Lot Essay
The decoration of the room shows signs of careful deliberation, with matching curtains and upholstery. The bare parquet floor was usual in Austria where rugs and carpets remained a rare and expensive luxury in the early nineteenth century. Double glazing protected the inhabitants against the severity of the winter climate. The date of the watermark on the paper gives some indication of when the drawing was done, suggests that the owner of this deceptively modest room was in the forefront of fashionable taste in furnishing, picture-hanging and flower-arranging. The indoor garden, contrived behind a screen of glass in the window-embrasure, was an innovation more common in Russia and Scandinavia than elsewhere at this date.
The Viennese Jacob Alt was principally known as a landscape painter, but his interior views are highly accomplished, notably the lovely watercolour showing his easel by the studio window, and the view beyond the garden wall, now in the Albertina (see Geraldine Norman, Biedermeier Painting, 1987, p.28-9). His sons Rudolf (one of the most celebrated Viennese watercolourists of the nineteenth century) and Franz, followed in his footsteps. Franz based his style and subject matter closely on that of his father.
The highly esteemed Whatman 'Turkey Mill' artists' paper was made in England by the Hollingworth brothers, lately of Hollingworth & Balston, the partnership which had bought the Whatman business in the late eighteenth century. The manufacture of high quality paper in England had been stimulated by the popularity of watercolours, prints and other paper fancy-work as leisure diversions and female accomplishments, and the setting-up of large establishments selling stationery and drawing supplies which were social centres as much as shops, the most famous of which was Ackermann's Repository of Arts. These events, combined with the blockade during the wars with France, encouraged the development of a native product. English paper manufacturers managed to keep the lead through strict attention to maintaining quality
The Viennese Jacob Alt was principally known as a landscape painter, but his interior views are highly accomplished, notably the lovely watercolour showing his easel by the studio window, and the view beyond the garden wall, now in the Albertina (see Geraldine Norman, Biedermeier Painting, 1987, p.28-9). His sons Rudolf (one of the most celebrated Viennese watercolourists of the nineteenth century) and Franz, followed in his footsteps. Franz based his style and subject matter closely on that of his father.
The highly esteemed Whatman 'Turkey Mill' artists' paper was made in England by the Hollingworth brothers, lately of Hollingworth & Balston, the partnership which had bought the Whatman business in the late eighteenth century. The manufacture of high quality paper in England had been stimulated by the popularity of watercolours, prints and other paper fancy-work as leisure diversions and female accomplishments, and the setting-up of large establishments selling stationery and drawing supplies which were social centres as much as shops, the most famous of which was Ackermann's Repository of Arts. These events, combined with the blockade during the wars with France, encouraged the development of a native product. English paper manufacturers managed to keep the lead through strict attention to maintaining quality