Patrick Bade
Biedermeier: Vienna

Patrick Bade - Biedermeier: Vienna

- Well, hello everybody. And I can almost hear people saying, “Biedermeier? Biedermeier, what on earth is Biedermeier?” Well, it’s a period with very precise dates. It starts in 1814 with the Vienna Congress and it ends in 1848 with the revolutions throughout Europe. So it’s a period, it’s a style as far as furniture is concerned. This wonderful desk is a very typical Biedermeier desk, and I’m going to talk about that later, and decorative arts. It’s not something you could describe as a movement like the Enlightenment or Romanticism. It’s really a way of life. It’s an ethos and it’s found in all the German speaking countries and Scandinavia. And you can find some parallels in other countries, in Russia, in England and France. Now, the name ‘Biedermeier’ was coined right at the end of the period. And as so often with movements or styles or whatever you want to call them, it actually started off as a pejorative term. Biedermeier was a character in a satirical journal called ‘Fliegende Blatter’ which was founded in 1845. And is really, Brits of a certain age, anyway, remember a similar journal that we had called, ‘Hunch’, which was found around the same time and lasted well into the 20th century. Now ‘bieder’ in German means honest, decent, honest, and ‘Meier’ is just a very, very common name. So Biedermeier is sort of like ‘Honest Smith’, ‘Honest Jones’. And he is a pretty bourgeois and he’s kind of small minded with very small horizons, you could say. And in the second half of the 19th century, particularly the latter part, which in Germany is called the . That’s a period of industrialization. Germany became very wealthy, very ambitious. They looked back on this period from 1814 to 1848 with a certain contempt as being boring and pretty bourgeois. As I said, it’s a kind of way of life that you see represented in this picture.

There’s a huge emphasis on family values and lots and lots of family images that I’m going to show with you. Everything about this picture, this is quite late in the period, this picture, because the costume looks like it’s about 1840, but you see three generations together. You see granny sewing by the window, you see several members of the family making music together and there are children playing, doing children’s things and there are toys and on the floor and there are pets and so on. So it’s very kind of cosy and domestic. Now, the greatest cultural achievements of this period, 1814 to 1848 are musical. I think you can say that some of the greatest music ever written was created in this period. I’ve got Beethoven, on the right hand side, he’s hardly somebody you would call cosy or Biedermeier nor really Weber, great romantic opera composer on the left hand side. But they’re working in this period and later in the period, you’ve got Mendelssohn on the right hand side and you’ve got Robert and Clara Schumann. If you want to pick out a composer who embodies the spirit of Biedermeier, it would have to be Franz Schubert. Now, I don’t want to label him as a Biedermeier composer because that would be too limiting. There’s more to Schubert than that. He’s obviously a great genius and there are many aspects to his art, but there is a very, very Biedermeier side to his art that is, as I said, cosy, convivial. There’s a very nice word in German, which can’t quite be translated into English, which is ‘gemutlich’.

And Schubert in his songs and his chamber music can be very ‘gemutlich’ and a great deal of his work, most of his work, actually, was composed for amateur performance, the songs and the chamber music. And I want to play you one of the most famous pieces of chamber music. This is a movement from the ‘Trout Quintet’. This is written well in the middle of this period, 1819. And as usual, it was written for amateur performance, for a group of friends. One of the friends was a postman who played the double bass. So this is written for quartet, string quartet and double bass. And I’m actually not going to tell you what it is or perhaps I told you already, but anyway, I think most of you will recognise it as soon as it starts. That’s the trout swimming through the rippling water described by the strings there accompanying the piano. Now in 1815, Europe is exhausted after more than 20 years of continuous warfare. First of all, the French Revolutionary Wars and then the Napoleonic Wars and finally, finally, finally after Waterloo in 1815, Napoleon is packed off to exile and those naughty French, those irritating French are reconfined within their own borders and everybody can breathe a deep sigh of relief. Here is the, the Emperor Francis coming back to Vienna at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. And then you have this very famous Vienna Congress. Actually, what it’s most famous for, is that everybody had a very good time, that the diplomacy was all done quite informally, and there were wonderful banquets, lots of balls, and a lot of fun was had by all at the Vienna Congress of 1814 to 15. Here are the two most important characters.

