The national authorities for the protection of the cultural heritage have filed  a procedure for the protection of this lot and for this reason the property is unlikely to receive an export license from Austria.  

(Atzgersdorf 1832–1889 Vienna)
Portrait of Architect Wilhelm Bücher, in the Background the Admont Collegiate Church; Portrait of His Wife Therese Bücher, both signed
A. Romako, oil on canvas, each 76 x 59 cm, framed, (2)

Provenance:
Private Collection Austria.

Exhibited:
Catalogue of the exhibition, Anton Romako, Vienna 1950, nos. 44 and 45.

Catalogued and illustrated in:
Fritz Novotny. Der Maler Anton Romako 1832–1889, Vienna/Munich 1954,
CR 185, pl. 15; pp. 30f., 35, 49, 56f., 62, 70;
Cornelia Reiter: Anton Romako. Pionier und Außenseiter der Malerei des
19. Jahrhunderts. Monografie und Werkverzeichnis, Vienna 2010, pp. 182–183, nos. 315, 316.

Born in Wiesbaden and trained in southern Germany, the architect
Wilhelm Bücher worked in Austria from 1863 onwards. His first major commission, which helped him to achieve his breakthrough, was the reconstruction of the collegiate church of the Benedictine monastery of Admont, which had been devastated by fire in 1865. In only three years, from 1866 to 1869, Bücher succeeded in planning and executing this first large church building in the neo-Gothic style in Austria. In doing so, he combined the “historical” language of form with technical innovation, he used prefabricated, moulded cement blocks on a large scale, which accelerated the reconstruction dramatically and reduced costs. The Admont Collegiate Church was a great success and established Bücher as an architect. In the following year, 1870, Bücher was awarded the Golden Cross of Merit with Crown (Österreichische Zeitung für Verwaltung, 18 August 1870) by Emperor Franz Josef. Further commissions in Graz followed. Bücher became head of the building department of the governor’s office in Graz and designed a project for the restoration of Graz Cathedral, but failed due to lack of funds. Conversely, he was able to complete the main customs office in Graz and the Palais Apfaltrern (1873-74).

When the Admont Collegiate Church was completed, Bücher and his wife were portrayed by Anton Romako. We see the architect at his peak after a breakthrough moment in his career. According to Fritz Novotny, however, the portrait of Wilhelm Bücher also represents the first highlight in the artist’s art of portraiture, as he describes in vivid detail in his 1954 monograph on Romako. In the chapter “The liberation of form. The first half of the 70s,” he emphasises Romako’s developing colouristic abilities and a new symbiosis of figures and background. The portrait of the architect is “(...) a splendidly painted head, whose blossoming colours stand out against the black mass of his coat in a marked contrast. But everything is of equal intensity, and this equivalence means something special, something characteristic of Romako. On the left, the tower façade of the neo-Gothic church of Admont in the magic of a cheerful vision. On the right, the similarly sketched column. In between, a delicately golden-yellow shining cloudy sky. From all these things, and also from the sparkle of the clock chain, festivity and joie de vivre after the completion of the building radiate. Thus, the emotional content of this rich image goes far beyond what similar backgrounds mean in the conventional portrait painting of the time. This generous space is formed with the purely painterly means of a tonal colour balance. Everything along the outline of the figure is tied to the background space, the pale bluish glow to the grey and brown tones of the landscape, a melting transition to the warm colour of the beard and the blue-grey of the distant forest mountain, and cloudy brightness and half-tones on the right behind the head and shoulder” (pp. 30-31).