Egger-Lienz, Albin (1868-1926) - 1910 Midday Meal (Leopold Museum Vienna, Austria)
Oil on canvas; 91 x 141 cm
Austrian painter. He was the illegitimate son of a peasant girl and the Austrian church artist and photographer Georg Egger. Later he adopted the name of his father and home town. He studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich from 1884 to 1893. The main subject-matter of his early works, which were painted in a naturalistic style and influenced by Franz von Defregger, was determined by his background: scenes from peasant life and from the Tyrolean freedom battles of 1809 against the French troops of Napoleon, for example Ave Maria after the Battle on the Bergisel (1893–6; Innsbruck, Tirol. Landesmus.). He moved in 1899 to Vienna, where his own style developed: its fresco-like monumentality, as in The Dance of Death of Year Nine (1908; Vienna, Belvedere), was a contrast to sophisticated metropolitan culture at the turn of the century. His style was characterized by a concentration on the clearly outlined large form and by a linear rhythm in the picture surface. Bulky figures combine to form voluminous masses that appear against the background as silhouettes. Colors are reduced to mainly monochrome earth-colored tones of brown.
Egger-Lienz, Albin (1868-1926) - 1910 Midday Meal (Leopold Museum Vienna, Austria)
Oil on canvas; 91 x 141 cm
Austrian painter. He was the illegitimate son of a peasant girl and the Austrian church artist and photographer Georg Egger. Later he adopted the name of his father and home town. He studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich from 1884 to 1893. The main subject-matter of his early works, which were painted in a naturalistic style and influenced by Franz von Defregger, was determined by his background: scenes from peasant life and from the Tyrolean freedom battles of 1809 against the French troops of Napoleon, for example Ave Maria after the Battle on the Bergisel (1893–6; Innsbruck, Tirol. Landesmus.). He moved in 1899 to Vienna, where his own style developed: its fresco-like monumentality, as in The Dance of Death of Year Nine (1908; Vienna, Belvedere), was a contrast to sophisticated metropolitan culture at the turn of the century. His style was characterized by a concentration on the clearly outlined large form and by a linear rhythm in the picture surface. Bulky figures combine to form voluminous masses that appear against the background as silhouettes. Colors are reduced to mainly monochrome earth-colored tones of brown.