilities of reproduction of complicated motifs, which until then were with great effort embossed and engraved by hand, contributed to quick widening of neo-styles, primarily Neorococo.

The period of late Biedermayer which has in itself the elements of the second Rococo, i.e. from the 4th and 5th decade of the 19th century sugar dishes with the luxuriant floral motifs, as also these with the floral adornment band, the objects decorated with guilloching, as also with curly and floral flower elements are typical and the most recognizable elements of style.

In validation of the cultural heritage of one country we always have to bear in mind, besides the cultural substance, also its social background. The Croatia is in this moment too poor country to make collections of large volume and value by means of repurchases. Our museums are going through the periods of entropy: the export, legal and illegal, repetitively goes beyond the museum repurchases. It is important to stop or redirect these negative tendencies by the own enthusiasm of collecting which in our territories has no comparison.