Hugo Darnaut - Buy or sell works
28 November 1851, Dessau (Germany) - 9 January 1937, Vienna (Austria)
Hugo Darnaut was one of the most important Austrian painters of the ‘Mood Impressionist’ movement. He is best known for his landscape painting.
Hugo Darnaut was the son of Michael Fix, a court actor who went by the name of Darnaut. He spent his youth in Graz and began an apprenticeship as a theatre painter in Vienna. He subsequently studied at the Vienna Academy under Eduard Peithner von Lichtenfels. As part of his scholarship in Düsseldorf, he focussed on the genre of landscape painting under the instruction of Andreas Achenbach, Robert Meyerheim and Johannes Wortmann. Darnaut joined the major Viennese artist association, the Künstlerhaus, in 1887. In the 1890s, he went on to receive further training under the directorship of Gustav Schönleber. From 1893-1912, Hugo Darnaut rented the Schloss Plankenberg, a castle in the Vienna Forest, in which he ran a school for landscape painters until the death of Emil Jakob Schindler. Alongside teaching, he organized numerous major events in Berlin and Venice. In 1900 he collaborated with Erwin Pendl on the painting of an aerial view of Vienna, which was put on show at the Paris World Exhibition. From 1913-1918 Darnaut was the President of the Fine Arts Cooperative in Vienna (Genossenschaft der bildenden Künstler). During his lifetime, Darnaut enjoyed a high social status - such that he was an honorary member of both the Künstlerhaus and the Technical University in Vienna.
Hugo Darnaut is most famous for his landscape paintings. Darnaut followed the Austrian mood impressionist movement. His works employ an array of idyllic motifs, which made them appealing to contemporaries.
His most important works include “In einem Wiener Garten” (In a Viennese garden, 1878), “In voller Blüte“ (In full bloom, 1904) and “Haus am Weiher“ (The pond house, 1933).
Hugo Darnaut’s works regularly perform well at Dorotheum auctions. On 9 November 2021, his painting "Abendstimmung im Spätherbst" sold for €46,000.