THE ORIGINS OF THE BLUE-WHITE CHECKERBOARD IN CARL MOLL'S PAINTINGS
Note To Readers: Due to copyright restrictions, the works of Carl Moll cited in this paper cannot be shown. Almost all appear in Natter and Frodl (see Sources).
In 1906, the Austrian artist Carl Moll (1861-1945), co-founder of the Vienna Secession and noted gallery director, painted a self-portrait that raises questions about his choices depicting his presentation of himself and about his selections for the portrait’s interior décor. Especially compelling is the black and white checkerboard floor he uses in this interior. Equally key are signs in this self portrait that Moll was identifying with and/or honoring a great predecessor, Johannes (Jan) Vermeer (1632-1675). In searching Moll’s oeuvre for the checkerboard, a related facet appears in many of his paintings for a brief span of years: again a checkerboard but a blue-white one. Here were links to Vermeer in the checkerboard - the popular interior feature of Dutch homes as known from paintings of Vermeer’s era - and the specific ultramarine blue that was prized by the Dutch artist in his own work. The blue-white checkerboard also represented the new paths sought by the evolving design philosophy led by the Wiener Werkstätte. By bringing together these triple elements – Vermeer, the checkerboard floor shown in Moll’s self-portrait, and blue-white checkerboard found in a substantial number of his paintings – the researcher may gain better insight into the life and times of a once notable artist whose fame has since faded. Even before his death, Moll was not a special topic in art except for a few Viennese art historians. The primary sources about Moll are limited, and some are unpublished and unavailable. The thesis proposed herein has not been raised elsewhere.
My argument is that while he appeared in the public arenas of art and music, much of Moll’s closely intertwined personal and professional life was hidden from wider view. Moll married the widow of his teacher, the great Austrian artist Emil Jakob Schindler (1842-1892), and thereby became the stepfather of two adolescent girls, one of whom was Alma Schindler (1879-1964) who was later to marry the composer Gustav Mahler (1860-1911). Moll was widely known in local art circles, and the Vienna elites were the source of much of his patronage (many of his patrons were Jewish). By examining the three elements noted above – self portrait, checkerboard floor and recurring blue-white checkerboard design - and by using them as the method to gain access into those hidden aspects, we begin to understand the reasons for his choices. Moll’s professional life as a leader in Vienna’s art circles was fraught with tension as the Viennese art world moved rapidly into significant changes in style and philosophy and as Viennese society began slowly to crack under the strain of the failing Austro-Hungarian empire. Moll was not immune to the political and social currents flowing through Austrian society. Who he was as a man and an artist can be viewed in the context of his work. It is my thesis that the blue-white checkerboard – its reason for being and Moll’s repeated use of this design - becomes emblematic of both the man and the artist. The choice of this design had a special significance for the artist in an era of instability, and this instability had fateful consequences for his society and for his own life, which as a long-time Nazi sympathizer ended in suicide as the Soviet Army marched into Vienna.
A particularly striking color and a notable design motif are found in the works of Carl Moll, all cited herein. The color is Delft or ultramarine blue; the design motif is a blue-white checkerboard. The two themes appear in a variety of items and places in his paintings, however, the blue alone without the checkerboard can be seen at the start and at the end of his working life. In his In der Kaffeemittelfabrik, 1900, the blue appears more prominently as the metallic finish on the large grinding machines in the background. Moll painted a number of works in 1903 that featured the blue-white checkerboard. Perhaps the best example of this group is Salon im Haus auf der Hohen Warte (Interieur). In this painting, the checkerboard is assigned to the strip of white and blue frieze-like decoration at the top of the blue partitions enclosing the short series of steps up from the dining area into what may be a kitchen or pantry. Only a few years later does this checkerboard appear as the classic black-white floor tiles of his 1906 self-portrait, Aus meinem Atelier (Selbstbildnis im Atelier). The blue of Interieur covers the painted walls, the window frame, the glass china cabinet, and the chair upholstery. The blue-white checkerboard theme appears in a very small part of Bei der Anrichte as a decorative feature of blue pantry shelves. The cups and saucers lined up on the dining table are also blue and white, and the single dining chair has a subtle touch of this blue in the seat cover. The delicate, gauzy curtains in Beim Frühstück (Mutter und Kind) are white with large blue polka dots evenly spaced throughout, and the chair seat and banquette back cushions are fabric-covered in blue-white striped ticking.
