Biedermeier ― Art and Culture in Central Europe 1815-1848

A wave of revolutionary ideals, the collapse of Napoleon's imperial dreams and the changes wrought by the Restoration all contributed to the birth in Europe of new models of social behaviour accompanied by a taste in art something other than the empire style with its echoes of the classical period. Attention turned instead to the intimate, domestic sphere, to the everyday events in the world of the middle class and to a sentimental and slightly melancholic vision of nature. In Central Europe and especially Austria, Bohemia, Hungary and northern Germany, this milieu came to be defined as "Biedermeier". More than an artistic style, Biedermeier was a way of life which had a profound influence on all the arts in Europe from 1815 to 1848--although with distinct regional variations, for example, in Russia, Scandinavia, France of Charles X and Louis Philippe, Italy of Carlo Alberto of Savoy and in Victorian England. It was especially influential in the areas of furniture design and the decorative arts. This book, with its up-to-date critical and historical reading of Biedermeier, offers an extraordinarily rich repertoire of paintings, glassware, ceramics, textiles and jewellery. It also includes an annotated bibliography providing an overview of the Biedermeier phenomenon, a phenomenon which stands at the root of an emerging middle-class culture in Europe as well as of international modernism.