Julius SCHMID
1854–1935, Austria

Julius Schmid (1854-1935) was an academic artist of his era - a landscape, historical, and genre painter as well as a very successful portraitist of the Austrian Imperial family, the nobility, and of the Vienna haute bourgeoisie. Vienna born, Schmid was a student at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts from 1871 to 1878 and also traveled through Austria and visited Munich. In 1878, Schmid won the Prix de Rome, which enabled him to study in that city for two years. After he completed his studies in Rome, Schmid traveled extensively through Italy, in particular Naples, Florence, and Venice, to expand his knowledge and technique. Upon his return to Vienna, Schmid spent some months in Hans Makart's atelier. In 1881, Schmid joined the Genossenschaft bildender Künstler Wiens, also known as the Künstlerhaus, Vienna's exhibition organization for those in the fine arts. In 1884, Schmid produced the first poster for the Künstlerhaus. It was this organization from which the Vienna Secession artists, led by Carl Moll (1861-1945) and Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), seceded in 1897 because the Künstlerhaus membership represented the status quo and would not recognize the artists of the existing Munich Secession. Schmid had several exhibits of his work at Künstlerhaus: in 1925, in 1937, and in 1954 - the last being on his 100th birth anniversary. Künstlerhaus issued a brochure in 1934 dedicated to the artist on his 80th birthday.

From 1884 to 1902, Schmid worked at the Academy of Fine Arts as assistant to the noted artist August Eisenmenger (1830-1907) and in 1902, as befitted his artistic and intellectual inclinations, Schmid became a professor in the same academy where he had studied. He worked his way up through the professorial ranks eventually succeeding Eisenmenger whose student and disciple Schmid had been. Eisenmenger's reputation today is strongly founded on his portraits and on the contributions he made in the 1880s to the interior decoration -- wall and ceiling frescoes -- of some of the new buildings which comprised the just-created Ringstrasse complex.

Schmid was a full professor at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts from 1919 to 1925 when he finally retired to private life. He was awarded numerous prizes including the Reichel Prize (1891), the Kaiser Prize (1892), the Gold Medal of the City of Berlin (1894), and the Knight's Cross of the Order of Franz Joseph (1898). Schmid was given high honors on his 75th birthday in 1929 by both the City of Vienna and the Republic of Austria.

Schmid's oeuvre is represented by numerous portraits as exemplified by those of Emperor Franz Joseph (1848-1916), Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863-1914), and famed Austrian writer, poet and playwright Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916). Like Eisenmenger, Schmid was commissioned to do wall and ceiling frescoes at which he too excelled. Examples of these frescoes are in Vienna's Schottenkirche. The Raimund Theatre has a classical scene by Schmid painted on its main curtain. Schmid's historical scenes and portraits, in fresco and grisaille, of musical performances and of famous Austrian composers, in Vienna and in Graz, are perhaps his greatest artistic legacy.

Schmid was born between the generation of Hans Makart (1840-1884) who he admired, and Gustav Klimt, an artist who by virtue of Schmid’s great esthetic differences with Klimt, Schmid would and could not join in the Vienna Secession. Klimt professed great admiration for Makart, who was both Klimt's and Schmid's teacher for a very short time. While Makart was an artist both Schmid and Klimt respected neither of them would follow Makart's idiosyncratic historicist lead. Schmid was fully honored by academic prizes and medals in Austria and Germany but he never captured the imagination of the public as had Makart and Klimt, both of whom have been re-discovered by succeeding generations of art viewers into the 21st century thanks in part to the Internet and World Wide Web.

Source: http://www.janetwasserman.com/into-oblivion-julius-schmid-artist.html