Rudolf von Alt

Rudolf von Alt
Garden Room, Palais Rasumofsky on Landstrasse, Vienna
1845
watercolor on paper
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Rudolf von Alt
Salon, Palais Rasumofsky on Landstrasse, Vienna
1836
watercolor on paper
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Rudolf von Alt
Study, Palais Rasumofsky on Landstrasse, Vienna
1842
watercolor on paper
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Rudolf von Alt
Salon, Palais Liechtenstein on Herrengasse, Vienna
1837
watercolor on paper
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Rudolf von Alt
Bedroom, Palais Liechtenstein on Herrengasse, Vienna
1837
watercolor on paper
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Rudolf von Alt
Salon, Liechtenstein Residence on the Jägerzeile, Vienna
1842
watercolor on paper
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Rudolf von Alt
Interior, Liechtenstein Residence on the Jägerzeile, Vienna
1845
watercolor on paper
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Rudolf von Alt
House of Prince Liechtenstein
in Bauernmarkt, Vienna
1846
watercolor on paper
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Rudolf von Alt
Landhaus and Zeughaus, Graz
1885
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Rudolf von Alt
Staircase in the Upper Belvedere, Vienna
1882
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Rudolf von Alt
Gothic Oriel Windows, Klosterneuburg Abbey near Vienna
1841
watercolor on paper
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Rudolf von Alt
Library, Schloss Eisgrub
(formerly in Austria, now in the Czech Republic)
1852
watercolor on paper
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Rudolf von Alt
Small Marble Salon, Schloss Feldsberg
(formerly in Austria, now in the Czech Republic)
1845
watercolor on paper
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Rudolf von Alt
Blue Salon, Schloss Feldsberg
(formerly in Austria, now in the Czech Republic)
1845
watercolor on paper
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Rudolf von Alt
Gun Room, Schloss Feldsberg
(formerly in Austria, now in the Czech Republic)
1845
watercolor on paper
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Rudolf von Alt
Self Portrait
1883
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

We have seen that we enjoy nothing more than the demand made on us to exercise our own "imitative faculty," our imagination, and thus to share in the creative adventure of the artist.  But if this pleasure is to be felt, the transformation must not be so easy as to be automatic.  The further illusionist skill advanced, the more frequently we therefore hear of the difference between a work of art and the mere trick of deception.  In 1823 the great neoclassical critic, Quatremère de Quincy, devoted a whole book to this important distinction.   Our pleasure in illusion, he insisted, rests precisely in the mind's effort in bridging the difference between art and reality.  This very pleasure is destroyed when the illusion is too complete. "When the painter packs a vast expanse into a narrow space, when he leads me across the depths of the infinite on a flat surface, and makes the air circulate . . . I love to abandon myself to his illusions, but I want the frame to be there, I want to know that what I see is actually nothing but a canvas or a simple plane."  

These demands have been echoed ever since in French art criticism.  They formed the basis of the aesthetics of Puvis de Chavannes and his Swiss follower Hodler and were given their most famous formulation in the injunction by Maurice Denis to the Nabis: "Remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, a nude woman, or some anecdote, is essentially a plane surface covered with paint in a certain arrangement."  It is a fact not very difficult to remember for those who are engaged in storing paintings or packing them into trunks.  But is it possible to "see" both the plane surface and the battle horse at the same time?  If we have been right so far, the demand is for the impossible.  To understand the battle horse is for a moment to disregard the plane surface.  We cannot have it both ways.  

– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)