River landscape
Thuringia or Saxony, 18th C.
Glass panel painted on reverse in eglomisé technique with gold and silver leaf and opaque and transparent pigments. A retouched area in the upper left of the sky. Waxed softwood frame, H 25.4, W 31.4 cm.
Edith Mannoni published two similar reverse glass paintings, one of which was inscribed on the reverse "Weinberger G. Hayn 1775". Ryser suggests that the inscription may be referring to the town of Hayn between Erfurt and Weimar. A perpetual calendar in the Steiner Collection within the Kunstsammlungen Augsburg inscribed "Jw.Fr. Weinberger Glasergesell von Großenhayn in Sachsen 1778" documents that the "G" in the inscription was not a shortening of Weinberger's first name, but instead referred to the town of Großenhain in the region of Meissen in Saxony. The artist was undoubtedly a master of his art and excelled in all the techniques of reverse glass painting.
The model upon which this work was based has not yet been identified, but it may have been a Dutch engraving by a contemporary of Jan van de Velde II.
Literature
Illus. in Steiner, Landschaft in der Hinterglasmalerei des 18. Jahrhunderts, Berlin-Munich 2013, illus. 32.
Illus. in Steiner, Goldglanz und Silberpracht – Hinterglasmalerei aus vier Jahrhunderten, Berlin-Munich 2015, no. 70.
Cf. cat. Glas Glanz Farbe. Vielfalt barocker Hinterglaskunst im Europa des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, Murnau 1997, no. X 2.2. a and b.
Cf. Mannoni, Fixés et peintures sous verre, Paris, undated, p. 29.
Exhibitions
1997 Schloßmuseum Murnau.
2013 Oberammergau Museum.
2015 Schaezlerpalais der Kunstsammlungen und Museen Augsburg.
2020 - 2021 "Hinter Glas gemalt. Geheimnisse einer Technik", Museum Penzberg Sammlung Campendonk.