Description
PROPERTY FROM A EUROPEAN NOBLE FAMILY FRANZ XAVER MESSERSCHMIDT (1736-1783) AUSTRIAN, 1770-1783 AN IMPORTANT ALABASTER BUST OF THE SO-CALLED "RESCUED FROM DROWNING
patinated alabaster carved with eyes tightly shut and mouth closed, neck arched, the head with mop-like wig, on later white marble socle (2)
PROVENANCE
Johann Adam Messerschmidt, brother of the sculptor
Mr Stranz before 1793
By descent since purchased in the 19th century
EXHIBITED
Merkwuerdige Lebensgeschichte des Franz Xaver Messerschmidt K.K.Oeffentliche Lehrer des Bildhauerkunst, Vienna 1793
LITERATURE AND REFERENCES
E.Kris, Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art, New York, first published 1952, 1974 reprint, illustrated fig.33
M.Pötzl-Malikova, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, Vienna and Munich, 1982, pp.255-256
M.Krapf (ed), Franz Xaver Messerschmidt 1736-1783, exh.cat. Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, 2002, plaster cast, p.168
CATALOGUE NOTE
SUMMARY
Of the 49 Character Heads exhibited in Vienna in 1793 only 16 were sculpted in alabaster. The present head - no. 29 in the series, the so-called Rescued from Drowning, Aus dem Wasser Geretteter - is the only original alabaster known to be located outside of Austria. Of the other alabasters from the 1793 exhibition: 2 are missing, 10 are in the Österreichische Galerie, Vienna, 1 is in the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien and 2 formerly in the Sitte Collection in Vienna are believed to be in anonymous private collections in Austria. This is the first time an alabaster head by Messerschmidt has ever come to auction since the dispersal of the set of 49 heads at the end of the 19th century.
LIFE AND WORK OF MESSERSCHMIDT
Born near Ulm in Swabia in 1736, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt was descended on his mother's side from a long line of Bavarian sculptors. He was initially trained by his uncle Johann Baptist Straub, sculptor to the court in Munich. Following his apprenticeship in Munich, Messerschmidt moved to Vienna in 1755, where he attended the Imperial Academy of Arts. After an appointment to the Imperial Arsenal, initially to chisel the decorative elements on canons, he produced his first independent works for the Arsenal State Rooms: the gilt bronze bust of the Empress Maria Theresa and her consort Francis I of Lorraine and the reliefs of their son, later the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II, and his wife Maria Isabella of Parma. Further portrait, religious and allegorical sculpture followed, all in the Baroque taste. Following a journey to Rome in 1765, however, all was to change. By 1769 Messerschmidt produced his first neo-classical portrait, the lead bust of the art critic Franz von Scheyb (Historisches Museum, Vienna), which is now considered to be the first neo-classical portrait sculpture in Austria. Messerschmidt submitted the von Scheyb bust as his admission piece to the Imperial Academy and it marks the beginning of the new direction of his oeuvre. It was during these years that Messerschmidt gained greater recognition, soon becoming Deputy of Sculpture at the Academy.
From 1765, Messerschmidt lived in the home of the physician and spiritual healer Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), from whom we get the word mesmerism. Mesmer was involved in hypnotic cures together with the application of magnets in order to relieve patients of their disorders, in many cases psychologically induced. Whether quack or "wonder healer", Mesmer and his patients undoubtedly triggered a new departure in the sculptor's work. Krapf, in the recent Vienna exhibition catalogue, stresses the fact that Messerschmidt was "a realist whose conception of truth and in the spirit of the Enlightenment prompted him to abandon his role as a conformist artist and seek self enquiry".
THE BELOVED HEADS: No. 29 RESCUED FROM DROWNING
Messerschmidt started work in 1770 on the series of the "Character Heads" which at the time of his death in 1783 numbered 69. 49 of these were first exhibited in Vienna in 1793 accompanied by an itemized pamphlet, entitled Charakterköpfe, together with the titles by which each head is known today. The earliest heads were conventional representations in the Neo-classical style. The impetus for focusing all his energy on the series undoubtedly came in 1774 when he was passed over as head of the Imperial Academy. His behaviour was supposedly becoming more and more eccentric. The Academicians granted him a stipend and Messerschmidt left Vienna. Free from the constraints of the court and court patronage, disillusioned with society, he settled by 1776 in Pressburg, now Bratislava, in the Kingdom of Hungary and an Austrian dependency.
In Pressburg, Messerschmidt was to devote the rest of his life, with the exception of a few commissions, to his "Beloved Heads". These are for the most part bald headed, displaying his own sanguine, melancholic and convulsive features in alabaster, lead and tin alloy as well as one in wood. Using himself as a model, he is recorded as spending numerous hours in front of the mirror becoming ever more reclusive and eccentric. The gallery director Christian von Mechl recorded in 1780 that "perpetual grimacing had ravaged his features."
With his eyes tightly shut, his hair with an almost mop-like bedgraggled appearance and his mouth and neck so strained that the sinews appear to be standing out from the neck, the present head, entitled Rescued from drowning in the 1793 exhibition, can be compared with three others in the series, The Vexed Man (no. 21), The Haggard old Man with Aching Eyes (no.15) and The Hanged Man (no.25), the first two of which are also treated with hair, rather than being left bald. It has been suggested that the addition of hair was Messerschmidt's way of showing his disdain at the continued use of wigs in the eighteenth century and ultimately of the Baroque movement on which he had turned his back.
The convoluted, posthumous 1793 description of the present bust details the angst, fear and numbing sensation of someone who has just been rescued from the water, his hair still dripping. However, it is unlikely that this interpretation was originally intended by Messerschmidt and it is inherent in the power of these busts that the intense emotions of each head are interpreted differently by every individual. It is this direct and personal impact of the character heads which has proved so engaging to the modern audience.
HISTORY AND INFLUENCE OF THE HEADS
Following Messerschmidt's death in 1783, 69 heads passed into the possession of his brother Johann Adam, who by 1793 had sold the series of 49 to the collector Stranz, who organised the initial exhibition. From 1808, when the busts were owned by Franz Jakob Steger, a bronze founder and landlord of an inn in the Prater, the Vienna amusement park, the heads began to be exhibited regularly, mostly in the Prater, thereby becoming associated with a form of popular culture which began to be reassessed by modern artists in the 20th century. The complete series was finally dispersed in 1889. By this time plaster casts had been made of them and it is through these and the lithograph by Rudolf Toma (illustrated on p.96), that we know how the whole series would have appeared.
In 1906 the Viennese photographer Joselph Wlha published a photographic series of Messerschmidt's "Character Heads", which in turn influenced sculptors and painters later in the 20th century. Indeed Behr (op.cit.) records that a set of Wlha photographs were found in the estate of Pablo Picasso. Amongst many other modern artists who were directly inspired by Messerschmidt are Egon Schiele (Self-Portrait Photographs, 1914), Francis Bacon (Head IV, Screaming Pope,1949, which has been linked to The Yawner, no.16 in the series), Arnulf Rainer (Overdrawings of Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, 1975-76), Franz West (Anruf an Arnulf), Claes Oldenburg (Symbolic Self Portrait with Equals,1969) and Bruce Nauman (Ten Heads Circle, 1990).
RELATED LITERATURE
H.G.Behr et al. Charakterköpfe. Der Fall F.X.Messerschmidt, Winheim and Basel, 1983
Franz Xaver Messerschmidt Character Heads 1770-1783, exh.cat., Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1987
