Biedermeier and Vormärz

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Napoleon brought fear and terror to Europe. After his defeat at Waterloo, his victorious opponents set about rebuilding Europe at the Congress of Vienna; and in Austria, pre-revolutionary conditions were re-established under the iron heel of Prince Metternich. During this period, known as Vormärz, the masses lived in poverty, and even middle-class citizens enjoyed very few freedoms. Dancing became an `opiate of the people;' Strauss and other composers of the waltz competed for fame, and ballet and theater - albeit a theater much subject to censorship - were typical Viennese entertainments. It was also a period of technical innovation, with the introduction of the steamship and steam railway, sewing machines, gas lighting, and mass-production of various kinds. But the `Biedermeier person' prided himself on his artistic taste, and preferred craftsmen's work to machine-made items. Furniture was simple and functional. Tableware and glassware, adorned with transparent miniature paintings of landscape motifs, portraits, flowers and animals, became a Viennese speciality; porcelain flourished, as did fashion, which became simpler and free of earlier pretentiousness. In architecture, the influence of Neo-classicism was still in evidence, but domestic architecture for the middle classes became simple and modest. In painting it became the custom to copy nature. Biedermeier landscape painting, though not without atmosphere or feeling, is laboriously detailed and precise. In portraiture, bourgeois realism prevailed, enhanced by subtly observed psychological detail. Cosy idylls of family life were popular, for the bourgeois parlour, seen as a place of refuge from rough reality, was at the very heart of the Biedermeier ethos. But the most typical Biedermeier painting was the genre picture. In 1848 another revolution took place in Paris, and on March 13, the people of Vienna also rose. They were promised a constitution, and the lifting of censorship. Metternich, after more than thirty years in power, resigned and fled. The Biedermeier age was gone for ever.

© 1998-2008 The Roland Collection & Pira Intl.