The painting ... a film ... and correcting an injustice ...... Adele Bloch-Bauer ...and the Woman in Gold

 Now like many people much of what I know about art and literature has come about by a mix of accident and curiosity.

And so it is with the painting of  Adele Bloch Bauer, painted by Gustav Klimt in 1907.

"Adele Bloch-Bauer was a wealthy society woman, hostess of a renowned Viennese salon, art patron, and philanthropist. Her famous portraits by Klimt are historical witnesses to the significance of Jewish patronage during the Golden Era of fin-de-siècle Vienna. Among the famous guests in her salon were composer Gustav Mahler, journalist Berta Zuckerkandl, author Stefan Zweig, and socialist Julius Tandler. She supported socialist causes."*

She died in 1925, and during the Nazi occupation of Austria, her family’s collection of art was stolen, by the German Government.

And in 2015 the story of the painting and the attempt by the niece of Adele Bloch-Bauer to have the art work returned to its rightful heirs was the subject of the film, Woman in Gold, which is where I come in, because having seen the film on a wet Sunday afternoon, I went looking for more.

Like all fictional accounts, the film toyed with the events and in particular underplayed the role of Hubertus Czernin the Austrian journalist and publisher who found the historical documents which allowed the family to the begin the process of reclaiming the collection.

But the film and two earlier documentaries highlighted the part played "by Jewish patrons in shaping Viennese modernism and …. the historical injustice in handling their restitution claims.”*

And led me to explore other such claims for restitution, as well as discovering the work of Gustav Klimt.

Not bad for a wet Sunday afternoon.  

Never being one to lift other people’s research, the full account of Adele Bloch-Bauer, and the attempts by her niece, Maria Altmann, and the lawyer,  E. Randol Schoenberg can be read by following the link.

Location, Austria, and California

Picture; Adele Bloch-Bauer, Gustav Klimt in 1907

* Adele Bloch-Bauer, The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/bloch-bauer-adele

A little bit of New York in Vienna .......... travelling the Amerikaner

I always like those little messy stories which are not what you expect and take you off in all sorts of directions.

The Amerikaer in Vienna, 2006

This is Peter’s painting of a tram in Vienna which he told me came from New York.

Now there is nothing odd about transport networks buying foreign rolling stock.

All around the world tram and railway companies along with bus operators regularly buy both new and second hand.

What makes this one just a little different is the history behind it.

There have been trams in Vienna since 1865 and today it is the fifth largest tram network in the world with 175.9 kilometres, and 1,071 stations.*

And for those who revel in tram facts, in 2013, 293 million passengers travelled on Vienna’s 525 tramcars.

The service reached its peak during the interwar years but like so many European cities it was much knocked about during the Second World War.

In the case of Vienna most of its 4000 trams had been badly damaged with 400 of them beyond repair.

At which point the Amerikaner enters the story, because these were the trams Vienna acquired in 1948 under the Marshall Plan.**

There were 41 of them, shipped over from New York, and they became known as the Amerikaner.  They were slightly wider than the Austrian ones, had air operated doors, automatic retractable ramps and seat backs which could be changed so that passengers always faced forwards.  At which point Ron will point out that our old Corporation trams had the same facility.

What makes the Amerikaner just that bit more special is that New York abandoned its trams in the 1950s, leaving only its overhead Roosevelt Island Tramway.

So unusual, I used it again

That said there were plans to reintroduce trams to New York a year ago and I must check out whether that has happened.***

So not only was Peter’s tram journey a tad unusual he was riding history.

No wonder he was moved to paint the picture.



Location; Vienna, with an option on New York

Painting; the Amerikaner  © Peter Topping, 2008

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook: Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

*Trams in Vienna, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Vienna

**The Marshall Plan, or the European Recovery Program, was a bold American initiative to assist Western Europe rebuild it economies with $13 billion.

*** New York tram stages an unlikely comeback, Robert Wright, Financial Times, New York, February 4, 2016,  https://www.ft.com/content/133c1c58-cb5c-11e5-a8ef-ea66e967dd44