Hugo Charlemont

1850 Jamnitz/Moravia – 1939 Vienna

 

 

At first designed for a career in the civil service, Hugo Charlemont joined the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna as a student of landscape painter Eduard Peithner von Lichtenfels. Afterwards, he studied in Holland and further improved his skills under his brother Eduard Charlemont and Hans Makart in Vienna. Hugo Charlemont painted still lifes, landscapes, genre paintings and portraits in oil, including the dry oil pen by Raffaelli, watercolours and gouache. Of his numerous paintings standing out through appealing colours and a thorough, but not too detailed depiction, the following shall be mentioned: his still lifes of flowers and fruit, often with a figurative staffage, his interiors and workshops with a brilliant depiction of cleverly arranged everyday tools, as in a series on the Austrian big industries, animal paintings, such as colourful poultry in the style of Hondekoeter and Weenix, soft landscapes with birches and colourful paintings of the Brionian Islands famous for their lush southern vegetation. About 70 pieces of the latter were shown in a special exhibition in 1908. Among Charlemont’s portraits is one of Emperor Franz Joseph as King of Bohemia and one of Queen Natalie of Serbia. Works by the artist are in museums in Vienna (Natural History Museum Vienna, Court Museum and Moderne Galerie), Budapest, Prague, Chicago, in the possessions of the Emperor and of the Imperial Court Theater (Hofburgtheater) where he created the ceiling painting for the buffet hall (“Gaben und Früchte der Erde“). Charlemont’s paintings are often part of larger exhibitions in Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Düsseldorf, Florence and other cities.