For BADA week we have chosen to showcase this engaging portrait by Hugo Von Bouvard. He was born in Vienna in 1879 and from 1908 studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts under Rudolf Bacher. In 1910 he began studying at Heinrich Knirr's private school in Munich and then at Dachau and Karlsruhe under Hans Muller.
In 1914 he was conscripted into the army and sent to the front line, being made a war artist in 1915. He returned from the war highly decorated and in 1921 joined the Vienna Secession. He was a painter of Austrian landscapes and still life pieces, but is best known for his many portraits.
One such striking portrait, done in 1925, is of Geoffrey Scott, author of ‘The Architecture of Humanism’, and ‘The History of Taste’. Scott was also architect to the distinguished art historian, Bernard Berenson and was responsible for much of the rebuilding of Berenson’s Florentine villa ‘I Tatti’.
Scott’s portrait is held in the RIBA collection, London. After a decade living in England, between 1938 and 1948, Hugo Bouvard returned permanently to Vienna, becoming a member of the Vienna Kunstlerhaus. He was a regular exhibitor at both the Vienna Secession and the Kunstlerhaus.
A fine and engaging portrait, signed top right, and dated 1928.
Within the original silver leaf frame. o.s: 33.5 inches x 41 inches.