Adolf hiremy hirschl painting
Ahasuerus at the End of the World (1888).
Regular readers will know that I have a fondness for the academic or historical painters of the 19th century if their work is sufficiently grotesque, macabre or fantastical. These paintings by Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl push a number of the relevant buttons, especially Ahasuerus at the End of the World which is so immediately startling I can’t imagine why I’ve not seen it before. Hirémy-Hirschl was a Hungarian who pursued his career in Vienna until he fell out of favour with the arrival of the Secession artists.
The Ahasuerus painting is the stand-out piece here, Ahasuerus being the name of the Wandering Jew who was condemned to walk the earth until Jesus returned. What struck me about this was how uncharacteristic it seems for 1888, with everything rendered in a very hard-edged manner; and that’s before you get to the gratuitous dead woman and the skeletal reaper. This is closer to some of the Russian painters of the period than the academic artists in Paris.
The Souls of Acheron (1898).
The Souls of Acheron shows a crowd of the newly dead waiting to be ferried across the river Styx. The Tomb of Achilles seems to be about sea-nymphs mourning the dead hero whose mother was also a nymph; mythology aside, it looks like one of the many 19th-century pictures that use a legend as an excuse to paint more naked flesh. Translucent blue material wrapping a body is a recurrent detail in all three paintings.
The Tomb of Achilles (no date).
Sic Transit… (1912): central panels.
Hirémy-Hirschl spent his final years in Rome where he painted Sic Transit…, a polyptych that shows the emergence of Christianity in the city after the fall of the Roman Empire. There are five panels in all; the copies here are the best I’ve found. The final panel is notable for the scale of its ghostly figures who tower over the temples in the foreground. Click on the images for larger views.
Sic Transi Hungarian-Jewish artist Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl (1860–1933) was a Hungarian, Jewish artist known for historical and mythological painting, particularly of subjects pertaining to ancient Rome. Some of his major history paintings have been lost, and many of his smaller works were retained by his heirs until the early 1980s. Although he was one of the most successful artists of fin-de-siècle Vienna, these circumstances, along with the rise of Gustav Klimt and the Vienna Secessionists, put his reputation in eclipse. Hirémy-Hirschl was born 31 January 1860 in Temesvár, then a part of Hungary, but at an early age he went to Vienna to study. He received a scholarship to attend the Akademie der bildenden Künste in 1878. He won his first prize two years later with Farewell: Scene from Hannibal Crossing the Alps, followed in 1882 by a prize that allowed him to travel to Rome. His time in Rome was a major influence on his choice of subject matter. After returning to Vienna, he produced the acclaimed large-scale canvas The Plague in Rome (1884), a work that is now lost. He enjoyed a successful career with numerous commissions and high praise for his historical and allegorical works, culminating in the Imperial Prize in 1891. During the rise of Klimt and the Vienna Secession movement, he began using the name Adolf Hirémy and moved to Rome, where he spent the last 35 years of his life as an eminent member of the expatriate art community. In 1904, seventy of his works were exhibited at a retrospective. He was admitted to the Accademia di San Luca in 1911. One of his last works was Sic Transit … (1912), an immense allegorical polyptych on the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity. His heirs retained possession of his studio for decades following his death. A large number of his drawings, watercolors, pastels, and oil sketches became public only in the early 19 Home / Museum / Search ARC Museum Adolf Hiremy-Hirschl 56 artworks Hungarian Born 1860 - Died 1933 {"Id":5716,"Name":"Adolf Hiremy-Hirschl","Biography":"","Awards":null,"HasAlbums":false,"HasPortraits":false,"HasRelationships":false,"HasArticles":false,"HasDepictedPlaces":true,"HasLetters":false,"HasLibraryItems":false,"HasProducts":false,"HasSignatures":false,"HasVideos":false,"HasMapLocations":true,"TotalArtworks":56} .Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl
Education and career
Adolf Hiremy-Hirschl