Facebook
Twitter
Gmail
Anton Mozart
Augsburg 1572 - 1625
Extensive Landscape with Rafters.
Oil on Panel, 35 x 45.5 cm
Signed with the monogram lower right: AM
Provenance
Private collection, Germany, same family for at least 3 generations.
Additionnal Information
In comparison to his Augsburg contemporaries, such as Hans Rottenhammer, Johann König or Mathias Kager, the work of Anton Mozart today is still somewhat unknown. During his life time Mozart was quite a celebrated artist. He was praised by Philipp Hainhofer however as being an "outstanding landscape painter" (Rudelius-Kamholz). Hainhofer himself was not only a famous cabinet maker but also a successful art agent, mediating works by Mozart to clients such as the Duke of Pomerania-Stettin and Maximilian I of Bavaria amongst others.
Anton Mozart and fellow artists such as Hans Rottenhammer and König were active in the Augsburg area. Mozart was active as a figure painter but primarily as a landscape painter. He was influenced by Pieter and Jan Brueghel the Younger and Lucas Valckenborch which is apparent in his work. It is evident that Mozart combined these influences with his own developing signature style. His use of 'color-perspective' most clearly reveals the influence of his Flemish contemporaries. Mozart embraces unusually complex compositions. In our painting his vivid us of color differentiates the fore-middle and background of this painting, while the winding river with figures on a raft lead the eye of the viewer into the distance. His work however reveals an original and talented artist.
One of his best-known works is the painterly processing of the Pomeranian cabinet made by the Augsburg cabinetmaker Ulrich Baumgartner, whose handover by Philipp Hainhofer to Duke Philipp II of Pomerania in 1617 he captured in a group painting (today in the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin).
