Joseph Carl Berthold Püttner (Planà, 1821 – Vöslau, 1881), Gondolas at sunset in front of St. Mark's Square and Santa Maria della Salute

Joseph Carl Berthold Püttner (Planà, 1821 – Vöslau, 1881) Gondolas at sunset in front of St. Mark's Square and Santa Maria della Salute (2) Oil on canvas, cm 34.5 x 50.5 With frame, cm 53.5 x 68.5 Signed and dated: "J.C.B. Püttner, 1873 and 1874" The pair of canvases under examination, depicting gondolas at sunset in front of St. Mark's Square and the Basilica of Santa Maria della Salute respectively, were made, the first in 1873 and the second the following year, by the Czech artist Joseph Carl Berthold Püttner (Planà, 1821 – Vöslau, 1881), as attested by the signatures placed in the lower right. Born in 1821 in Planá, in what is now the Czech Republic, he was the son of Johann Karl Püttner, an officer in the Principality of Reuss, and spent his youth between the cities of Prague, Leitmeritz and Pilsen. After attending high school in Egra and completing an initial six-year apprenticeship in a porcelain factory near Karlovy Vary, he decided to independently develop his artistic skills: without recommendation and as a complete self-taught artist, he settled in Vienna, where to survive he often had to settle for painting cooks or apprentice tailors in exchange for a few florins. Püttner's official debut in the art world took place in 1842, when he presented a watercolor portrait at the annual exhibition of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, which saw his participation in subsequent years with his first forays as a landscape painter. Thanks to the patronage of the wealthy Zichy family, from 1842 to 1845 he worked as a drawing teacher at Lang Castle in Székesfehérvár, Hungary, before embarking on a first short study trip to Rome in the summer of 1846 and subsequently to the Netherlands. The move to Hamburg in 1850 marked a turning point in his artistic career: his seascapes and landscapes, mostly in romantic style, were a great success among German bankers and merchants, above all the two art-loving brothers Gustav and César Godefroy, the city's most influential shipowners, who made all their ships available to the artist. Thus, in the spring of 1851, Püttner boarded the ship Alfred in Glückstadt and first circumnavigated Cape Horn to Valparaiso, where he landed after a 104-day journey during which he worked continuously. A stay in Iceland and a new study trip between 1852 and 1853 in North and South America are also documented, with stops at the islands of Tonga and Tahiti and in the Cordillera hinterland. He then sailed along the west coast of South America through Chile, Bolivia and Peru to Panama and traveled to the West Indies, traveling over two thousand miles by train in the United States, up to the upper Mississippi. Upon his return to Europe, after various stays in England, Germany, Belgium and Holland, he decided in 1855 to move permanently to Vienna, where in 1861 he became a member of the Künstlerhaus of Vienna and where he was appointed marine painter to the Austrian court, restoring numerous paintings in the possession of the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph. From 1869 Püttner settled in Vöslau with his wife, niece of the English tenor Charles Incledon, where he died in 1881. Among the most important trips he made during his maturity was undoubtedly the one to Italy, where he had the opportunity to see the main cities of the peninsula up close, remaining fascinated by the timeless beauty of Venice. Püttner's Venetian views, in fact, represent a fascinating and distinctive chapter within the vast production of this artist: known for his thematic versatility, his interpretations of Venice possess a unique quality that distinguishes them in the nineteenth-century vedute panorama, revealing a pictorial approach imbued with romantic sensibility and an acute sense of atmosphere. As in the two cases in example, the artist's ability to capture the changing light and the ethereal aura of the lagoon city emerges. His skies, vast and dominant, are rendered with fluid and delicate brushstrokes, modulating tones ranging from the pale pinks and diaphanous blues of the early hours of the day to the fiery golds of sunset. This attention to light is not merely descriptive: it becomes a fundamental narrative element, capable of evoking romantic melancholy, serene quiet or the vibrant energy of the city. His views are not simple picturesque postcards, but rather visual meditations on the beauty of the places he has the opportunity to visit, on the relationship between man and the surrounding environment, and on the timeless charm of unique places in the world.