Vienna’s Albertina Museum: A Treasury of Modernist Art

The Albertina, one of the most important palace-museums in Vienna, is a treasure trove for Modernist art. It features an enviable permanent collection of notable 19th and 20th century European artworks, covering important movements such as Impressionism, Expressionism and Fauvism through artists like Picasso, Monet, Renoir, Degas and more. Some of these paintings, displayed in all their glory inside the elegant rooms of the Albertina, deserve a special mention.

VIEW OF VÉTHEUIL, CLAUDE MONET (1881)

This is a famous work from the Impressionist movement by its founding father, the French artist Claude Monet. The artist moved to Vétheuil in 1878 with his family and painted several canvases of the small farming village on the river Seine between Rouen and Paris. Some of these works were also painted from the artist’s floating studio in a houseboat.

This painting is of a summer’s day in Vétheuil reflected in its bright hues of yellow and green. The view of the blue sky highlighted with yellow strokes captures the bright sunlight — a classic example of Monet’s manipulation of light through color and brushwork. The artist emphasized on presenting distance through a careful use of color in this work, with warm shades of the foreground against cooler, muted hues in the backdrop and the sky.

MORET: THE BANKS OF THE RIVER LOING, ALFRED SISLEY (1877)

A peer and friend of Monet, Alfred Sisley was another notable Impressionist artist known for landscape paintings, although he is not recognized as much today. Nevertheless, his work was a great influence on Monet as well, and both of them studied under Eugène Boudin. Naturally, his painting is placed right next to Monet’s abovementioned work in the Albertina.

Moret: The Banks of the River Loing was part of a series of 21 paintings created between 1896 and 1897. Sisley mostly painted picturesque rural landscapes with an aim to capture the beauty of nature and how it is ever-changing under the whims of light. This autumn scene uses bolder strokes and brighter colors than Monet’s works, partly because Sisley preferred to portray a sense of permanence in his work. The colors are also more subtle and the brushstrokes more delicate in the background, suggesting a great depth of distance.

MOONLIT NIGHT, EMIL NOLDE (1914)

This Expressionist work by the German-Danish artist Emil Nolde captures the abundance of color that he was known for. Also skilled in watercolors, prints and woodcuts, Nolde pioneered the German Expressionist movement. His paintings were particularly recognized for their vibrancy, as well as an expression of the artist’s personal feelings through deep and bright colors. Expressionism as a movement took off in Europe around roughly the same period as Impressionism. Nolde had studied the latter and employed some of its techniques in his works. He admired the prominent Impressionist artists, but considered himself a colorist and was more liberal with his use of color. A Moonlit Night, for instance, revels under a vivid yellow and deep ultramarine blue. This work was painted from Nolde’s memory, recalling the tranquility of a calm sea under a bright moon.

VENICE, THE PINK CLOUD, PAUL SIGNAC (1909)

A pioneer of a unique painting style called Pointillism, Signac was one of the main founders of the Neo-Impressionist movement. He not only created a new style of painting which deviated from the delicate Impressionist brushwork of Monet, but was also a supporter of the Fauvism art movement, in particular artists like Henri Matisse.

Signac had a great fondness of the sea and most of his paintings feature a port. The dots which create the picture are shaped like rectangular tiles, each of which is angled differently and contains two or more shades of color. As seen in this painting, the tiles in the foreground are more distinct while the shapes and colors merge more freely in the background. This style of painting is also very similar to the way photographs are developed — by placing tiny dots of different colors together to form a complete picture.

THE WATER LILY POND, CLAUDE MONET (1917–1919)

A classic of Monet, this painting is a part of a series called Water Lilies, consisting of 250 works. The series was inspired by Monet’s Japanese-style garden in Giverny and is known for the artist’s meticulous study of reflections, light and shadows. Impressionism was known for capturing the perception of light as well as the artist’s emotional or personal expression in colour, and Monet was called the “Master of Light”. He, like most Impressionists, relied on colours rather than defined lines for his art.

Tragically, during the last decades of his life, the artist suffered from cataracts which weakened his color perception. However, most of the Water Lilies paintings were created during the same period, which explains the nearly indistinguishable forms of the flowers and a blurriness in the whole image. The Water Lily Pond at the Albertina is overtaken by shades of green, and captures the reflection of trees and the sky in the water.

TWO DANCERS, EDGAR DEGAS (1905)

The French Impressionist Edgar Degas created a great number of pastel drawings, paintings and sketches of young ballet dancers at the Paris Opera in the 1870s. He did not paint many landscapes or outdoor scenes as was typical of Impressionists, but laid emphasis on capturing the human form. He was skilled in portraying movement, which became his sole focus when he started painting ballet dancers. His art, which consisted of sketches, paintings and sculpture, was dominated by women subjects.

What interested Degas about ballet was not only the grace of flowing movements in light costumes, but also the everyday struggle of young dancers in rehearsal. His dancer subjects however were not always mid-practice; sometimes they were just tying their shoes or sitting down in their costumes.

GIRL WITH HAT, PABLO PICASSO (1962)

The Spanish artist and sculptor Pablo Picasso, a fairly newer name in this list, was the pioneer of Cubism, which took off in Europe in the early 1900s. The artist painted a number of portraits of a woman wearing a hat with bold colors and distinct lines. That woman is most likely Picasso’s wife Jacqueline. His style of painting stands out as it is majorly two-dimensional and abstract, unlike the Realists or even the Impressionists. He does not rely on light and shadows, but only on two major aspects which create the foundation of his work: colors and lines. This particular work in the Albertina is probably the only one in the series which lacks Picasso’s infamous abstract effects in the facial structure. The painting’s most notable features include bright shades of red and yellow, thick black lines, and an asymmetrical structure of the face, especially the eyes of the woman.