In Moll's 1903 Mein Wohnzimmer (Anna Moll am Schreibsekretär) with its Secession-inspired look such as the Hoffmann-designed writing desk, the ultramarine blue appears in the background wall against which the female figure, the artist's wife Anna (Anna Bergen Schindler Moll, 1857-1938) is framed; in the blue cupboard; and in the blue-white umbrella holder. A shimmering blue reflection from the window puddles on the floor behind the seated figure of Anna. Lined up on the blue-framed windowsill in the rear of this painting are six flowerpots, each containing a single tulip.
In Moll's 1903 outdoor scene, Terrasse der Villa Moll auf der Hohen Warte (also referred to as Hausgarten or Gartenterrasse) , the blue-white combination appears in the wooden flower boxes where the dovetailed corner segments are alternately painted blue and white to resemble the checkerboard pattern of Interieur. The villa's architect Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956) designed the garden layout as well as the exterior of the villa. The door entry in Terrasse is blue and white, but the blue is alone in the decorative cover surrounding a small potted tree. The blue appears again in Das Haus des Künstlers auf der Hohen Warte, 1905, on a door, an archway, and a protective wooden overhang above a religious statue on the side of the artist's house. The bright blue appears boldly in Der Blaue Salon im Winterpalais des Prinz Eugen in der Himmelpfortgasse, 1907/08, a scene of baroque splendor suffused with ultramarine coloration.
Two paintings titled Stilleben mit blauer Flasche, both 1930, are particularly effective for the deep blue vase which dominates these paintings. The 1906 Selbstbildnis im Atelier - the artist in a Vermeer-like setting - is the culmination of the 1903 Delft-inspired interiors, yet lacking the blue. After the 1906 self-portrait, the blue reappears in the 1907 Salon; and later in the 1930 blue vases. Circa 1933, Moll's Blick auf Wien (beim Eichelhof in Nussdorf) depicts distant Vienna in the far background (viewed from a great height above the city) as a broad patch of blue; and, finally and surprisingly, at the end of the artist's life. Curiously, while the blue disappears after ca. 1933, Moll makes a final statement with the blue in his last two self-portraits. In his 1943 Selbstbildnisthe blue cravat is a big splash of color inside his open shirt just below his chin while in the 1944 Selbstporträt the blue cravat has been greatly reduced in size and is a hardly discernible blue wedge.
A blue-white checkerboard was used ca. 1901-1902 by a group of Wiener Werkstättecraftsmen, inspired by Secession designer Koloman Moser (1868-1918). A set of stoneware dinner service designed in the Moser-led workshop uses a double row of the blue-white checkerboard around the rim of the bowls and plates. The blue in this design is the lighter ultramarine blue, not the intensive and bright ultramarine blue used by Moll. Moser incorporated the blue-white checkerboard in the main windows, variously described as being either stained glass or a glass mosaic, of the Hoffmann-designed St. Leopold am Steinhof church (1902-1907). Other Wiener Werkstätteexamples incorporating the checkerboard are: a pendant, snuff box, table lamp, plant stand, cruet stand, jardiniere, tea set, chairs, and the memorable black-white checkerboard tiled floor of the famous Cabaret Fledermaus (1907). While Hoffmann's architectural gem, the Palais Stoclet (1905-1911) in Brussels, was a collaborative effort in the execution of the interior, it was Hoffmann who was responsible for the complete interior design and, therefore, for the blue-white tiled checkerboard border on the floor of the dining room which housed Gustav Klimt's Beethoven frieze. In the 1907 Wiener Werkstätte exhibition at Mannheim, the space designed by Hoffmann had the black-white checkerboard tiled floor.
While the checkerboard rows appear in Moll's paintings, the categorical origin of the blue-white checkerboard is not known. This checkerboard design was 'in the air', truly ubiquitous and very popular in Wiener Werkstätte design concepts. Both Hoffmann and Moser used a checkerboard frequently, although usually the combination was black and white, such as the dining room floor collaboratively designed for the 1904 Vienna house of Editha Mautner-Markhof. Square shapes, including the checkerboard, became so closely associated with Hoffmann and his designs that he was nicknamed Quadrat'l-[Little Square] Hoffmann. It has been suggested that Hoffmann may have been familiar with the blue from the Moravian architecture of his childhood. Hoffmann's 1895 Prix de Rome enabled him to travel to study architecture, which he did in Italy and on the Dalmatian Coast, particularly of Dalmatian peasant houses with their abstract surface patterns. One such example of a peasant house had a whitewashed exterior with a light blue around the windows. Could either or both Moravia and Dalmatia be the source of the blue? For years, Hoffmann used blue-lined graph paper almost exclusively for his designs. In short, he looked at blue-white grids for most of his working life.
