A particularly elitist pleasure is to collect art. Art collectors prove themselves before the world: They display an all-round education and exquisite taste, as well as wealth and social status. Art forms that had previously been held in lesser regard, the landscape, genre and still life, are appreciated by collectors in the late Baroque period. Small-format paintings fill castles and patricians’ houses where painting cabinets are set up as galleries and proudly displayed. Like the salons of the time they are places for conversing about art and centres of a new bourgeois culture of collecting.
The connoisseur especially appreciates the rural idyll, which gently romanticises the mostly hard life of the peasants. In Vienna, it is mainly Franz de Paula Ferg whose pictures precisely match the taste of the times. Above all, the highest level of technical precision is called for. The model is the fijnschilder art of Dutch masters, which casts a shimmering glow in the candlelight.
Alte Galerie, Schloss Eggenberg
Eggenberger Allee 90
8020 Graz, Österreich
T +43-316/8017-9560
altegalerie@museum-joanneum.at
Opening Hours
1 April to 30 October 2022
Tue-Sun, public holidays 10am-6pm
1 November to 18 December 2022 only with guided tour by prior appointment
Opening Hours Library
Tues–Fri 10am–12pm and afternoons by appointment only
Open in addition:
15th August 2022
1st November 2022 (
with guided tour
)8th December 2022 (
with guided tour
)