Joseph Carl Berthold Püttner (Planà, 1821 – Vöslau, 1881), Gondolas at sunset in front of Piazza S. Marco and Santa Maria della Salute

Joseph Carl Berthold Püttner (Planà, 1821 – Vöslau, 1881)

Gondolas at sunset in front of St. Mark's Square and Santa Maria della Salute

(2) Oil on canvas, 34,5 x 50,5 cm

With frame, 53,5 x 68,5 cm

Signed and dated: “JCB Püttner, 1873 and 1874”

The pair of canvases in question, depicting gondolas at sunset in front of Piazza San Marco and the Basilica of Santa Maria della Salute respectively, were created, the first in 1873 and the second the following year, by the Czech artist Joseph Carl Berthold Püttner (Planà, 1821 – Vöslau, 1881), as attested by the signatures at the bottom right. Born in 1821 in Planá, in what is now the Czech Republic, he was the son of Johann Karl Püttner, an officer of the Principality of Reuss, and spent his youth between the cities of Prague, Leitmeritz and Pilsen. After attending secondary school in Egra and completing an initial six-year apprenticeship in a porcelain factory near Karlovy Vary, he decided to develop his artistic skills independently: without any recommendations and as a complete self-taught artist, he settled in Vienna, where in order to survive he often had to make do with painting cooks or tailors' apprentices in exchange for a few florins. Püttner's official debut in the artistic world took place in 1842, when he presented a watercolour portrait at the annual exhibition of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, which he also participated in in the following years with his first attempts as a landscape painter. Thanks to the patronage of the wealthy Zichy family, from 1842 to 1845 he worked as a drawing teacher at Lang Castle in Székesfehérvár, Hungary, before undertaking a first short study trip to Rome in the summer of 1846 and subsequently to the Netherlands. His move to Hamburg in 1850 marked a turning point in his artistic career: his seascapes and landscapes, mostly in a romantic style, were very successful among German bankers and merchants, above all the two art-loving brothers Gustav and César Godefroy, the most influential shipowners in the city, who placed all their ships at the artist's disposal. Thus, in the spring of 1851, Püttner embarked on the ship Alfred in Glückstadt and first circumnavigated Cape Horn to Valparaiso, where he disembarked after a 104-day voyage during which he worked continuously. A stay in Iceland and a new study trip between 1852 and 1853 in North and South America are then documented, with stops on the islands of Tonga and Tahiti and in the hinterland of the Cordillera. He then sailed up the west coast of South America through Chile, Bolivia and Peru to Panama and traveled to the West Indies, covering over two thousand miles by rail in the United States to the upper Mississippi. Upon his return to Europe, after various stays in England, Germany, Belgium and Holland, in 1855 he decided to move permanently to Vienna, where in 1861 he became a member of the Künstlerhaus in Vienna and where he was appointed marine painter to the Austrian court, restoring numerous paintings in the possession of the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph.

Among the most important trips he made during his maturity was undoubtedly the one to Italy, where he had the opportunity to see the main cities of the peninsula up close, being fascinated by the timeless beauty of Venice. Püttner's Venetian views, in fact, represent a fascinating and distinctive chapter within the vast production of this artist: known for his thematic versatility, his interpretations of Venice possess a unique quality that distinguishes them in the panorama of nineteenth-century vedutista, revealing a pictorial approach imbued with romantic sensitivity and a keen sense of atmosphere. As in the two cases in question, the artist's ability to capture the changing light and ethereal aura of the lagoon city emerges. His skies, wide and dominant, are rendered with fluid and delicate brushstrokes, modulating shades that range from the pale pinks and diaphanous blues of the early hours of the day to the fiery golds of the sunset. This attention to light is not merely descriptive: it becomes a fundamental narrative element, capable of evoking the romantic melancholy, the serene quiet or the vibrant energy of the city. His views are not simple picturesque postcards, but rather visual meditations on the beauty of the places he has the opportunity to visit, on the relationship between man and the surrounding environment, and on the timeless charm of places unique in the world.