Hans Makart

Austrian

9 paintings in our database

Makart was the dominant figure of Viennese cultural life in the 1870s and early 1880s and the most influential Austrian painter of the 19th century.

Biography

Hans Makart was born on May 28, 1840, in Salzburg. He studied in Munich under Karl von Piloty and spent time in Antwerp studying Rubens. In 1869 Emperor Franz Joseph I invited him to settle in Vienna, where he was provided with a large studio that became one of the social centers of the Austrian capital. Makart dominated Viennese cultural life for a decade and a half, his theatrical canvases, studio parties, and public pageants making him the unofficial art director of the Ringstrasse era.

Makart's paintings are characterized by their overwhelming scale, sumptuous color — rich crimsons, golds, and jewel tones — and densely populated compositions. Der Einzug Karls V. in Antwerpen (1878), Die fünf Sinne (1872–79), and his many female figure subjects draw on Rubens, Titian, and Veronese, amplified to grandiose proportions. His portrait subjects — Bertha von Piloty (1872), Lili Lauser (1877) — share the same opulent visual temperature.

Makart died in Vienna on October 3, 1884, at only forty-four, from syphilis. His influence on Klimt and the Vienna Secession was direct and acknowledged.

Artistic Style

Makart's style is a highly individual synthesis of Rubens's colorism and compositional energy with 19th-century academic technique applied at a monumental, often overwhelming scale. His canvases are filled with warm flesh tones, deep crimson draperies, cascading flowers and foliage — a visual luxuriance that contemporaries found either magnificent or suffocating. His female figures are sensually rendered with great technical skill.

Die Niljagd (1876), Bacchusfest (1873), and the grand historical subject Einzug Karls V. show different facets of his ability to orchestrate complex, densely populated compositions at large scale.

Historical Significance

Makart was the dominant figure of Viennese cultural life in the 1870s and early 1880s and the most influential Austrian painter of the 19th century. His studio, his pageants, and his paintings shaped Viennese taste during the Ringstrasse era. His influence on the young Klimt was decisive — Klimt absorbed Makart's richness of surface and his eroticized female figures before developing his own more radical Symbolist style. Makart is the essential precursor of Viennese fin-de-siècle art.

Things You Might Not Know

•Makart was the most celebrated and fashionable artist in the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the 1870s — his studio in Vienna was a public attraction where society figures came simply to be seen in the presence of greatness.
•He designed the costumes and decorations for the massive Ringstrasse procession celebrating the silver wedding anniversary of Emperor Franz Joseph and Empress Elisabeth in 1879 — an event that drew hundreds of thousands of spectators.
•Makart's studio style — rich, dark wood paneling, tropical plants, animal skins, and oriental carpets — became the defining aesthetic of middle-class Viennese interiors in the 1870s.
•His fame was so great that the term 'Makart-Stil' entered German to describe the opulent, cluttered decorative aesthetic of the era.
•He died at 44 from syphilis, at the absolute height of his fame, and his death was treated in Vienna as a national catastrophe.
•Gustav Klimt was his most important successor and began his career completing some of the decorative projects Makart left unfinished.

Influences & Legacy

Shaped By

Peter Paul Rubens — Makart was obsessed with Rubens and spent years in Italy and Belgium studying his work; the Flemish master's sensuous, large-scale figure painting was the direct model for Makart's own monumental works.
Veronese and Titian — the Venetian Renaissance tradition of rich color and opulent pageant scenes was equally central to Makart's visual world.
Karl von Piloty — his Munich teacher gave Makart the technical foundation for large-scale dramatic history painting.

Went On to Influence

Gustav Klimt — Klimt's early decorative style developed directly in dialogue with Makart, and he completed several of Makart's unfinished works before developing his own independent manner.
Vienna Secession — the entire Secession generation defined itself partly in reaction to Makart's style, but his emphasis on total aesthetic environment and the decoration of life anticipated Secession ideals.
Austro-Hungarian decorative arts — Makart's influence on interior design and decorative taste permeated Viennese bourgeois culture for a generation.