General Director Stella Rollig: Is it even possible to find new aspects to spotlight in Waldmüller’s work? It is indeed! Waldmüller’s popularity and the Belvedere’s extensive holdings of his paintings make him one of the key artists in the museum’s collection. By juxtaposing his landscapes with works by other European artists, this exhibition promises fresh perspectives—even for enthusiasts and experts.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, progressive artists across Europe issued a clarion call for art to be true to nature. At the same time, they increasingly concentrated on their native landscapes. Accompanying this was a more general trend of people wanting to spend more time in the natural world, to learn about it, and to bring nature into their homes in the form of pictures. Political upheavals, social change, and advancing industrialization were the forces behind this cultural shift in the nineteenth century.

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, a major Austrian painter from the Biedermeier period, made it his goal to paint “the nature that surrounds us, our time, our customs.” His true-to-life portraits, genre scenes, and landscapes polarized opinion. Waldmüller was—and still is—best known for his realistic portraits and scenes from everyday life. Real, observed landscapes only appear as backgrounds early on in his career. This changed in the 1830s, and Waldmüller began placing the natural world at the forefront of his work, producing numerous views with striking naturalism. From that point onward, landscape assumed a decisive role in his art—an interest that remained with him until the end of his life.