(Frankfurt am Main 1789–1872 Vienna)
Three Views of the Fürstlich Salm‘sche Eisenwerke & Kunstgießerei in Blansko near Brno (Restoration in Klepoczow, Altgrafenhütte and Karlshütte), all three signed, dated Jac. Alt 1855 and View of Raitz Castle (Rájec nad Svitavou) near Blansko from Salm-Reifferscheidt, signed, dated Jac. Alt 1855, oil on canvas, each 29 x 36 cm, framed (4)

Provenance:
Family Ownership, Vienna, for four generations.

Born in Frankfurt, the painter and lithographer Jakob Alt received his first art lessons from the miniaturist Johann Peter Beer and his father Johann Friedrich Beer. In 1810 he came to Vienna to study at the academy. Shortly afterwards he married Anna Schaller, with whom he had eight children, including the painters Franz Alt and Rudolf von Alt. He taught himself landscape painting on many journeys to the Austrian Danube and Alpine regions and became an extremely sought-after and highly esteemed landscape painter.

One of his last journeys in 1855 took him to Moravia and Silesia. Over the course of this journey he produced three lithographic cycles, two of which mainly show industrial works. Industrial workshops and the world of work come to the fore in the paintings. Part of this series are the three works “Restoration of Klepoczow”, “Karlshütte” and “Altgrafenhütte”. On an artistic level, they reflect the new spirit of the times with its enthusiasm for emerging industry.

Prince Salm received the imperial-royal factory charter for his ironworks in 1810; his factory produced not only cast iron pipes for water, steam and gas pipelines, but also decorative cast iron elements and frames for avant-garde projects, such as the “Bubble’s Colonnade” in Carlsbad (destroyed in the Second World War). From 1821, the works formed a 25 km long interlocking factory complex with Blansko as its centre.

The fourth painting, “View of Raitz Castle”, shows Rájec nad Svitavou (German: Schloss Raitz), an early classicist aristocratic residence in Moravia. A medieval fortress and later a Renaissance chateau stood on the site of today’s castle. After the castle was destroyed in a fire in 1743, the then owners sold it to Anton Josef Altgraf von Salm-Reifferscheidt in 1763, who had a new castle built in the style of King Louis XVI and a large English garden laid out. The building plans for the new seat of the Salm-Reifferscheidt-Raitz line were provided by the Viennese architect Isidore Carnevale. Altgraf von Salm-Reifferscheidt had the numerous, almost life-size cast-iron ornaments made in the in-house Fürstlich Salm’sche Eisenwerke and the Kunstgießerei in Blansko.

The ancestors of the consignors worked in these workshops for decades and thus got to know Jakob Alt during his long stay in Blankso, during which these works were produced. The four paintings have been in the family since they were created in 1855.