10.2 The Organization and Documentation of Hoser’s Collection
In 1837, Hoser opened his collection in his apartment in Vienna to the public.1 For the arrangement of the paintings on the walls, the collector had developed a theoretical scheme, which he published in his Ideen über die zweckmässigste Einrichtung von Gemälde-Gallerien und Cabinetten (Ideas about the most appropriate arrangement of painting galleries and cabinets) in 1845.2 He called this scheme or method (in translation) ‘the architectonic arrangement’: starting from a central axis of one or more central paintings, smaller side paintings should be added symmetrically to both sides in several rows, forming ,’as it were, a kind of floating architectonic fronts’.3 When Hoser presented his collection in the Prague gallery of the Society of Patriotic Friends of the Arts in 1845, located in Sternberg Palace on Hradčany, he applied this system. The gallery director Joseph Karl Burde (1779–1848) made drawings of the planned hanging [3].4 Hoser adapted the arrangement to the larger rooms of the palace, using pictures with larger formats which he had recently acquired. Because he did not have enough works to display, he was not able to divide them into nations and schools. Consequently, he arranged them according to ‘classes’, which he regarded hierarchically: from the so-called decorative paintings (which included still life, animal pieces and interiors), to landscapes, marines, genre painting, portraits, and, finally, history painting, the highest-ranking genre [4].5 Suitable side pictures were counterparts or pictures that complemented the central paintings in format, theme or appearance. On the one hand, this arrangement was intended to aesthetically appeal to inexperienced laymen, but on the other hand also to satisfy those, who had a scholarly interest in art. The hanging of the other pictures from the collection of the Society in the other rooms of the gallery was carried out by director Burde: they were arranged according to schools in conventional dense rows or columns with a central symmetry axis [5].6
In 1846, Josef Hoser published a detailed, annotated catalogue raisonné of his collection thereby demonstrating his connoisseurship.7 In the catalogue, he provides detailed information on the lives and works of the artists, on the provenance of the works, and he listed known print reproductions or copies of the pictures. Hoser donated his auction catalogues as well as the reproduction prints and portrait prints of the artists represented in his collection to the Society of Patriotic Friends of the Arts.8 Unfortunately, his stock of auction catalogues has been lost. Hoser continued to purchase paintings, which he added to the gift, until it amounted to 327 works at the time of his death.9 Hoser’s donation was the most important basis of the permanent collection of the Picture Gallery of Patriotic Friends of the Arts. A large part of the exhibits were only loaned by members of the Society. It was not until 1835 that the Society began to build its own collection of paintings. Hoser himself saw his donation as a patriotic act: his collection was to be ‘a useful common good of the nation’, aimed especially at ‘training the sense for art’ in his ‘young compatriots’.10
3
Josef Karl Burde, scheme of hanging of J. Hoser’s paintings according Hoser’s own design in the Gallery of the Society of Patriotic Friends of the Arts in Sternberg Palace, Prague 1843–1844; Wall IV of the cabinet
Archive of National Gallery Prague. Credit: Šámal – Brožová 2015, p. 109, fig. 68
4
Scheme of hanging of J. Hoser’s paintings according his own design in the Gallery of the Society of Patriotic Friends of the Arts in Sternberg Palace (1843–1844, Wall IV of the cabinet, see fig. 3) with partial reconstruction by Stefan Bartilla
5
Josef Karl Burde, scheme of hanging of Netherlandish painting after Burdes design in the Gallery of the Society of Patriotic Friends of the Arts in Sternberg Palace, Prague 1838–1844; Archive of National Gallery Prague. Credit: Šámal/Brožová 2015, p. 106, fig. 66
Notes
1 Hoser 1838 (personal copy with handwritten addendum listing acquisitions from 1839–1840: Library of National Gallery in Prague, signature KX1122).
2 Hoser 1845, ‘An den Leser’.
3 Hoser 1845, p. 18: ‘Diese Methode besteht aber darin, dass eine willkürliche, dem Locale jedoch anpassende Zahl vor Gemälden, je nach der Höhe der Wand, von einem oder mehren Mittelbildern ausgehend, und sich nach beiden Seiten in mehren kleine Nebenbilder symmetrisch verbreitend, gleichsam eine Art schwebender architectonischer Fronten, nur im umgekehrten Sinne, weil hier die grossen und schweren Massen oben, in der Architectur aber unten ihren Platz finden, bilden, und als solche einer unendlichen Abwechslung fähig, selbst wieder gewissermassen eine grosses und regelmässiges Gemälde darstellt, eine Methode, die wir eben um dieser Regelmässigkeit und Symmetrie willen die architectonische Anordnung nennen möchten’.
4 Šámal/Brožová 2015, p. 109, fig. 68.
5 Hoser 1846, pp. XV–XIX.
6 Šámal/Brožová 2015, pp. 106–107, fig. 65–67.
7 Hoser 1846.
8 Slavíček 2009, pp. 58–76.
9 Vlnas 1993, p. 24.
10 Hoser 1846, p. III.