On the right, is the Austrian chancellor, Count Metternich, a very wily operator, but not quite as wily as Talleyrand, who you see on the left hand side. He’s probably the most famous, the most celebrated, the most notorious diplomat in history. Very, very brilliant man. So he was actually representing the defeated France but he was so clever at setting everybody against everybody else and intriguing and doing all sorts of very naughty stuff, that actually France came out of it all remarkably well. There’s, I read a nice story the other day. It was in some, I think it was actually in relation, was it to Boris Johnson? I can’t remember. But anyway, apparently when Talleyrand died, Metternich was convinced that somehow, it must be just another trick in his playbook. And when told that Talleyrand was dead, he said, “Oh, what did he mean by that?” So this is the new Europe that was drawn up after at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. And you can see Austria-Hungary is an enormous area of pink in the heart of Europe. And the- You’ve got the German Confederation of different German states. Previously, to French Revolution and the Revolutionary Wars that had been over 300 states in what is now Germany and Austria. And that was reduced to, to 30 from 300. Here is the German Confederation. But there is a new sense of national identity abroad. It’s from this period. I think it was a reaction, of course, to the French occupation. So this desire for German nationhood that is born around this time is partly an anti-French feeling. And you’ve got, on the left, you’ve got this huge monument from the banks of the Danube called the ‘Befreiungshalle’, the ‘Freedom Hall’, the ‘Liberty Hall’ by Klenze. And so that’s in Bavaria. And on the right hand side, we have a painting by Caspar David Friedrich called ‘The Chasseur in the Forest’. And that’s often interpreted as a French soldier who’s lost and abandoned in the vast German forest.

And it’s often seen as an anti-French and a German nationalist image. Now, what Metternich wanted to do, what all the people wanted to do, all the leaders in Europe in 1815, was to put the genie of liberty and revolution that had been unleashed by the French, they wanted to put that back into the bottle. And Metternich was very keen on telling people, you know, the middle classes, you just get on with your lives, you tend your back gardens and leave the business of government to your betters. That was his message. Here are two very, very Biedermeier portraits. You see a woman, this must be about 1820 I think, in Vienna. And she’s sitting in her lovely back garden and she’s reading what is presumably a religious or moralising book, great big, thick book and she is knitting. And I’m going to show you an awful lot of images of women knitting or doing crochet. Idle hands were not approved of in the Biedermeier period. If you, if all of my female listeners today, if you are from the Biedermeier period, you’d be busy knitting and crocheting while you listen to this talk. There’s also a new interest or emphasis on hobbies of all kinds. And this is a popular artist of the period, called Carl Spitzweg. He’s a South German artist and he loved painting eccentric gentleman pursuing their hobbies of all kinds. But the big emphasis, as I said, is on family life and domesticity. You can see this very characteristic, commemorative cup of the period, which has been decorated to celebrate the birth of a child on August the 15th, 1819. There are many, many family periods, paintings from this period. Here are two characteristic ones. One on the left, you can see it’s actually two families. There’s presumably the parents who perhaps have died, I don’t know, in the meantime. And you’ve got the six children and they’re all preparing to make music together and on the right hand side and every, you don’t want to waste your time. So you can see all the women on the left hand side, well, most of the women, have got busy hands. They’re sewing or whatever or they’re making music. And you see children and pets and toys.

And again, this picture, which I’ve talked about already, so I’ll move on. Children, childhood. Now it’s often said that it’s the 18th century that discovers the notion of childhood. Often people complain to me that children in old master pictures, Dutch an exception, but in Renaissance pictures, they just look like shrunken adults and they don’t behave like children. So Biedermeier children, certainly behave like children. You can, these are very childlike children here in this picture with their little drawings and their toys and so on. But there is a difference. Well see, there’s actually quite an important change in the concept of childhood from the 18th century, say from the Rococo period through to the Biedermeier and Romantic periods. And this is a very characteristic Rococo image of . Actually, it’s the children being given teaspoons of hot chocolate. And it’s, I suppose, adorable if you like that kind of thing. This is an awful lot less cutesy. This is by an artist called Philipp Otto Runge and these are the Hulsenbeck children. And so you have, I think this is a probably a Romantic thing as much as it is a Biedermeier thing. This sense that children are powerful, they’re not just cute little adults. Notice how your, the level of view has actually dropped down to the level of the children. And I think that the fence has been deliberately shrunk. So these look like baby giants and they look very powerful, full of energy. Compare again with the cutesy Lancret on the left hand side. Back to the 18th century, there’s a sort of winsomeness, a very, almost sickly sweet winsomeness in the depiction of children in the mid 18th century.