Hoffmann may already have used the blue-white checkerboard in 1899, incorporating it in a 1905 sewing table he designed for a hunting lodge he built on commission by the Viennese art patron Karl Wittgenstein (1847-1913). For the hunting lodge, on the Hochreith, Hoffmann designed both furnishings and exterior as part of his overall philosophical approach to architecture. Hoffmann also incorporated a black-white checkerboard on the exterior of Moll's 1901 Hohe Warte villa and a black-white checkerboard tiled garden terrace for the villa. This same black-white checkerboard was used in the chairs designed for the main hall of the 1904/1905 Purkersdorf Sanitorium, a project shared by Hoffmann and Moser. In 2002, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acquired a Hoffmann-designed octagonal center table of ebonized wood, marquetry, marble, and nickel-plated brass. The design incorporates the checkerboard around the side edges of the table and is similar to the Moll commission; this was obviously a style favored by Hoffmann and his clients.
In 1894 Hoffmann met Joseph M. Olbrich (1867-1908) and remained in contact with him during Olbrich's years in the studio of Otto Wagner (1841-1918) whose pupil Hoffmann had been. Hoffmann and Olbrich were part of the Secession group of artists; Olbrich became famous as the designer of the Secession House in Vienna, and its notable cupola. The four truncated corner columns surrounding the cupola each have three rows of checkerboard accents. However, despite his success in Vienna, the German-born Olbrich was not happy with the tensions and conflicts over aesthetic issues that were endemic to an art world in flux. In 1899, Olbrich accepted an offer from Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig to help found an artists colony in the city of Darmstadt. Along with six colleagues, he was charged with designing and building the working and living space for the design team of seven artists, architects, painters, and sculptors. Upon completion, the team would then open the colony's quarters to the public. In Darmstadt, Olbrich designed the 1899/1900 Römheld house whose interior prominently bears the well-known checkerboard design in several rooms. Black and white photographs make it impossible to tell the colors of the checkerboard absent published documentation. Olbrich's own 1901 house in Darmstadt is significant because the lower part of the façade is a checkerboard pattern of blue and white glazed architectural tiles made in the famous Zsolnay factory.[i] In 1901 there appeared an exhibit poster for the Darmstadt artists colony that contained a red-white checkerboard design, which was the path to the exhibit hall entrance. This poster was published in several different color versions but it is not known if blue-white was one of the variants. Olbrich also designed a liquor bottle (undated) with five rows of blue and white checkerboard on the cap and neck of the bottle. Circa 1903, he designed a small grandfather clock that has three checkerboard rows circling the clock's face.
By the turn of the century, Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) was already recognized as a forward-looking and innovative architect and interior and furniture designer, both in Glasgow, Scotland (his home) and abroad. In 1898, Mackintosh had designed a dining room for a Munich client, Hugo Bruckmann, who also happened to be the editor and publisher of the newly founded German journal Dekorative Kunst. In November 1898 Dekorative Kunst published its first article about Mackintosh and other Glasgow designers. In succeeding years, Mackintosh and his designer-wife Margaret Macdonald (1865-1933) again appeared in the pages of this notable German design magazine. Munich was home to the first of the so-called Secession movements, and its impact and that of Dekorative Kunst on the German-speaking design world would not have been negligible. As president of the Vienna Secession, Moll wrote to Mackintosh in July 1900 to return some photographs and to ask permission to publish some of the photos in the Secession journal Ver Sacrum. Moll also used this letter to invite Mackintosh to contribute to the Secession's eighth exhibition for the autumn of that year, which Mackintosh did.[ii]
There was a mutual recognition between Mackintosh and the Vienna Secession artists that they shared a great sympathy and understanding for their visions and goals in the changing world of art and design. The work of Mackintosh also reflected the use of geometric designs in Hoffmann's and Moser's work, and especially the open or pierced grid so familiar in Hoffmann's Gitterwerk. A photograph of a 1900 Mackintosh washstand prominently features the black-white checkerboard on the countertop and back splash. The more recent biographers of both Hoffmann and Mackintosh have agreed that Hoffmann was not directly influenced by Mackintosh. Moser was not mentioned as being a direct influence on Mackintosh but rather Moser was an artist who recognized and appreciated the work of Mackintosh. This is less in accord with the view that Mackintosh had what has been termed a "profound influence" on the younger generation of Viennese designers, and a much lesser influence on Hoffmann. Scholars are slowly coming into agreement that Mackintosh was not a formative influence on the Vienna Secession, but an impressive talent who shared ideas and concepts. While the geometric had a strong and central position in the work of Mackintosh, what is not seen in Mackintosh is the blue-white checkerboard design (although he designed glazed tiles in a variety of geometric arrangements and used the deep blue).
