Reverse painting and Gilding Behind Glass
by Frances Federer
The story of a nearly lost art, from the late Middle Ages to the First World War.
Part II
As the popularity of reverse glass painting reached its lowest point, in the years before the First World War, the art was to experience a short-lived resurgence.
During their frequent summer walking tours in the mountains of Bavaria, Vassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter, members of the German Group of painters, "Blaue Reiter" (Blue Rider), stumbled across examples of glass painting in the village of Murnau, south of Münich, close to the Austrian border. Discovering Murnau to have been an important center of this little known art, they were captivated not only by the charm of painting on glass, but by the fact that the craft had all but died out. Münter bought a house in the village, where she and Kandinsky lived together for a period, experimenting in the medium, and each left a substantial body of work. The beauty of the glazed work, its glowing, rich colors, together with the fact that the art was clearly dying appealed to their romantic souls.
They became acquainted with Heinrich Rambold, still painting, and one of the last surviving members of an important glass-painting family whose history stretched back several generations. Maybe it was the old man who planted sentimental ideas into their heads, but their perceptions of the art, illustrated by Max Picards' comment, "Die Hinterglasbilder sind das Volkslied in der Geschichte der Malerei" (reverse glass paintings are the folk songs in the history of painting), only tell part of the story.
The art does not go back thousands of years, as they thought, nor is it sufficient to say it was only practiced by farmers in the winter when they were unable to fix their fences and paint their houses. On the contrary, in this and many other central European regions it was generally a year-round, highly commercial activity that can be divided into 3 distinct groups:
1. the urban professional
2. the rural painter
3. the cottage industry /small factory
1. The Urban Professional
Visual art in Central Europe during the 16th century was flourishing as never before; patronage was strong, demand for fine objects high, with lavish use of gold and costly pigments. The principle centers of production and innovation were the German cities of Augsburg and Nürnberg, where unfired, decorative work on glass was equal to the finest contemporary goldsmith work, metal-engraving, or furniture inlay.
No name had been given to painting and gilding on the back of glass as a distinct and separate activity until the first record of the art appeared in the account book of a Nuremberg patron, Dr. Christoph Scheurl, in 1532: "Let me have from Augustin Hirsvogel, out of friendship, for 2 and one half florins, 4 coats of arms, 'geamaliert'", a mix of the old German terms meaning to paint and to enamel.
Hirsvogel was prominent amongst no fewer than eight first rate artists working at that period, in this field, in Nuremberg alone. Although attributions have been made to individual artists, by the close examination of their different styles, it was not yet the custom to sign work, and no signed pieces exist. On glass it was usual to reproduce oil paintings that were being created at the time. Copperplate engraving was the only means of mass reproduction of paintings, and these were usually used as patterns, placed beneath the glass with the contour lines being painted in first. From as early as the fifteenth century Augsburg prided itself with an established art Academy, and by the seventeenth century it was the city custom to display the skills of artists and craftsmen on specially made ornamental cabinets. Cities were competitive and justly proud of their skills; these were the days of patronage, and generous support of the arts. The doors, drawer fronts, and sides of these extraordinary constructions were decorated with panels executed by the famous painters, ivory carvers and gilders of the day. By backing their painting either with the finest beaten silver leaf, or with gold, glass painters adhered (in reverse) to the tradition of painting over a metal ground, and so produced highly reflective surfaces. The Augsburg historian, Paul von Stetten, is quoted as saying these glass panels were used for mirror frames, wall lights, little chests and similar Quinquaillerie.
2. The Rural Painter
During the sixteenth century the eternal problems of pestilence and war were never far away, and both phenomena greatly affected the development of the arts. In addition to restrictions imposed on the numbers of practicing craftsmen in any single city, the Thirty Years War in the first half of the seventeenth century wreaked havoc across Europe and drove industry from the centers. Fine artists and craftsmen fled their homes but in the process, as was ever the case in such circumstances, they spread their skills and experience to new areas. The influence of Nuremberg and Augsburg diminished as artistic centers, whilst the emphasis of the glass painting business shifted from city to country, and to the remote mountain villages.
Prior to the war maybe Hinterglasmalerei was regarded as a cheaper alternative to enameling, or to stained glass, both of which processes depended on kilns and plant for production. Subcontracting of this work to the countryside was out of the question, whereas 'straightforward' painting and gilding on the back of glass could be more easily carried out by country craftsmen. Whether the art was considered inferior remains to be seen. Certainly lack of written information on the subject suggests it was considered less worthy of attention.
