Joseph Feid
(1860-1870)
A Mountain Landscape / Heiligenblut, 1848
oil on canvas
47.4 x 42 cm
MG-3064

Joseph Feid (1806-1870) was a typical Austrian landscape painter from the Biedermeier period. He often painted his studies out of doors (in plein air) already during his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. His motives were the surroundings of Vienna and alpine landscapes. He then used his plein-air studies to produce studio-made paintings of lacquered surfaces, in which there were no visible brushstroke traces, which was a much sought-after quality in paintings at the time. Besides landscape painting, he is known for his precise, almost botanical mastery of painting leaves. His landscapes feature carefully painted details of nature, in which human and animal figures serve as ornaments and a size scale. He was friends with the famous animalist painter Friedrich Gauermann (1807-1862), with whom he also collaborated professionally (i.e., the two worked together on a number of paintings).
Joseph Feid’s A Mountain Landscape / Heiligenblut painting from 1848 depicts one of the favourite motifs of Austrian landscape painting of the time – the surroundings of Heiligenblut featuring a chapel of the same name at the foot of an alpine massif and Grossglockner, Austria’s highest alpine peak. This motif was often reproduced in different ways (oleography, tapestry), thanks to which it became not only widely known, particularly within the federal states of Austria, but also a much sought-after painting motif for furnishing civic houses.

Text: Dajana Vlaisavljević, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art ©N ational Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Ana Janković
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb