Hinterglasmalerei#

Eglomise Painting, painting technique in which colours impervious to light (water colours, tempera, oil or mixed) paints are applied to the rear side of thin glass panels (initially streaky greenish Waldglas, i.e. glass made in small woodland workshops), producing a particularly brilliant image under incident light. In contrast with the normal sequence of painting phases, the craftsman first applies the foreground (contours, lettering) and shadings, followed by the medium hues and finally the background and backing. The technique involves partial gilding (garments, aureolas), metal coating of unpainted surfaces with tin foil or mercury, masking the backing with soot and linseed oil, cutting contour drawings into gold or silver backings and setting "eglomise etchings" in finely-etched mirror frames. Eglomise painting has been known since the 14th century and serial production started in Italy in the 16th century. From the mid-17th century, workshop manufacturing was increasingly practised in the Alpine regions, Bohemia, the Bavarian Forest, Upper Austria, the Mediterranean countries and Eastern Europe. The workshops were operated in conjunction with glass factories, and the high-quality works of art produced in earlier periods were superseded by mass-produced paintings based on standard patterns of an expressive and naive nature. Centres in Austria were Sandl, Buchers, Schwertberg and Karlstift in the Waldviertel region. Eglomise paintings, mostly with religious and popular motifs, were produced in a kind of cottage industry and distributed to all the countries of the Monarchy by "Kraner" (hawkers from Carniola (Krajna), South Tirol, the Palatinate, the Odenwald region and the Bavarian Forest). They were set up as devotional pictures in house chapels, roadside shrines and in the corners of the farmhouse living-rooms and have become valuable collectors' items. In the 1970s, eglomise painting was revived by artisans organising courses for amateur painters. There is a "Hinterglasmuseum" at Sandl, and the "Muehlviertler Heimathaus" local heritage museum at Freistadt, Upper Austria, the Upper Austrian Provincial Museum and the Austrian Folklore Museum (Oesterreichisches Museum fuer Volkskunde) in Vienna have numerous specimens on display.

Literature#