Communications had always been poor in the mountains; the Roman roads built on the boggy plains of the Northern Alps running east to west eroded because of lack of maintainence, leaving Southern Bavaria and Italy divided from the rest of Germany. This was bandit country and since the end of the Thirty Years War out-of-work mercenaries roamed the mountains and boggy plains looking for trouble. Guides were needed here, not only to show the way through the mountains, but to supply horses, clothes, weapons and armed escort along the route. Priests were needed to give comfort and guidance, and the sale of 'protective' amulets and portraits of favorite patron saints, customarily painted on the back of glass, became a lucrative business.
During times of plague villages went into enforced isolation depriving the locals of income not only as traders, but as guides. The end of plague in 1633 was celebrated the following year with the first performance of the Passion Play at Oberammergau, and it was this festival that drew visitors to the area, with money to burn on souvenirs, as they still do today. Now the former guides had a new occupation, producing painted glass mementoes.
The distribution of the work from the countryside was carried out by 'Kraxenmänner,' men with enormous baskets on their backs, packed with framed panels of glass, who walked from village to village, over the mountains, through all weathers. In this way glass panels were distributed as far as the Black Sea in the east, and to England and Holland in the west. From there panels were shipped in their thousands to Colonies in the New World, India and the Far East. The first records listing 'Hinterglasmalerei' as an independent trade appeared in Augsburg, in 1684.
3. The Cottage industry/small factory
In the mountainous areas of Bavaria and Bohemia there was little opportunity for farming, but by the early eighteenth century there were many cottage industries established, such as shoe making, building and all the usual trades, as well as the subsidiary back up jobs related to the glass industry. Much of the area was thickly wooded, with good concentration of minerals conducive for glass production, in particular with the lead component necessary for the famous clear, hard, heavy glass suitable for engraving. There were many glass factories giving work, and numerous cottage industries involved in some way in the enhancement of glass products.
As the eighteenth century wore on, plagues and wars continued to ravage the cities in particular, but in some respects the countryside began to prosper. There is documentation on individual relocated artists founding dynasties of glass painters which, through judicious inter-marriage and careful husbanding of resources, continued, right up until the years before the First World War.
By the turn of the eighteenth into the nineteenth century populations had increased, and the small-holdings that most families owned in the mountainous villages of Bavaria and surrounding areas had been, by law, sub-divided to such an extent that they were too tiny to sustain a family. The advent of these glass associated cottage industries was a godsend, saving many families from starvation.
With a plentiful supply of glass from the many local glass factories, and a strong folk painting tradition, it was not a huge step to start glass painting as a small industry. There was division of labor, with whole families involved in production, from tracing the design, to framing. Factories were built for mass production.
One case illustrates the kind of numbers we are talking about; in April, 1814, an order was placed with an Upper Bavarian factory for 4,000 framed glass paintings for a jubilee festival at a church. Delivery was to be in June, at the latest. This would mean an average production of 40-50 paintings per day. This kind of output is impressive, but it also tells us a lot about the quality of the work and the level of skills at the time. This was a pinnacle for production, but a low point for the art. The work produced was, frankly, crude. It gave a living to people who had minimal, if any, artistic skill, who only needed to be able to manipulate a paintbrush reasonably competently to contribute to the process, with every stage of the work broken down into small bites that a child could understand. Things could only improve, which they did, in time.
Summary
Since the days of the Counter Reformation, in the second half of the sixteenth century, Catholic Europe craved ornate religious motifs, most households decorating their homes with religious or secular glass panels. In addition, the thousands of churches and chapels in Germany, Austria, Romania, Czechoslovakia a well as Spain, Portugal and Italy maintained a constant demand for quantities of reproduction paintings, glass being a beautiful substitute for the real thing. By the 18th century reverse glass paintings were being shipped around the world in huge quantities, with some of the most beautiful reverse painting to have ever been done coming from China. The Chinese taught the Eastern Indians, and so it spread around the world. It is estimated that during the 18th and 19th centuries some sixty million pieces of reverse glass painting were produced in Central Europe alone; that is 300,000 panels per year.
Largely due to their fragility many, many panels have been lost to us, but the derivative nature of the work also prevented it from being valued sufficiently to be either documented properly or preserved. It is hardly any wonder than accidental discovery in those pre-war years in the Bavarian mountains should have triggered such romantic thoughts.
In German studies distinctions of style and history have been made from region to region, centering on the areas around Nuremberg and Augsburg. Pieces have been carefully examined and attributed wherever possible. Apart from these publications, and a few other out of prints texts, there is not as yet, very much documented.
End of Part 2
About the author:
Frances Binnington has been practicing, researching and teaching gilding on glass in England and the U.S. since the early eighties. She is London born, where she was a partner in an antique furniture restoration business whose clients included museums and private collectors. She is a member of the Society of Gilders and has been resident in the U.S. since 1992. If your curiosity is aroused, please visit her web-site at: www.gilding.net, e-mail her at: frances@gilding.net.
