(Vienna 1845–1916)
“Frühling, Aus dem Wiener Prater” (Spring, from the Prater in Vienna), signed, dated T. Blau Vienna 1900, inscribed on the reverse in the artist’s own hand: Tina Blau, Wien III, Rasumofskygasse 9, stamp Privatfond no. 534 and no. 5839, with Künstlerhaus label, oil on canvas, 95.5 x 125 cm, framed

Provenance:
Purchased by Emperor Franz Joseph I (1830-1916) in 1901;
General Directorate of the Private and Family Fund of His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty, 1917;
His daughter Archduchess Marie-Valerie (1868-1924), Wallsee Castle;
Her husband, Archduke Franz Salvator of Austria-Tuscany (1866-1939);
His second wife Melanie of Habsburg-Lorraine, née Baroness Risenfelds (1898-1984), Seisenegg Castle, Lower Austria;
Her heirs - Private Collection, Austria.

Exhibited:
Paris’ World Fair, 1900;
Künstlerhaus Vienna, 1901;
Künstlerhaus Vienna, 1917.

Catalogued in:
Online-Werkverzeichnis, Tina Blau, Belvedere-Research-Center, Vienna,
cat. raisonné no. GE 797.
Künstlerhaus labels 1901, 1846 and 1917, 1580 confirmed by Nikolaus Domes MA.

Born the daughter of a military doctor in Vienna, Regina Leopoldine Blau, known as Tina, is one of the most famous Austrian artists of the 19th century. Her exposure to the „paysage intime“ works of the Barbizon school had the most decisive influence on her style, alongside her encounter with the landscape painter Emil Jakob Schindler. She went on several study trips with him, including to Szolnok in Hungary in 1873 and to Holland in the summer of 1875. From 1879 she used the studio they had originally shared in Vienna’s Prater alone. Tina Blau quickly became emancipated from her teacher and established herself as a respected artist in her own right, holding lively exchanges with national and international landscape painters.

The high regard in which her works were held during her lifetime is evident in the present lot, which was shown as Tina Blau’s contribution to the Paris’ Worlds Fair in 1900. This atmospheric Prater landscape was exhibited a year later in 1901 at the Vienna Künstlerhaus and finally acquired by His Royal Majesty Emperor Franz Joseph I on 19 April 1901. One of her major works, the large-format painting “Frühling im Prater” [Spring in the Prater] (267 x 340 cm), was purchased for the Imperial Picture Gallery as early as 1899 and is still in the Österreichische Galerie at the Belvedere (inventory no. 2233).

The Prater was a popular place of study for 19th-century landscape painters, as it was situated in the immediate vicinity of the city and was largely unspoilt, a small, quiet paradise. The painters were able to study the flickering water in the Praterauen, different groups of trees as well as isolated giant trees in open meadows in detail. This diversity of motifs greatly attracted Tina Blau, who repeatedly captured views of the Vienna Prater in her paintings. The artist was able to extract a great variety of motifs from the landscape of the Prater, predominantly in her favourite moods of the seasons of transition: spring and autumn.
Tina Blau returned to her Prater studio repeatedly over the course of five decades, where she found both artistic inspiration and peace for her work in the wonderful combination of amusement park and riparian woodland. She captured the Prater landscapes along with the people populating them in her paintings with skilful variability. This is the case in the present lot, which shows the Prater in spring. We see a woman in a blue dress and red parasol walking through nature along a tree-lined path. The trees seem to move in the wind and the leaves begin to sprout in the fresh green of spring. Here, Tina Blau skilfully conveys to us the tranquillity of nature that so captivated her contemporaries.