Austrian BiedermeierGLOSSARYTerm applied to a style characteristic of much German and Austrian art and interior decoration in the period roughly between the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1815) and the Year of Revolutions (1848). The name derives from a fictional character called Gottlieb Biedermaier (sic) from the journal Fliegende Elssner (Flying Leaves), who personified the solid yet philistine qualities of the bourgeois middle classes, and the art to which he lent his name eschewed flights of the imagination in favour of sobriety, domesticity, and often sentimentality. There were, as is to be expected, no major painters associated with Biedermeier but many excellent practitioners, such as Waldmüller. The term is sometimes extended to cover the work of artists in other countries. painter. Having studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Johann Baptist Drechsler (1756-1811), Nigg began working in a Viennese porcelain factory as a flower painter. He continued to work there over the next forty years, also holding painting classes.
With the advent of the Biedermeier era, flower painting became immensely fashionable and examples could be found on large porcelain plaques. A piece of this sort, approximately 30 cm in height, was presented by Nigg on behalf of the Viennese porcelain factory at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London.
In addition to being a porcelain painter, Nigg was also known for working in pastelGLOSSARYA drawing medium of dried paste made of ground pigments and a water-based binder that is manufactured in crayon form., watercolourGLOSSARYPigment ground in gum, usually gum arabic, and applied with brush and water to a painting surface, usually paper; the term also denotes a work of art executed in this medium. The pigment is ordinarily transparent but can be made opaque by mixing with a whiting and in this form is known as body colour, or gouache; it can also be mixed with casein, a phosphoprotein of milk. Watercolour compares in range and variety with any other painting method. Transparent watercolour allows for a freshness and luminosity in its washes and for a deft calligraphic brushwork that makes it a most alluring medium. There is one basic difference between transparent watercolour and all other heavy painting mediums - its transparency. The oil painter can paint one opaque colour over another until he has achieved his desired result. The whites are created with opaque white. The watercolourist's approach is the opposite. In essence, instead of building up he leaves out. The white paper creates the whites. The darkest accents may be placed on the paper with the pigment as it comes out of the tube or with very little water mixed with it. Otherwise the colours are diluted with water. The more water in the wash, the more the paper affects the colours; for example, vermilion, a warm red, will gradually turn into a cool pink as it is thinned with more water. The dry-brush technique - the use of the brush containing pigment but little water, dragged over the rough surface of the paper - creates various granular effects similar to those of crayon drawing. Whole compositions can be made in this way. This technique also may be used over dull washes to enliven them. and oil. He died in Vienna in 1863, survived by his son, the painter Alois Nigg.
Paintings by Nigg can be found in museums in Vienna (Museum fûr Kunst und Industrie), Milan (Brera), Salzburg (Museum Carolino-Augusteum) and St Petersburg (Hermitage).
