Johann Adalbert Kratochwill and His Two ‘Indian’ Interiors in Bohemia

Abstract

While the work of western European lacquer workshops has been described in much detail, the lacquer workshops in central Europe have not been extensively researched. Nevertheless, they, too, reflected the taste for exotic themes and non-traditional techniques imported from the Orient with the same intensity starting in the late seventeenth century, when an increasing number of aristocratic residences in the region were decorated with exotic and iconographical unfamiliar depictions and interiors (featuring imported Oriental pieces or their more readily available copies). They were produced by local artists and craftsmen, who learned to translate motifs from contemporary literature or their own experience using themes from the past. In the same way as neighbouring Saxony had Martin Schnell or Berlin had Gérard Dagly, the territory of Austria had its own peerless lacquer master – Johann Adalbert Kratochwill, who did lacquerware with scenes in the chinoiserie style. In Bohemia Kratochwill was known under the Czech version of his name Jan Vojtěch Kratochvíl or Jan Vojtěch Kratochvíle. In archival sources his surname is sometimes referred to as Cratochwill. His activities are most closely linked with the aristocratic Sachsen-Lauenburg family, namely the Margrave of Baden-Baden, and the family residences in Schlackenwerth (Ostrov nad Ohří) and Rastatt, Germany. Somewhat later, his presence is documented in Vienna and then Prague. In Bohemia, Kratochwill was one of the artists who had a monopoly on exotic decorative elements. In 1712, he obtained an imperial privilege to use varnish paints, which until then had not been used in the Czech Lands. In 1718, he even acquired an imperial patent for a ten-year privilege to paint ‘in the Indian manner’ throughout Austria. His lacquer workshop is also interesting for the fact that it carried on after his death under the management of his widow, the painter Maria Anna Kratochvillin, who headed it for almost twenty years. Kratochwill decorated the Chinese Salon in the palace of prominent nobleman Wenzel Adalbert of Sternberg on the Prague Castle grounds. He drew inspiration from non-European models and emulated the principles of Japanese and Chinese lacquerware imported to Europe by the Dutch East India Company. It has recently been shown that the Oriental Salon in the Sternberg Palace might not have been the only work his workshop did on Bohemian territory. Another newly discovered product of Kratochwill's workshop is the dining hall decoration of the chateau in Zákupy/Reichstadt, North Bohemia. Its connection with this master had not been previously known, but a thorough study reveals a composition similar to that of the panels from the Sternberg Palace in Prague.

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