Page 58 - Gallery 19C Nazarenes Catalogues

2 4 PROVENANCE
Joseph Führich Sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 5
CZECH, 1800 –1876 November, 2009, lot 139
Private Collection, California
MARY’S WALK ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS (acquired at the above sale)
after 1841
oil on canvas
21 ¹/₂ by 27 ³/₄ in. (55 by 70.5 cm)

Joseph Führich (1800–1876) was born in the small Bohemian town Douay-Rheims), and had attracted scarce attention in the visual arts prior The acquisition of the canvas for Austria’s Imperial Painting Gallery in
Kratzau (today’s Chrastava in Czechoslovakia Czech). He was the son to Führich’s composition. ² The Austrian painter took the opportunity 1868 added long-lasting visibility to the exiting popularity, and by 1920s
of a local painter and early on showed promising talent considering to rethink the possibilities of biblical narration and, infatuated with the Mary’s Walk across the Mountains was undisputedly Führich’s most famous
that the instruction he received from his father may have been deemed pious atmosphere of his native woods, invented a music-filled journey painting. ⁴ Choosing this work for a full-page illustration of his article
insufficient. Basically, an autodidact in those years he developed a reminiscent of fairy-tale illustrations. Neither the endearing choir of on the artists, Gerard Gietman even felt it worthwhile to note that “two
fascination for the rustic wayside shrines and chapels he grew up with, angels nor the angelic group hovering above have biblical origins, and of his early pictures … viz. ‘Jacob and Rachel’ and “Mary’s Journey over
a youthful passion perceptible throughout his mature work. Later their presence evokes Christian legend instead. This is true for the tender the Mountains’ sold for five times the original price even during his
on, Führich would certainly be more than capable of grand dramatic motif of the roses scattered on the Virgin’s stony path or the figure of lifetime.” ⁵ No surprise then that the artist would soon set out to create
gestures, as in his monumental frescoes Stations of the Cross for the Viennese the devout and devoted wanderer who might or might not be Joseph. a replica of his most cherished, and most lucrative, composition.
church St. John Nepomuk (1844–1846). But he again and again favored
heartfelt, intimate depictions, above all of the Madonna, and was drawn Führich’s anecdotal storytelling evokes a charming lightheartedness ¹ Führich’s autobiography; cited after Machalíková 2014, 548.
to the magic of folk piety. “How the spirit that almost imperceptibly that goes hand in hand with an overall lyricism. It is as if the painter ² See, for a description and analysis of Führich’s first, 1841 version, https://
breathes through all the lands in which the Church reigns also sanctifies wanted to translate the sweet sound of the angels’ voices into line and sammlung.belvedere.at/objects/7894/der-gang-mariens-uber-das-gebirge.
Nature,” he wrote enthusiastically. “Chapels, crosses and simple images color. This is hardly surprising for a painter dedicated to the idea of a ³ Štědronská 2021.
serve [the pilgrim] as a reminder of his celestial home and the mystery harmony of the arts. But Führich went even further. By placing his divine
of our salvation. … I understood this very early on and to this day I choir firmly on the ground, he depicts celestial music no longer as an ⁴ Kletzl 1893, 22.
remember vividly the impression they made upon me when on beautiful unattainable vision but a concrete model for its earthly counterpart. ⁵ Gietmann 1913, 312.
fresh mornings I walked with my father through the countryside.” ¹ Losing the nimbus of the supernatural, the angels’ song gains presence
In one of his most famous paintings, Mary’s Walk Across the Mountains in the here and now, an idea further inscribed by the written fixation of
(1841), he would materialize this intimate memory for all to share. the song’s text, “Vox dilecti mei.” The score probably refers to a motet
by the late Renaissance composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
The desire to visualize his personal, almost autobiographical experience (1525- 1594), whose rediscovery was part and parcel of the Nazarene
might explain the unexpected choice of subject matter, the moment when resurrection. ³ If the reference to an early modern setting of the Song
Mary, pregnant with Jesus, leaves Nazareth to visit her cousin, Elizabeth, of Songs to music is unexpected, it represents a rather ambitious, and
on the other side of the mountains. In contrast to the Annunciation or the perhaps no less surprising, intervention in a core discourse of modernist
Visitation, this particular passage, when Mary “went into the hill country” art, the push for a musicalization of the visual arts. In this sense, Mary
and “with haste into a city of Juda” is only mentioned by Luke (Luke 1:39; is not merely on her way to visit her cousin, but Kandinsky as well.

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