PORTRAIT AND MONUMENTAL PAINTING OF KARL AREND (1815– 1876): A STUDY OF AUTHORSHIP AND STYLISTIC INFLUENCES

Abstract

The purpose of the article is the study of influences on the formation of stylistic features of portrait and monumental painting by Karl Arend, who worked in Lviv and Chernivtsi in the 19th century, to the determination of authorship and attribution of individual works of the artist. Scientific novelty consists in the process of research, a number of new facts about the life and work of the artist were established, part of his creative output was analyzed and introduced into scientific circulation. Special attention was paid to portrait and sacred painting by K. Arend. Archival and few literary sources have been studied, which made it possible to reconstruct the biography of the artist, to clarify, in particular, the time of his work in Lviv and Chernivtsi as an artist of the Bukovyna Orthodox Consistory and to establish the dates of his life. The portrait and iconographic works of the artist were analyzed, which allowed to determine the influences that became decisive for the formation of stylistic features of his paintings, in which there is a noticeable imitation of Biedermeier’s features, characteristic of the artistic culture of Austria-Hungary in the first half of the 19th century. The methodology of attribution of the studied works is outlined. As a result of a detailed study of the stylistic and other features of the portraits, the date of their execution was established. At once, a comparative analysis of portraits from the Lviv period, including the one with the image of the Miers couple, and the exhibits of the Chernivtsi Art Museum gave grounds for a well-founded assumption about the belonging of some of the portraits, namely “Portrait of the Unknown” and “Portrait of the Unknown Woman” from the collection to the work of Karl Arend. It is proved that the attribution of monumental and portrait paintings made by the artist is relevant both for the scientific research activities of the museum and for supplementing data on the history of regional art and culture of Ukraine in general, which contains the influence of a significant number of artistic styles and directions of European art.