Otto Prutscher (1880-1949) of the Wiener Werkstätteused a blue-white color combination in a chain design for the stem of some of his notable glassware, the chain here being a three-dimensional checkerboard. The design was really a combination of carved blue and clear glass squares but because of its density the clear glass looks white. That Wiener Werkstätte artists like Prutscher, Moser, Olbrich, and Hoffmann used the checkerboard is hardly a remarkable choice. This precise design is an ancient man-made one, not naturally occurring in nature. The very name itself alludes to the board on which was played the ancient game known today as chess. The chessboard also became a checkerboard. The game board itself is universally and instantly known and recognized. The checkerboard appears to be far older than originally thought, dating back to a design on a biblical garment (the ku'tonet, a robe made of white linen with a checkerboard design on it) and to the Anasazis of the Caucasus who were weavers, potters, and painters. The checkerboard was probably found in European heraldic designs. In the nearer, modern era, the checkerboard was widely used in the 19th and 20th century in industrial and commercial design, corporate logos, advertising symbols, and national emblems. Not to be overlooked is the checkerboard in painting. A basic and simple symmetrical and repetitive design, the checkerboard can be distorted and spatially manipulated to create the powerful illusion of perspective, as in the black-white tile floors in Dutch and Flemish paintings, or to appear as the elongated diamonds of the blue-white checkerboard Bavarian flag derived from its ancient coat of arms.
This self-same blue-white checkerboard unexpectedly appears on a headband worn by a male figure - actually a self-portrait - in a 1909 drawing by a young Egon Schiele (1890-1918).[iii] Schiele was for a time part of the group of young artists encouraged by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) whose impact on Schiele's art apparently extended to this Secession/Wiener Werkstätte design originated by some of Klimt's Wiener Werkstätte comrades. The checkerboard design found in the array of Wiener Werkstätte-crafted articles and in the tiled floors closely identified with the early Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte, appeared to fade away as the Wiener Werkstätte began its financial decline and loss of public following to its ultimate disappearance in the 1930s. Its motifs and decorative accents metamorphosed from the sternly geometric to the sinuous lines and floral themes more popularly identified with Art Nouveau.
Moll knew and saw the recently rediscovered Vermeer, revived since ca. 1866 by French critic and writer Etienne-Joseph-Théophile Thoré (1807-1869), pseud. William Bürger. Moll now seemed to venerate Vermeer, who was for Moll an astonishing artistic talent from whom he drew inspiration, as Moll had earlier venerated his teacher, Emil Jakob Schindler. Did Moll perhaps visit the famous private collection at Count Czernin's Vienna residence and see Vermeer's The Art of Painting? Had Moll read Thoré-Bürger's groundbreaking 1866 Vermeer review or his later works on Vermeer? Alternatively, could he have first seen photographs of Vermeer's paintings, in the 1880s and 1890s when photography was now widely popular? Thoré-Bürger had included photographs of Vermeer's paintings in his articles and books.
