Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820 – 1950

Four years after the first exhibition of the Franzensmuseum Art Association (Kunstverein für Franzensmuseum), the secretary of the Moravian-Silesian Economic Society (K. k. mähr.-schles. Gesellschaft zur Beförderung des Ackerbaues, der Natur- und Landeskunde), Franz Moriz Xaver Braumüller (1780-1860) organized a second, similarly designed exhibition in 1842, presenting the museum’s new acquisitions together with artworks from the collections of local private owners. The show was centered around the four newly acquired paintings by Allaert van Everdingen, Herman Saftleven, David Teniers Jr., and Salvator Rosa from the famous Viennese private collection of Baron Johann Baptist Puthon (1776-1839), who died in 1839. The purchase, made despite the limited success of the Kunstverein in raising the necessary funds, was brokered by Puthon’s son-in-law, Freiherr Vojtěch Widmann (1804-1888), who offered the financially strapped Kunstverein a discount, a two-year repayment period, and donated to the museum a small still life by the esteemed contemporary Viennese painter Franz Xaver Petter from his estate.  

The exhibition, this time accompanied by a printed catalogue in the form of a sheet with a list of exhibited works, was again held at the Bishop’s Court of the Franzensmuseum in Brno. It was open to the public on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 12 noon and from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., and those interested could pick up tickets free of charge at the apartment of the museum’s curator, Albin Heinrich (1785-1864). In addition to newly acquired paintings from the museum’s collections, the exhibition included Peter Paul Rubens’s Head of Medusa, then attributed to Frans Snijders and Abraham van Diepenbeeck, to which Braumüller had previously devoted a separate article in the magazine Moravia [Braumüller 1838]. Once again, most of the 34 exhibited works came from the collections of the Brno collectors and art enthusiasts Josef Ethler (1796-1880), Ernst Hawlik (1776-1846), Ernst Rincolini (1785-1867), Franz Xaver Rectořík (1793-1851), and Eduard Heintz (1807-1882). Almost half of the works, namely 15 paintings, were loaned by the publicist and later secretary of the Economic Society Josef Karl Lauer (1788-1869), while the only aristocratic supporter of the exhibition, Count Emanuel Dubský (1806-1881), lent two paintings. Once again, the works of old masters prevailed over those of contemporary artists. The Brno art scene was represented by its most prominent members at the time, the portraitist Jan Gebhardt and the landscape painter František Richter. 

Although an anonymous reviewer, undoubtedly someone close to the organizers of the exhibition, expressed the hope in the magazine Moravia that the “good and pure will” of this enterprise would “awaken that sense of art which so commendably distinguished the inhabitants of Brno in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” [anonymous author 1842, p. 266], it turned out that the Moravian metropolis was not ready to host regular exhibitions. The Franzensmuseum Art Association had a low membership fee (1 gulden per year), which made it widely accessible to the public. However, it did not offer any benefits, such as a raffle in which members could win a work of art or at least a graphic premium associated with membership, as was common in art associations elsewhere in Europe, including Prague’s Krasoumná jednota (Fine Arts Association). Unable to attract members, it was not profitable. In 1842, shortly after the second and last exhibition, the Franzensmuseum Art Association ceased its activities, probably because of the debt incurred in purchasing the paintings from the Puthon collection. Nevertheless, it left an indelible mark on the cultural consciousness of the Brno public – several decades later, when the Mährischer Kunstverein, a modern art association, began its exhibition activities in 1882, it consciously built on the two pioneering shows of 1838 and 1842 [anonymous author 1882].

Petr Tomášek

Works Cited

Anonymous author 1842: Anonymous author, Die Gemälde-Ausstellung im Franzens-Museum zu Brünn, Moravia V, 1842, no. 66, 18. 8., pp. 265–266

Anonymous author 1882: Anonymous author, Die Eröffnung der Gemälde-Ausstellung, Mährisch-schlesischer Correspondent XXII, 1882, no. 211, 15. 9., p. 4

Braumüller 1838: X. B. [Franz Moriz Xaver Braumüller], Ueber ein Gemälde im Franzens-Museum, das Medusenhaupt vorstellend, Moravia I, 1838–1839, no. 86, 24. 12., p. 344

Further Reading

 Christian d´Elvert, Der alte und der neue mähr. Kunstverein, Notizen-Blatt der historisch-statistischen Section der kais. königl. mährisch-schlesischen Gesellschaft zur Beförderung des Ackerbaues, der Natur- und Landeskunde, 1883, no. 5, pp. 33–39

Josef Hájek, Dějiny obrazové sbírky Františkova muzea v letech 1817–1841 (thesis), MU Brno 1997

Lubomír Slavíček, Brněnská výstava starých mistrů z roku 1925 a soukromé sběratelství v Brně 1918–1939, Bulletin Moravské galerie v Brně LV, 1999, pp. 105–118

Lubomír Slavíček, „Sobě, umění, přátelům“. Kapitoly z dějin sběratelství v Čechách a na Moravě 1650–1939, Brno 2007 

Lubomír Slavíček, „... hier in Brünn das Interesse für die Kunst anzuregen“. Brněnské umělecké výstavy v letech 1851 až 1878, Bulletin Moravské galerie v Brně LXXV, 2017, pp. 34–55

Maximilian Steif, Alte Meister aus Mährischem Privatbesitz. Ausstellung alter Meister im Künstlerhaus Brünn 1925 (exh. cat.), Wien 1925

Petr Tomášek, Tak trochu nesamozřejmá galerie. Moravská obrazárna na cestě k samostatnosti, Bulletin Moravské galerie v Brně LXVII, 2011, pp. 168–176

Petr Tomášek (ed.), Naše galerie! Moravská zemská obrazárna (1817–1961), Brno 2022

Archival Sources

Moravský zemský archiv, fonds G 82 – Hospodářská společnost [Economic Society], file 240 (Umělecký spolek Františkova muzea [Franzensmuseum Art Association])

Joseph Carl Lauer, Franzensmuseum, in: Landwirschaftskalender auf das Schaltjahr 1844, Brünn [1843], p. 11