Interior portrait

The term Room photos, we describe a genre of painting, with the representation of - dealt indoors and was distributed almost exclusively in the epoch of the Biedermeier period - usually private.

Requirements

A hallmark of the Biedermeier period was the development simplicity and modesty - not as an ethical stance, but as a matter of style. Instead exuberant shapes and abundant use of gold now were simple, formal reductive objects and simple but masterfully crafted materials as identification aesthetic quality. This particular type of noble modesty was costly. The nobility and, increasingly, the wealthy bourgeoisie could afford them - and they could have achieved that in my pictures.

Form, content and use

Room photos gave it as drawings, watercolors and gouaches, as well as in different mixing techniques. They were relatively small, an average horizontal measuring approximately 32.5 x 22.5 cm, larger deviations up or down before came, but were rare. The presentations were followed in most cases the principle of the proscenium stage. The viewpoint was often slightly offset from the center to the left. These works were not the work of amateurs, but by professional artists, in part by specialized " room painters ". A clear evidence of the esteem in which enjoyed the genre temporarily, is a series of nine watercolors, who prepared the famous architectural painter Eduard Gaertner on behalf of the royal family of interiors of the Berlin City Palace.

With great accuracy, the state of a particular interior was described at a certain time - appearance and placement of furniture, the colors and patterns of wallpaper, curtains and carpets, the design of the rooms with works of art, everyday objects or decorative objects. This detailed reproduction of the interiors reveals how intense his contemporaries dealt with the objects of their private environment and also makes clear that this was also documented. People were rarely shown in these pictures, and if so, then grasped hardly with their individual traits, but kleinformig and in an activity that corresponded to the purpose of each room. The individual was primarily indirect presence, with an accurate description of his private environment.

Room images were usually given as personal gifts for special occasions in order. The Prussian Princess Elizabeth gave her parents a picture of their child's room in Berlin, when she married young to Darmstadt went. And a watercolor of the study of Grand Duke Ludwig II of Hesse -Darmstadt was created as a copy even after his death and was presented posthumously. The leaves were possibly inherited, at least not publicly displayed, not sold. They turned to albums together - a then popular in society women employment - and looked at them in a home environment. Through its emotional significance, these anthologies were thus also images of the understanding of art, education level and social status of their owners.

Beginning and end

The earliest surviving Room photos are from Vienna (1815 ) and Munich (1820 ); from Berlin, there are examples since 1828 Sure can find older, reasonably comparable representations -. approximately Still life and playing indoors in Dutch painting, otherwise isolated interior descriptions and architectural designs. But only in the Biedermeier period, ie in the first half of the 19th century, and in a limited geographical area - in the German states and in Austria - Room photos were an established, autonomous genre of painting.

In the immediately following periods of history, the images kept still for a while their private sentimental value, but declined in importance by the transformation of aesthetic views and individual habits. The desire to document their own four walls to this particular kind was not as widespread as before. If this still wish availed itself of the "modern" medium of photography. With greater distance from their origin, however, the rooms pictures of the Biedermeier period were again important as sources of specific information on the cultural history.

Gallery

Anonymous ( E. W. ), Vienna 1820

Leopold Zielcke, Berlin 1825

Adolph von Menzel, 1845 Balcony Room