(Salzburg 1840–1884 Vienna)
Night and Morning, ceiling painting in four parts, oil on paper on canvas, each 174 x 174 cm, unframed

Provenance:
Estate sale, Hans Makart, H. O. Miethke, Vienna, 26 March 1885, lot 5;
Weidmann Collection, Vienna;
Collection of Carl Reininghaus (1857-1929), Graz since 1894;
his heirs;
Sold via the Neue Galerie, Vienna and the art gallery Elisabeth Adelsberger, Wiesbaden to the Führermuseum Linz on 9.5.1943, Linz-no. 3157 I-IV;
Recovered from the Altaussee salt mine;
Central Collecting Point, Munich since 19.10.1945, Mü-no. 9133,10668,10709,10669;
Restituted to the Austrian Republic, 1958;
Austrian Federal Monuments Office, Vienna, transfer to the
Österreichische Galerie (inventory no. 5641 a-d);
Exchanged with the Viennese art dealer Ferdinand Spany for works by Josef Abel and Hans Canon in 1964;
Purchased by the present owner in 1964.

Exhibited:
Hans Makart. Ein Künstler regiert die Stadt, Wien Museum, 9 June – 16 October 2011, cat. no. 1.4.

Catalogued and illustrated in:
Carl von Lützow, Hans Makart. Ein Beitrag zu seiner Charakteristik, Sonderabdruck aus der Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, in: Hugo Ottomar Miethke (ed.): Hans Makart, Vienna 1887, p. 13;
Emil Pirchan, Hans Makart, Vienna 1954, ill. 28, 29;
Gerbert Frodl, Hans Makart. Monographie und Werkverzeichnis, Salzburg 1974,
p. 306, cat. no. 112/1–4, pl. 25;
Gerbert Frodl, Hans Makart. Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde, Vienna 2013, p. 102, no. 140.

Hans Makart’s activity in Vienna began not with a commissioned work, but with the design of his immediate surroundings. It is telling of the young painter’s reputation as an artistic sensation that he was immediately able to combine his appointment to Vienna with demands for a studio and a flat. Both were made available to him in Gußhausstraße in Vienna’s 4th district and he was able to begin immediately with the prestigious decoration. He planned “Night and Morning” as a four-part ceiling for his dining room and executed the four canvases right away in 1869. The personifications of Night and Morning are highly reminiscent of the “Modern Amoretti”. These are putti-like children’s figures, the “night” wrapped in a black veil and floating along accompanied by owls, the “morning” depicted by two children greeting each other with a good-morning kiss. For the overall composition, Makart chose the Baroque system of a deep view into the upper storey of a fictitious high hall for the ceiling. Its windows offer a view of a blue sky, while the architecture itself is stripped of its austerity by all manner of rich and splendid still lifes, flowers and fruits. These still lifes and the blue shining through the windows dictate the colourfulness of the composition. “Night and Morning” is the first in a series of large, prestigious ceiling paintings created by Hans Makart during his time in Vienna (which ended abruptly with his early death in 1884). In terms of painting, this ceiling is the most subtle in its details, and the most precious in its colourfulness.

Dr. Gerbert Frodl