Emil Jakob Schindler. Poetic Realism

This year marks the 170th anniversary of Emil Jakob Schindler's birth and the 120th anniversary of his death. His works of "atmospheric Impressionism" illustrate the change from the opulent art of early 19th century Vienna to a new understanding of nature. Rather than realistic documentations, his landscapes are idealised and poetic interpretations.
Schindler's works feature romantic themes, lonely chapels and couples in forests, but also Symbolist paintings such as Pax (1891), inspired by Böcklin's 1880 Isle of the Dead. His early Symbolist approach from the 1870s already differed in interpretation from that of his teacher Albert Zimmermann.
Schindler looked for the simple landscape, the poetic moment, the special atmosphere of the mundane, whether in a vegetable garden, or in the floodplains of the Danube. These works show the influence of the World Exhibition, the Barbizon school, and the Viennese tradition. Man is not absent from Schindler's works. Steamboats and water mills and other man-made objects are shown to exist in harmony with nature.