Vermeer's rediscovery had the effect of a bombshell in the art world. Moll's 1906 Selbstbildnis im Atelier was nothing less than a catalogue of Vermeer elements: an interior scene; a window on the left, if that is the light source -- in any event a light source on the left of the painting; a view into a recessed room; light that has that silvery quality as in Vermeer, including the silvered sheen of the artist's face and of the draperies; household furniture shown completely or partially, such as the chair Moll is sitting on, the partly obscured low cabinet behind him, and the truncated sideboard in the left foreground with its ornate turning; a curtain; interior light; shadows cast by the light; household objects; framed art work on the walls; a tiled floor, and the perspective of diagonals and orthogonals. In an undated photograph, Moll is shown in his atelier, which does not at all resemble the atelier of the self-portrait.[iv] In the self-portrait he is seated at a desk in the nearly exact posture as his photograph, in a very similar suit and cravat, with the same arm and hand positions, and his face is shown with the same light and shadow in his self-portrait as is seen in the photograph. This suggests without doubt that Moll used this photograph as the template for his own portrait. The Vermeer elements from the Selbstbildnis never again appeared in a Moll interior, but the Dutch tiled floors seemed to echo in the blue-white checkerboard motif, although the checkerboard itself did not remain in Moll's work beyond the paintings cited. The ultramarine blue lingered in Moll's work to the end of his life.
Within a decade after Moll completed this self-portrait Austria's own golden age was long over and the Habsburg monarchy was in the midst of the fight of its life -- a fight it was to lose at the end of the First World War. After 1918, Austria's citizens were to know severe deprivation due to food, medicine, and fuel shortages, along with a 1919 influenza epidemic that killed thousands. The monetary system broke down completely, and with most of his fellow Austrians Moll became impoverished. For a while Vermeer may have been Moll's touchstone for balance and security during a period when life and society were mutating into an as yet unknown final form. In his self-portrait, Moll's control in the shaping of perspective favored by Vermeer, and the use of the same blue color in a variety of other paintings were the echoes of a great time past made real in the physical act of the artist at his palette and canvas. By incorporating these themes in his art, Moll may have been able to recapture the perceived security of the past and fend off the sense of disintegration in the present.
The blue color throughout Moll's works provides the same striking aura that it does in the work of Vermeer - a kind of visual universe depicting with dependable assurance to the viewer that the reality upon which it is based is a secure one. Vermeer's paintings, however, suggest that the reality depicted ought not to be taken as a final verdict. Keep looking, Vermeer's paintings seem to say, and the reality - or the viewer's understanding and acceptance of reality - begins to shift imperceptibly. The notion of Vermeer as deceptive or of concealing meanings only to reveal other meanings may be a modern interpretation. However, to Moll the overt versus the covert may have had a strong attraction, strong and immediate enough for Moll to shade, blur, or hide meanings and symbols in his self-portrait while openly offering others of his choosing. Moll paints himself not as the painter he is but as a suited-up, well-off bourgeois. The art on his walls does not include his Meister Schindler, or Gustav Klimt with whom he allied to lead the Secession. Moll is alone although he led a highly active social and professional life. No one from his family - not wife or child - is represented while the 1888 portrait of Van Gogh's mother, which Moll owned, is on the wall in his self-portrait. Moll's face is partly hidden from the viewer, akin to Vermeer's artist in The Art of Painting turning his back to the viewer. Moll's intimate identification with the Wiener Werkstätte and close collegial relationships with Hoffmann, Olbrich, and Moser are nowhere shown in the interior décor, in fact, Moll does not appear to be in a Viennese setting at all. Eventually, the Dutch elements disappeared from his paintings. After 1906, Moll never again painted a Vermeer-like interior.
The blue was used in only a handful of Moll's works. Yet the question arises, why did not Moll use the blue he favored for these Dutch-inspired interiors in his 1906 self-portrait? Vermeer and the Delft artists recreated the ultramarine blue-white when depicting the skirting tiles popular in the Dutch household. Like Vermeer, Moll used a strong ultramarine blue in his other paintings. Was Moll cautious about creating too strong an identification with Vermeer? Would Moll be seen as too derivative? Was this an act honoring a great predecessor? Was Moll unconsciously expressing the prevailing ethos of fin-de-siècle Vienna and its pervading concern with crises of identity and modernity? The solitary artist in his atelier could well personify the debate then current within Vienna's intellectual circles about solitude - Einsamkeit - as emblematic of the modern era of individualism. However, historically the painter had almost always worked alone; therefore, this Wiener Moderne interpretation of Moll's motivation to paint this particular self-portrait would seem to be open to question. While the solitary sitter for a portrait is a traditional historical art event, so too is the family portrait. The reasons which distinguish the choice of the individual self-portrait versus the family portrait in this case may never be known. Also, a self-portrait by an artist is an artistic, historical, and esthetic given, including an artist's need for solitude as much as for society. During a long period of ferment and turmoil in imperial Austrian and Viennese politics, society, art, and culture, Moll may have been drawn to the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic and its perceived if not always true social solidity and homogeneity, secure political establishment, bourgeois comfort, and cultural continuity represented in its art, and in Vermeer as well.
