Blau, Tina
BLAU, TINA
BLAU, TINA (1845–1916), Austrian painter. Blau was born in Vienna. Realizing her early interest in painting her father arranged for lessons with the landscape painter Antal Hanély, with whom she started painting still lifes with fruits and flowers. In the early 1860s August Schaeffer became her tutor. From 1867 her paintings, especially landscapes, were shown in public exhibitions. While visiting Munich and the First International Exhibition in 1869, she discovered the paintings of the School of Barbizon, which influenced her later works, but in the end she adapted French impressionism and became one of the leading Austrian impressionist painters. After her initial success in selling her paintings, she enrolled in the Kunstschule fuer Maedchen in Munich and took an atelier in the house of her teacher Wilhelm Lindenschmitt. Together with her colleague Emil Jakob Schindler she traveled to Hungary and Holland, where she painted Jew's Street of Amsterdam (1875/1876, coll. Vera Eisenberger, Vienna). After two sojourns in Italy (1876 and 1879) she opened an atelier in the Vienna Prater, from where her most popular paintings originated, namely luminous views of the Prater such as Springtime in the Prater (1882, Vienna, Oesterreichische Galerie Belvedere).
In 1884 Blau returned to Munich, where she converted to Protestantism and married the painter Heinrich Lang. At that time, her own works were presented at international exhibitions such as the World Exhibitions of Antwerp in 1885 and of Paris in 1889. Moreover she started working at the Damenakademie des Muenchner Kuenstlerinnenvereins, an academy of fine arts solely for women, where she taught still life and landscape painting. In the summers she continued traveling, especially to France, Northern Germany, and Denmark. A first solo exhibition in the Munich Kunstverein contributed to the wide appreciation of her work at the end of the 19th century. She continued teaching at the academy until 1915, a year before she died, but was never accepted as a member of the Wiener Kuenstlerhaus.
bibliography:
G.T. Natter and C. Jesina: Tina Blau (1999); Plenair, die Landschaftsmalerin Tina Blau, 1845–1916 (Catalogue, Jewish Museum, Vienna, 1996).
[Philipp Zschommler (2nd ed.)]