03 — ARTWORK
Lifeboat
- MEDIUM
- Oil on canvas, 135 x 190 cm
- TYPE
- Genre
PALETTE
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CURRENT LOCATION · Magyar Nemzeti Galéria
- FILE
- 878 × 619 px · JPEG
COMMENTARY
UNDERLINED TERMS ARE DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY.
Mihály Zichy was 19 years old when he painted the picture. Zichy, a pupil of Waldmüller in Vienna, went on with his career in Pest the same year. Although his master, a realist of character portrayal, had taught Zichy the same ideas, the picture was by no manner of menas similar to the popular and amusing style of Austrian genre paintingThe depiction of scenes from everyday life. Elements of everyday life had long had a role in religious works; pictures in which such elements were the subject of a painting developed in the 16th century with such artists as Pieter Bruegel. Then Carracci and Caravaggio developed genre painting in Italy, but it was in Holland in the 17th century that it became an independent form with its own major achievements, Vermeer being one of its finest exponents.. The picture can be linked to Géricault and Delacroix who initiated French romanticismA term loosely applied to literary and artistic movements of the late 18th and 19th centuries. Resulting in part from the libertarian and egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution, the romantic movements had in common only a revolt against the prescribed rules of classicism. The basic aims of romanticism were various: a return to nature and to belief in the goodness of humanity; the rediscovery of the artist as a supremely individual creator; the development of nationalistic pride; and the exaltation of the senses and emotions over reason and intellect. In addition, romanticism was a philosophical revolt against rationalism.. By moving the figures right into the foreground, Zichy gave a psychologic analysis of his defenceless figures. Typical figures of Vienna biedermeierTerm 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. appear in the picture: small children playfully stretching out for the crucifix, old women praying, old men with beard and models of the art academy. What makes the picture even more surprising is young Zichy's skills of dramatic portrayal of the scene.
Théophile Gautier, the French apostleone of the twelve disciples of Jesus, chosen personally by him from amongst his large crowd of followers in order to continue his work and preach the gospels. of romanticism, called young Zichy "monstre de génie" because he increased tensions to the utmost in his pictures. With his "Life Boat" the young artist rebelled against coolly sophisticated academism and won the prize of the Academy in spite of its old professors.
OTHER WORKS BY MIHÁLY ZICHY
CITE THIS RECORD — BIBTEX
@online{wga-r4c483dee2d241b,
author = {Krén, Emil and Marx, Daniel},
title = {Lifeboat by ZICHY, Mihály},
organization = {{Web Gallery of Art}},
date = {2026-09-13},
url = {https://beta.wga.hu/artists/zichy-mihly-r9556aabb14f602/lifeboat-r4c483dee2d241b},
urldate = {2026-09-13},
langid = {english}
}ACCESSED 2026-09-13. REPLACE THE AUTHOR FIELD WITH THE COMMENTARY AUTHOR WHERE ONE IS NAMED.