SOURCES
Billcliffe, Roger, Mackintosh Furniture (Moffat, UK, 1984, repr. 1997).
Blum, André, Vermeer et Thoré-Bürger (Geneva, 1946).
Carl Moll: seine Freunde, sein Leben, sein Werk (Salzburg, 1985).
Csenkey, Éva and Ágota Steinert, eds., Hungarian Ceramics from the Zsolnay Manufactory, 1853-
2001 (New York, 2002).
Durham, John W., at <http://bart.cba.nau.edu/~durham-j/newsite/id153.htm>. History of the
checkerboard.
Fliedl, Gottfried, Kunst und Lehre am Beginn der Moderne; die Wiener Kunstgewerbeschule
1867-1918 (Wien, 1986). Page 287 has photo of the dinner plate with the blue-white checkerboard border, dated ca. 1902.
Fortescue, Donald, Towards a Pictography of Design, 1993. Online at:
<http://www.haresbreath.com/donaldfortescue/notes-pict.html> for a brief discussion see the section "THE GRID".
Franits, Wayne E., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Vermeer, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Giese, Herbert, "Carl Moll: Der stete Weg zum Licht," Parnass, September/Oktober 1992, Heft 3, 46-53.
Gresleri, Giuliano, Josef Hoffmann (New York, 1981).
On page 34-35, is the section "1902-1903 Villa Moll on the Hohe Warte." On this same page, in the text and in the label to a reproduction of a work by Carl Moll, the author says Moll was so pleased with Hoffmann's villa that Moll painted it. The label states: 'Painting, 1903, Albertina Museum, Vienna" The reproduction appears to be one of the woodcuts Moll did of the Hohe Warte, including this villa. The Albertina is a collection of graphic art, not of paintings.
Gronberg, Tag, "The Inner Man: Interiors and Masculinity in Early Twentieth-century Vienna,"Oxford Art Journal, vol.24, no.1, 2001, 67-88.
Hollein, Hans, and Catherine Cooke, eds., Vienna Dream and Reality, Architectural Design Profile 61, Architectural Design, 1986, vol.55, no.11/12. "A Celebration of the Hollein Installations for the Exhibition Traum und Wirklichkeit 1870-1930 in the Künstlerhaus Vienna."
Kallir, Jane, Egon Schiele; Drawings and Watercolors, ed. Ivan Vartanian, (London/New York, 2003).
Kallir, Jane, Viennese Design and the Wiener Werkstätte, New York, 1986.
Kaplan, Wendy, ed., Charles Rennie Mackintosh, New York: Abbeville Press, 1996.
Lehne, Andreas and Tamás Pintér, Jugendstil in Wien und Budapest, Wien: J&V Edition, 1990.
On page 71, "Zweites Haus Moll" has clear photos of the black-white checkerboard trim around a window frame and on a planter by the front door.
McKean, John, Charles Rennie Mackintosh Pocket Guide, Grantown-on-Spey: Colin Baxter Photography, Ltd., rev. 2001.
Moderne Vergangenheit Wien 1800-1900, Wien: Künstlerhaus, 1981.
Plate 48, "KOLO MOSER; SPEISEZIMMEREINRICHTUNG "DER REICHE FISCHZUG"; 1900; Die Kredenz wurde auf der VIII. Secessions-Ausstellung gezeigt" shows a checkerboard design wrapped around the chair's seatback corner uprights.
Müller, Dorothee, Klassiker des modernen Möbeldesign. Otto Wagner-Adolf Loos-Josef Hoffmann-Koloman Moser, München: Keyser, 1984. On page 6 is plate 33 with Moll's painting Weißes Interieur, 1908, which shows the Hoffmann furnishings.
Natter, G. Tobias and Gerbert Frodl, eds., Carl Moll (1861-1945), Wien/Salzburg: Oesterreichische Galerie Belvedere/Verlag Galerie Welz, 1998. Plate 42, Interieur in Döbling, 1908, shows Hoffmann furnishings quite similar to Weißes Interieur (see Müller above).
