Picture Perfect

 

Art does not have to be large and grand
to be appreciated for its beauty of design.
Sometimes a simple illustration
is equally charming.

 

 

 This is especially true in portrait sketches.
A skilled artist draws our attention to a face
with subtle strokes of a pen or brush.
Instantly we recognize a personality or character
that we know from our own life experience.

Today I present examples of this kind of pure natural art
created by an Austrian artist, Hermann Torggler. 

A native of Graz, Austria, Hermann Torggler, (1878-1939) first studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, and in 1908 moved to Vienna where he established a studio specializing in portraiture of Austrian nobility, military officers, and the upper classes of Vienna. These postcards date from his earlier career, perhaps even his student years in Munich and were published by Fr. A. Ackermann, Kunstverlag, München.

 

 

 

The first picture is a young woman in a garden setting playing a harp. The caption title is Andante, the Italian musical term for a modest strolling tempo. The postmark dates from 20 February 1900.

 

 

 

 

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The next postcard is entitled Studienkopf VI and shows a head study of a dark haired woman turned in part profile. She wears a large flower(?) in her hair and a hoop pendant hanging from her left ear, a classical style pose. Several people have signed the bottom of the card in pencil. The postmark is unclear but I think it is from around 1901, and certainly dates from the pre-war era of Kaiser Franz Joseph.

  

 

 

 

 

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The next portrait is a young musician, a woman with a violin, and given a title of In Harmonie! She is dressed in a gauzy Grecian-like gown with a flower band in her hair. Long time readers may remember her from my story Ein schönes Mädchen published in November 2019. This is a duplicate card that was sent through the Bavarian postal service in June 1899.

 

 

 

 

 

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The publisher Ackermann, Kunstverlag, was based in München, so their postcards were distributed widely over Bavaria, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. This next portrait is another dark haired beauty who may be holding a lute-like instrument or a serving tray. It's partly hidden but I think her fingers are plucking at a string instrument like a mandolin or lute. Torggler liked to feature female musicians in his postcards and did a series of musical portraits which I featured in November 2020, Hermann Torggler's Great Composers - part 1 and part 2.

 

This card has a cryptic message on the front that looks like a kind of short hand scribble and is in sharp contrast to the elegant penmanship of the address. The postmark is also from Bayern/Bavaria with a date of 11 July 1902.

 

 

 

 

 

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This weekend, (18-20 November 2022), western New York was hit with a fierce snowstorm that is predicted to dump 6+ feet of snow on the region. Being Austrian, Torggler knew something about the magical and spine-chilling qualities of snow. It's fun to watch it and sometimes play in it, but generally it's just a big icy mess that hangs around until spring. 

 

 

This last card shows two children, a boy and a girl, at play outdoors in the snow. An overly jolly snowman seems to reach out for the little girl. The title reads:

Der verliebte Schneemann
~
The snowman in love

This card was sent to Wien on 10 January 1900.

 

 

When Torggler's postcards were first offered to the public in the late 1890s, the medium of the picture postcard was still a new novelty. Instead of just sending a short message, people were discovering that they could now include an artistic gift of a picture of a pretty girl playing the harp or just gazing pensively into the distance. It was a way of conveying friendship, affection, even love. I especially like how his young women are depicted in a natural way without commercial affectations like a fashion model in an advertisement. Obviously there is some romantic sentimentality in the images, but Torggler was merely following a cultural trend that was popular in this era. 

Since his simple artwork did not require color printing they were cheap to produce. I expect Torggler probably sold entire sketch books to Ackermann's company which then chose the best ones and produced them in series. Now 120 years later we get to admire his charming artwork and share the joy they once provided. That's what great art is supposed to do, no mater how small.

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where everyone is checking out the leftovers this weekend.