Albin Egger-Lienz

(Austrian, 1868–1926)

Die Heilige Familie

, 1892

oil on canvas

signed A. Egger and dated (lower left); signed and inscribed (verso)

25 x 30 1/2 inches.

This lot is located in Chicago.

Provenance:

The Artist, sold by 1894

John Richards Maddox (1922-1999), Hartford City, Indiana

By descent to James Maddox (1924-2016), brother of the above, New Castle, Indiana

By descent to Jane Maddox (1926-2021), wife of the above

Acquired from the above by the present owners

Exhibited:

Munich, Glaspalast, June 1, 1892, no. 493

Literature:

Curt H. Weigelt, Albin Egger-Lienz, Berlin, 1914, p. 53

Giorgio Nicodemi, Albino Egger-Lienz, Brescia, 1925, p. 32

Josef Soyka, A. Egger Lienz. Leben und Werk, Vienna, 1925, p. 61

Heinrich Hammer, Albin Egger-Lienz, Innsbruck/Vienna/Munich, 1930, p. 260, no. 35

Wilfried Kirschl, Albin Egger Lienz, 1868-1926 : das Gesamtwerk, Vienna, 1996, vol. 2, p. 508, no. M70, illus.

Lot note:

The painter Albin Egger-Lienz would become one of the forerunners of Austrian Expressionism of the early twentieth century, with its emphasis on monumental, stylized forms along with bold outlines and blocks of color. This very early work, Die Heilige Familie (The Holy Family) is painted in a dramatically different style than that which Egger-Lienz would later be known, but nevertheless exemplifies artistic themes that would remain important to him throughout his life: the glorification of the peasant class and moments of religiosity underscored with strong allusions to the existing western canon.

Painted when the artist was just 24 years old, while still attending the Munich Academy of Art, Die Heilige Familie depicts a sparse interior scene of three people: a baby lovingly held by an elderly man looked on by a younger woman, who leans over a chair so as to better watch the child as he plays with the man’s beard. A cabinet of tools behind the trio and a few pieces of furniture, including a small bassinet in the right foreground, make up the otherwise plain, dimly lit space.

These types of early rustic scenes were in part influenced by Egger-Lienz’s professor, mentor, and fellow Tyrolean Franz Defregger, known for his history paintings and genre scenes. A shared local pride of the western Austrian region of Tyrol would lead Egger-Lienz to add the hyphenated “Lienz” to his family name of Egger in 1891, after the town of Lienz, from which he was born only a few kilometers outside. This stylization of his name was still not widely used by him by the time Die Heilige Familie was painted, and the work is still signed “A. Egger”.

This genre scene could be of any humble family if not for the faint halo around the baby’s head, which elevates the figures in the baby’s identification as the Christ Child and then, in line with historical western depictions of the Holy Family, the man and woman as St. Joseph and Mary, respectively. These illuminated figures in this otherwise dark scene emphasize the celebration of the sacred through the depiction of the mundane: a characteristic of Egger-Lienz’s early work while also a prescient theme in later works like his masterpiece Pietà of 1926 (Leopold Museum, Vienna) in which he placed a dead, Christ-like figure amid the context of the local peasantry.

Die Heilige Familie, in addition to being a particularly good example of Egger-Lienz’s work, was also one of his early successes: shown at the Munich Glaspalast in June 1892, he was awarded a small silver medal for the work from the Munich Academy. Egger-Lienz would continue with a similar painting style of local people engaging in daily life, often with a Catholic undertone, while he lived in Munich. For example, he submitted Karfreitag (Holy Friday) (Belvedere, Vienna) to the Academy the following year, which won another silver medal. The artist’s style gradually began to shift from this early naturalism to his eventually more-recognized style after he moved back to his native Austria in 1899, becoming more expressive and monumental following exposure to artists like Jean-François Millet and Ferdinand Hodler. But this early and tenderly painted work remains an important example of the foundation of Egger-Lienz’s artistic identity and his preoccupation with the ideal of the rustic class and its ability to exemplify the divine.