Neue Galerie New York. Reproductions of the Wiener Werkstätte dinner service with the blue-white checkerboard border are on display and for sale at the Neue Galerie New York, which opened in 2001.
Noever, Peter, ed., Josef Hoffmann Designs, Munich: MAK-Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna: Prestel-Verlag, 1992.
Olbrich, Joseph Maria, Idee, architetture e interni viennesi, introd. Ezio Godoli, Firenze: Cantini, 1991. Italian edition of Olbrich's 1899 book Ideas on Viennese architecture and interiors.
Thoré, Etienne-Joseph-Théophile (William Bürger), "Van der Meer de Delft," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 21, no. 26/27, October-December 1866, 297-330, 458-470, 542-575.
With special thanks to Dr. Christian Witt-Dörring. Museum der angewandte Kunst, Vienna, and Dr. Christopher Long, University of Texas at Austin, School of Architecture.
ARTWORKS WORKS CITED
Salon im Haus auf der Hohen Warte (Interieur), by Carl Moll. ca. 1903. 135x89 cm. (Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien).
Aus meinem Atelier (Selbstsbildniss im Atelier), by Carl Moll. ca. 1906. 100x100 cm. (Gemäldegalerie, Akademie der bildenden Künste, Wien)
Bei der Anrichte, by Carl Moll. ca. 1903. 100x100 cm. (Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien).
In der Kaffeemittelfabrik, by Carl Moll. 1900. 100x100 cm. (Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien).
Beim Frühstück (Mutter und Kind), by Carl Moll. 1903. 100x100 cm. (Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien).
Mein Wohnzimmer (Anna Moll am Schreibsekretär), by Carl Moll. ca. 1903. 100x100 cm. (Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien).
Terrasse der Villa Moll auf der Hohen Warte, by Carl Moll. ca. 1903. 100x100 cm. (Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien).
Das Haus des Künstlers auf der Hohen Warte, by Carl Moll. 1905. 81.5x80 cm. (Sammlung Essl, Klosterneuburg).
Der Blaue Salon im Winterpalais des Prinz Eugen in der Himmelpfortgasse, by Carl Moll. 1930. 60x54 cm. (Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien).
Stilleben mit blauer Flasche, by Carl Moll. 1930. 60x54 cm. (Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien).
Stilleben mit blauer Flasche, by Carl Moll. ca. 1930. 60x54 cm. (Österreichische Galerie, Belvedere, Wien).
Selbstbildnis, by Carl Moll. 1943. 60.5x50 cm. (Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien).
Selbstporträt, by Carl Moll. 1944. No dimensions. (Sammlung Dichand, Wien).
[i] É. Csenkey and Á. Steinert, eds., Hungarian Ceramics from the Zsolnay Manufactory, 1853-2001. exh. cat. Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, New York [2002], p. 74, fig. 5-4.
[ii] R. Billcliffe, Mackintosh Furniture, Moffat, Scotland [1984, 1997], p. 57.
[iii] Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele; Drawings and Watercolors, ed. Ivan Vartanian, London/New York: Thames & Hudson, 2003, 62-63.
[iv] University of Pennsylvania. Annenberg Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Alma Mahler and Franz Werfel. Collection of Photographs, ca. 1888-1971. MS Collection 370. Subject: Carl Moll. Date: n.d. Collection Location: Vol. 1, Item 9.
ADDENDUM
A recently published gallery guide provides the provenance of Georg Minne’s Kneeling Youth and Moll’s acquisition of it: Minne’s sculpture (Fountain of Kneeling Youths), consisted of five identical copies of a plaster cast figure of kneeling youths arranged around a basin. This sculpture was to be exhibited at the eighth exhibition of the Vienna Secession in 1900. However, the owner of the figures and the mold, German art critic Julius Meier-Graefe (1867-1935), felt that the plaster copies were too fragile for shipment and instead decided to send the mold to the exhibition so that the five figures could be produced in Vienna. Meier-Graefe later donated the plaster figures made in Vienna to Secession president Carl Moll and other exhibition collaborators. This gift to Moll is the Kneeling Youth sculpture Moll painted in his 1906 self portrait (Selbstsbildniss im Atelier) See Elizabeth Kashey, “George Minne,” in The Pipes of Pan and the Kneeling Youth, Shepherd & Derom Galleries, April 24 – June 28, 2008, pages 10-16.
Copyright © Janet I. Wasserman 2002-2009