(Innsbruck 1838–1902 Neuilly-sur-Seine)
“Castellmare Golfo di Napoli” (Castellammare del Golfo, Gulf of Naples), circa 1876/77, titled on the reverse and inscribed F. R. Unterberger Bruxelles, signed F. R. Unterberger, oil on canvas, 75.5 x 144.5 cm, framed, (Rei)

Provenance:
former Karl Wessel collection (1842-1912), Bad Harzburg, Germany;
his heirs; private collection, Germany.

Franz Richard Unterberger was as equally adept at painting sparkling waves rolling over the beach as he was at depicting the sun, heat and rising steam on the far horizon as they merge with the glistening sea in the bright midday sun against the silhouette of Vesuvius and clouds rising around the volcano. Franz Richard Unterberger was a true master of pictorial representations, his paintings enjoying a natural, atmospheric quality which maked his Italian views, especially those of the Costiera Amalfitana and the Gulf of Naples, inimitable. […]

Franz Richard Unterberger was respected throughout the large fraternity of European painters; his paintings were as familiar in the Paris Salon and Munich Glaspalast as they were in Vienna, Berlin and London. Or in Brussels, which he made his second home. Although for several decades the modern and abstract looked down with distain at the genre of masterful landscape painting, enthusiasts and collectors guaranteed the survival of ‘salon painting’ and, in doing so, the reputation of artists including Unterberger. In the 19th century, before the days of television, it was the tableau with its opulent gold frame, accentuating the distance between the observer and the events occuring on the canvas – here the hard life of a fisherman – which invited the observer to step into an imaginary world. The artist captures the ‘decisive moment’ of a mood as an aesthetic memory. The educated citizen would satisfy their longing for Italy in the déjà-vu moment, evoked by the idealised, genre arrangement. […]

Unterberger sketched his scenes on location, capturing them on panel in small format before theatrically staging his large scale paintings during the winter months in his Parisian studio in Neuilly. Franz Unterberger was a pupil at the academies in Munich and Milan, and in Düsseldorf he enjoyed freedom as a private pupil of academy professors Andreas and Oswald Achenbach. He cultivated his social life as a member of the respected Malkasten association of artists which, in turn, was proud of the artistic achievements of its prominent pupil. […]

Professor Sibylle Moser-Ernst