(Vienna 1793–1865)
Grandmother with Three Grandchildren, signed, dated Waldmüller, 1854, oil on panel, 48.5 x 37 cm, framed, cradled (Rei)

Provenance:
Wawra Auction, Vienna, 29–30 January 1883, lot 94, where purchased by Franz Terzer;
Wawra Auction, Vienna, 12 January 1891, lot 180, where purchased by Donat Zifferer;
Ernst and Else Gotthilf (née Zifferer) until 1939;
Forced sale from the above at Weinmüller, Vienna, 15-17 March 1939, lot 463, where purchased by Maria Almas-Dietrich for the Führermuseum Linz;
Central Collecting Point, Munich, 1945;
Transferred to the Minister-President of Bavaria by the Allies 1949;
On loan to the Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte in Oldenburg since 1968;
Restituted to the legal heirs of Ernst and Else Gotthilf in January 2012.

Catalogued and illustrated in:
Rupert Feuchtmüller, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller 1793–1865, Leben-Schriften-Werke, published by Christian Brandstätter, Vienna 1996, p.527, no. 952 and 1090.
This work was mistakenly listed in Rupert Feuchtmüller’s catalogue raisonné under the numbers 952 and 1090. Following research into its provenance and discussions with the Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller Archive at the Belvedere, it became apparent that these are one and the same painting.

Exhibited:
Residenzgalerie Salzburg 1953;
Barockschloss Riegersburg, Familie. Ideal und Realität, Niederösterreichische Landesausstellung, Barockschloss Riegersburg, Melk 1993.

Label oft he Vienna Künstlerhaus 1931, 1126 confirmed by Mag. Paul Rachler.

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller is probably the most famous Austrian artist of the 19th century. Born in Vienna in 1793, his attendance at the Vienna Academy was sporadic. From painting portrait miniatures and theatre scenery, he developed into a landscape, portrait and genre painter, becoming a master in each of these fields. Merely to describe him as a typical representative of the Biedermeier period would fail to award sufficient merit to either his art or his artistic attitude. He was opposed to academic painting and consistently advocated painting en plein air and the study of nature. (1)
His wanderings through Vienna’s outskirts and surroundings in search of new motifs and beautiful sunlight brought him into contact with the rural communities and population living outside the city walls. It was these people, their lives, celebrations, joys, illnesses etc. which Waldmüller took as the subject of his characteristic genre paintings. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, his representations are free from lecturing and moralising attitudes, rather they always “depict occurrences”. Sabine Grabner, curator of the 2009 Waldmüller exhibition at the Belvedere writes that Waldmüller “tried to present nature ‘just as it is’, and accordingly, he ‘portrayed’ it with brush and paint (…). This approach lent his scenes the appearance of having been taken from real life.”(2)

His protagonists appear natural, as if captured in a moment in time, embedded in their daily life. This is also true of the work here, Grandmother with Three Granddaughters. Delight is written on the faces of the two who have just entered from outside. It is not clear to the observer what they have handed the Grandmother – a poem, a letter, words of praise? However, for the viewer of the painting, this serves to make all the more manifest the curiosity and excitement of the younger girl standing to the right about the words the Grandmother reads out. The figures are gently touching, again a characteristic of Waldmüller’s genre paintings in which “(…) those portrayed consistently treat one another with affection and mutual respect, and with children and parents showing one another love and veneration, which should be understood as echoing the exemplary behaviours and moralizations of the preceding decades.”(3)

The scene is set in the apartment of a suburban home: living space is limited, to the right a glimpse of the kitchen, to the left the dark corridor leading to the front door. On the wall in the upper right a birdcage, and on the back wall three pictures, two of which can be identified as the Waldmüller paintings Kinderzärtlichkeiten (Affectionate Children) (CR 1053), Schlafendes Kind unter Obhut (Care of a Sleeping Child) (CR 1052) and Mutterglück (Motherhood).(4)

(1) cf. Agnes Husslein-Arco, Sabine Grabner (Hrsg.) Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Vienna 2009, Christian Brandstätter Verlag, Ausstellungskatalog p. 7.
(2) ibid. p. 135.
(3) ibid. p.137
(4) Cf. Rupert Feuchtmüller, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Leben Schriften Werke, Christian Brandstätter Verlag, Vienna 1996, p. 226.