Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820 – 1950

Between 1899 and 1917, the Moravian Museum of Applied Arts in Brno (originally called the Moravian Museum of Industry, and from 1907 to 1918 the Archduke Rainer Museum of Art and Industry) housed a public school of drawing and painting, which was intended to at least partially compensate for the lack of higher education specialising in fine arts in Brno. From 1901 it operated under the auspices of the Brno Society of Friends of Art, which was closely linked to the museum through shared premises and staff. At the beginning, the sculptor Klemens Purger (1870-1945) was a temporary teacher there. He was later replaced by the Viennese academic painter of Czech origin Anton Hlaváček (1842-1926), who was followed by another Viennese artist, the academic painter from Maribor, Slovenia, and member of the Vienna Secession Anton Nowak (1865-1932).

The museum's exhibition activities soon began to reflect the drawing and painting courses held there. In addition to promotional exhibitions featuring the two teachers, Anton Hlaváček in 1901 and Anton Nowak at the turn of 1907-1908, the museum regularly showcased the works of students. These student exhibitions, which began in 1903, were mostly modest in scale. However, some gained significant public interest, particularly the third exhibition, which displayed the works of students from Nowak's figure drawing class. The sixth exhibition, held to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the school, was especially popular. It attracted so much attention that it had to be extended for several days until November 13, 1910, and even included its own catalogue.

Julius Leisching (1865-1933), the director of the museum and the chairman of the society made sure the illustrated catalogue reflected the successes of the school. In his extensive introductory text, which was also published in the museum journal [Leisching 1910], he summarized what he considered to be an extraordinarily successful ten years of art education in Brno. According to him, the primary purpose of the courses was not to train artists, although some of their graduates did eventually go on to study in Vienna, Munich, Paris, or Rome: "It was never our intention to train artists. We aimed to lead them to recognize their abilities, to facilitate their first awkward steps on the rocky road" [Anonymous author 1911]. Following the ideas of Alfred Lichtwark (1852-1914) and other representatives of the German art education movement, Leisching emphasized the “consistent training of vision” and the cultivation of “true artistic dilettantism.”

The catalogue features 154 items, many of which are works by participants of Nowak’s courses. They are divided into several sections according to subjects: the preparatory course (Vorbereitungskurs), drawing the head according to a live model (Kopfzeichnen nach dem lebenden Modell), drawing the nude (Aktzeichnen), painting the head (Kopfmalen), the landscape course (Landschaftskurs), and an appendix (Anhang). The catalogue lists the names of the students, the vast majority of whom were women from Brno's German-speaking bourgeoisie, but it also provides some information about the relatively high standard of their work. The successful typographical design is also the result of students’ collaboration: the graphic headers in the titles of some sections were created by the course participants. In some of the headers and frontispieces, the students used the traditional black and white cut-out silhouette technique, which saw a renaissance at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, especially in the field of book and magazine illustration. For example, the catalogue includes a reproduction of Elsa Frankl’s silhouette illustration to The Tale of the Man in the Moon by Ludwig Bechstein (1801–1860).

Part of the exhibition – probably the best quality works – is marked for sale in the catalogue. In addition to an amateur artist named Emma Neumann, this group included works by two active members of the Brno Society of Friends of Art, Friederike Dagmar Jerger-Winter, who later led the children's courses, and the already quite experienced artist and teacher Marianne Roller (1866-1944), the younger sister of the Brno-born painter, graphic artist and stage designer Alfred Roller (1864-1935). Marianne Roller also played a major role in the typography of the catalogue.

The sixth exhibition of the Brno Society of Friends of Art can be seen as the culmination of Julius Leisching's long-standing interest in artistic dilettantism, which manifested itself in his Exhibition of Art Lovers (Ausstellung von Liebhaberkünsten) in the spring of 1896, soon after Leisching's arrival in Brno in 1893. Leisching can even be considered the leading promoter of modern dilettantism in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, not only in theory [see Leisching 1900] but also in practice. The school of painting and drawing, directly inspired by the art education movement in Germany and its main protagonist, Alfred Lichtwark, became an integral part of the artistic and art pedagogy world in Moravia [cf. Tomášek 2024]. It was later followed by the Czech School of Applied Arts (Škola uměleckých řemesel, ŠUŘ), which from its foundation in 1924 was also housed in the building of the Brno Museum of Applied Arts for more than two decades.

Petr Tomášek

Works Cited

Anonymous author 1911: Anonymous author, Dílny malířské, in: Museum arcivévody Rainera pro umění a průmysl. Třicátá šestá výroční zpráva, 1910, Brno [1911], pp. 9–10

Leisching 1900: Julius Leisching, Zur Pflege des Dilettantismus in Oesterreich. Vorwort zu der vom Verbande österreichischer Kunstgewerbemuseen veranstalteten Ausstellung von Aquarellen und Handzeichnungen der Wiener Gesellschaft der Kunstfreunde, Brünn 1900

Leisching 1910: [Julius Leisching], Brünner Gesellschaft der Kunstfreunde, Erzherzog Rainer Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Mitteilungen (Mittheilungen des Mährischen Gewerbe-Museums) 28, 1910, no. 11, pp. 173–176

Tomášek 2024: Petr Tomášek, „Zur gründlicheren Schulung des Kunstsinnes“. Malířská a kreslířská škola Brněnské společnosti přátel umění v Moravském uměleckoprůmyslovém muzeu (1899–1917), Bulletin Moravské galerie v Brně 90, 2024, pp. 42–66

Further Reading

 Anonymous author, Šestá studijní výstava Brněnské společnosti přátel umění, in: Museum arcivévody Rainera pro umění a průmysl. Třicátá šestá výroční zpráva, 1910, Brno [1911], p. 13

Bronislava Gabrielová, K dějinám Moravského uměleckoprůmyslového muzea v Brně (strojopis uložený v knihovně Moravské galerie v Brně), Brno 1971

Bronislava Gabrielová, Uměleckoprůmyslové hnutí na rozhraní 19. a 20. století (K historii Moravského uměleckoprůmyslového muzea v Brně), Časopis Matice moravské 107, 1988, no. 1–2, pp. 49–59

Bronislava Gabrielová, K dějinám Moravského uměleckoprůmyslového muzea v Brně, Brno 2003

Bronislava Gabrielová, Moravské umělecko-průmyslové muzeum v letech 1873–1961, in: Alena Křížová (ed.), Moravské uměleckoprůmyslové muzeum v Brně, Brno [2013], pp. 33–84

Anonymous author, Vom Erzherzog Rainer Museum (Brünner Gesellschaft der Kunstfreunde), Erzherzog Rainer Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Mitteilungen (Mittheilungen des Mährischen Gewerbe-Museums) 28, 1910, no. 10, p. 157

Anonymous author, Erzherzog Rainer-Museum, Mährisches Tagblatt 32, 1911, no. 144, 27. 6., p. 4

Brünner Morgenpost, 1910, no. 231, 11. 10., p. [2]

Brünner Morgenpost, 1910, no. 262, 17. 11., p. [2]

Brünner Zeitung, 1910, no. 230, 10. 10., p. 2

Brünner Zeitung, 1910, no. 234, 14. 10., p. 2

Brünner Zeitung, 1910, no. 235, 15. 10., p. 3

Brünner Zeitung, 1910, no. 236, 17. 10., p. 4

Brünner Zeitung, 1910, no. 257, 11. 11., p. 2

Brünner Zeitung, 1910, no. 260, 15. 11., p. 2

Brünner Zeitung, 1910, no. 261, 16. 11., p. 2