Painting: Reunion in Vienna

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In few quarters of the civilized globe do the wheels of bureaucracy grind so exceedingly slow as they do in the former realm of the Habsburgs. Thus it came as no surprise to Austrians that when the state-run Kunsthistorisches Museum recently opened a "new gallery," in a suite in Vienna's old Imperial palace, it turned out to be filled with 120 paintings by 19th century French and German artists. The collection had been taken down shortly after the Anschluss of 1938, and not been on display since. Any other country would have hustled them onto museum walls—if only to lure a few tourists—but the Austrian government allowed them to molder in a disused salt mine for 28 years.

What did amaze the critics was the caliber of the work. "Fabulous!" raved the critic for the prestigious Neue Zurcher. "A collection of many practically unknown masterpieces." Particularly admired were two Van Goghs, a Landscape of Auvers painted just three weeks before his death in 1890 and an 1886 self-portrait. A voluptuous Renoir, After the Bath, painted in 1876, is the twin to one in Moscow's Push kin Museum. Also on view are outstand ing paintings by Cezanne, Delacroix, Millet, Manet, Monet, Degas and Corot. But, for many critics, the most exciting works were four oils and two sepia sketches of the view through his window by the German Romantic, Caspar David Friedrich, who died in 1840. Their misty vistas and eerily precise draftsmanship emphasize the mystic tie that binds Goethian romanticism to 20th century gothic surrealism.