Seite - 303 - in Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg - Netzwerker der Kunstwelt

Rudolf von Eitelberger and Leopold Carl Müller 303 moting naturalist principles of painting, Müller voiced pedagogical convictions similar to Eitelberger’s during the 1870s. Eitelberger still believed that the Old Masters were the foundation of artistic training and that “naturalistic principles” should be guarded against, but he increasingly advocated a judicious balance. Failure, he noted in 1877 and 1879, resulted when extremes were pursued, whether in realism, as was the case of Leibl and the Berlin painter Karl Gussow, or academic Neoclassicism and the Romanticism of Peter von Cornelius and Friedrich Overbeck.41 Naturalism  – and the notion of art recording a lived experience  – would also play a key role in both men’s understanding of genre painting. Of Müller’s six suggested subjects for his commission, his favorite was an Egyp- tian Jahrmarkt, which allowed him to represent “die verschiedenen Racen der hiesigen Bevölkerung […] Gaukler aller Art, Tänzerinnen und Wahrsager […]. Solche Märkte werden zu Ehren irgend eines mohamedanischen Heiligen abgehalten,” he noted, “und sind eigentlich Festmärkte. Der [sic] Durcheinander von Menschen, Thieren, Zelten u.  s.  w. ist das Malerischste, das ich in meinem Leben gesehen habe.”42 His enthusiasm undoubtedly derived from his recent trip to the town of Dessuk in Lower Egypt where he had witnessed one of these fairs. The final painting, Markt in Cairo, would be partially informed by those sketches.43 In selecting this subject, he was also choosing an event that most Western authors on Egypt believed best captured the essential spirit of the country. Georg Ebers wrote : “whoever desires to learn something of the character of a nation must […] study the people at their festivals […]. This advice should be taken specially to heart by those whose duty it may be […] to describe the manners, the being, and doing of Oriental civic communities.”44 In a letter to Eitelberger from 7  May, Müller more fully explained his views about Volk genre as cultural immersion, vehemently defending his choice against Dalmatian and Viennese alternatives. Referencing Cairo, he wrote : Im Besitze zahlreicher Studien, ausgestattet mit reichlicher Kenntniß hiesiger Sitten und Ge- bräuche, glaube ich ein gutes Bild machen zu können. Mit einem Bilde aus Dalmatien jedoch würden mir große Schwierigkeiten erwachsen. Ich kann heute kein Thema aus dem dalmati- 41 Eitelberger, Vorwort, in : idem, Gesammelte kunsthistorische Schriften, vol.  2 (cit. n.  15), p.  VI, and idem, Die Kunst-Entwicklung des heutigen Wien. Retrospective Betrachtungen aus Anlass der historischen Kunst-Ausstellung der Wiener Akademie [1877], in : idem, Gesammelte kunsthistor- ische Schriften, vol.  1 (cit. n.  22), pp.  1–36, esp. p.  11. 42 Müller to Eitelberger, 9  April 1875, in : Zemen (ed.), Leopold Carl Müller (cit. n.  2), p.  203. 43 The drawings appeared as illustrations in G. Ebers, Egypt : Descriptive, Historical, and Picturesque, vol.  I, translated by Clara Bell, London, Paris and New York 1884, p.  72 and p.  81. 44 Ebers, Egypt (cit. n.  43), vol.  II, p.  80.