Countess Széchenyi
Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (Austrian, 1793–1865)
1828
- Medium
- oil on fabric
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 121.5 x 102 x 10.5 cm (47 13/16 x 40 3/16 x 4 1/8 in.); Unframed: 97.8 x 78.5 cm (38 1/2 x 30 7/8 in.)
- Culture
- Austria
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This portrait typifies painting in Vienna between 1815 and 1865, an era known as the Biedermeier period, during which the Habsburg government promoted positive artistic depictions of Viennese life and culture. The mountains in the background express both the artist's romantic fascination with nature and patriotic devotion to his Austrian homeland. The sitter, Crescentia Seilern, was a prestigious member of the aristocracy who married Hungarian reformist patriot István Széchenyi.
