Prater Scene, 1910 - 1915

The landscape of the Vienna Prater had mesmerized artists from the late 18th century and experienced its first heyday as a pictorial subject in Biedermeier painting. Tina Blau-Lang (1845–1916), too, was drawn time and again to the Prater from her student days. The large-scale painting Prater Scene, which was created around 1910–15, shows two large trees cut off by the upper edge of the canvas, affording a view of the racing stables. Though Blau-Lang never adopted Secessionism, this late work does betray influences of the movement in her choice of a narrow image detail, in her emphasis on the lineament of the trees and in the planar perception of space. Rather than rendering the motif as an experience of nature, Blau-Lang placed particular importance on a consolidated composition reinforced by the patchy manner of painting tending towards closed planes.

AGW, 2021