Jardin du Luxembourg, 1908

The Budapest-born artist Felix Albrecht Harta (1884–1967) grew up in Vienna. He studied painting in Munich and continued his studies in 1908 in Paris. At the Louvre, he copied Old Masters such as Titian and Tintoretto. At the same time, he discovered the style of painting espoused by Cézanne, Monet and Renoir. This painting, created during this time, reflects the artist’s fascination with French Impressionism: A woman, dressed in dark clothes, is spending the afternoon hours with two children in the shadows of the trees at the Jardin du Luxembourg. Harta’s actual theme is light: While the grounds in the background are bathed in bright sunshine, the foreground reveals a subtle play of light and shadow. In this work, Harta displayed a great deal of freedom in his treatment of forms, light and color, which would be important for his further development towards Expressionism as a contemporary of Egon Schiele’s (1890–1918) in Vienna.

AK, 2021