Compare these two with children of the Biedermeier period. These are by the Danish artist Kobke. So they- They’re quite solemn, quite serious. These are serious beings and not just cutesy little dolls. And these very small children, notice how the image of the child fills a canvas. Again, these seem, there’s a sense of real primordial energy in the very, very young child. And this is something that’s passed on by the Biedermeier artists to later artists like van Gogh here in the middle or Kokoschka who again see small children as a source of some enormous energy. And there is a very sentimental aspect, I suppose, to Biedermeier, anecdotal, cutely humorous. These again are paintings by Spitzweg. And this is Kobke, on the left, he’s Danish. Waldmuller who is Austrian, on the right hand side. Paintings rather anecdotal, sweet paintings of young love. And these paintings, again, they remind me very much of the songs of Schubert and Schumann. And I’m going to play you a song by Robert Schumann called ‘Aus den ostlichen Rosen’. And you can see it’s a declaration of love that might be made in a letter, sung here by the Austrian tenor Richard Tauber. I know I said that as far as the decorative arts are concerned anyway, Biedermeier can be related to Neoclassicism. You could see it as a late variant of the Neoclassical style. I love this painting. It’s a little painting by the Danish artist Kobke. There’s this reverence, of course, for the classical world and particularly a real discovery of Greek art in this period. Not just through Roman copies, but through Greek originals. And you can see that these are plaster reproductions of the so-called Elgin Marbles, the Parthenon Marbles. But what I particularly like about this image, again, is the very domestic touch of this rather bourgeois looking man with his duster dusting down the figure of Theseus.

So artists in the early 19th century are trained in academies earlier on 16th, 17th century. And even through much of the 18th century, the way an artist would be trained would be to be an apprentice in the studio of an older artist. But now, it’s pretty well universal by the early 19th century, that you attend classes at an academy and you train by drawing from plaster cast or drawing from the nude figure. And this pervasive classicism, this love of classical forms, you see it everywhere in Biedermeier decorative arts. Note, you’ve got a, I think this is a coffee pot and you’ve got a desk, but they’re both in the form of a classical urn. And they’re exactly contemporary with this very, one of the most famous poems in the English language by Keats written in 1819, the ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, which I imagine many of you will have studied, maybe even learned by heart when you were at school. So the two big movements in art, which are contemporary but seem like oil and water in the late 18th, early 19th century are Neoclassicism and Romanticism. And here again, Biedermeier has a relationship with Romanticism. And you could say it’s a mutant version of Romanticism, a rather tamer, more domesticated version of Romanticism. This is a Romantic image with a capital R. This is painted by John Martin inspired by Lord Byron’s poem ‘Manfred’. And this is ‘Manfred on the Jungfrau’ and if you are a Romantic young man, you want to teeter on the edge of the precipice. But if you are a Biedermeier family, then maybe you want to enjoy your nature in a rather calmer way and just go for a walk. And so, also in this period, in the early 19th century, there is all over Europe, in France, in England, in Scandinavia, in Germany, suddenly a desire to go out into the open air and to draw and paint from nature.

So this again, I think is particularly, is an aspect of Romanticism in general. And there are many images of people doing this. This man you can see has a box of paints, but from the date, the box is going to be full of either bottles or lattice. The invention of collapsible metal tubes like toothpaste tubes, which really revolutionises landscape painting and leads to Impressionism. This comes a bit later, not till the 1840s really, the end of the Biedermeier period that artists had this great advantage. I’m going to go to, sometimes I’m just going to go some of these images quite, quite quickly because they, they make the point that I’m telling you about this enjoyment of nature. Hiking, that’s a very, very Biedermeier thing to do, to get up very early in the morning, even when the moon is still up and go out for a long walk in the countryside. But you don’t necessarily have to go for a walk to enjoy nature. You can enjoy nature from the comfort and the closeness of your home by looking out the window. And there are endless, endless, endless Biedermeier images of people doing precisely that, looking out of windows and enjoying nature. But you also feel that nature in the Biedermeier period, as I said, it’s domesticated, nature is domesticated and it’s brought into the house. So you find pet birds in cages, of course, they were, had been kept like this since antiquity. But you’ll find so many images in this period of pets and potted plants. And this is the image I started with, which is actually the room of a grand duchess in a palace in Vienna. But it’s comfortable, it’s actually very bourgeois in its feeling.

And you’ve got the potted plants on the windowsill. You have the window seat. So you can really enjoy the nature from indoors. And you’ve got quite elaborate displays of flowers on this wonderful Danhauser desk. And as I said, I will come back to you later. Desk work is important. The work ethos in the Biedermeier period, work is combined with, and improving yourself so, this woman is reading, she’s at her desk and she’s got, oh, practically a whole garden looming on her desk. Again, notice the window seat. Another theme of this period is an interest in folklore and fantastic tales, fairies, goblins, elves, all that kind of thing. And much of this is inspired by the famous ‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales’, which came out in several volumes over quite a long period of time. The first volume came out in 1812 and the last in 1857. And ‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales’ can really hardly be overestimated in their cultural importance and influence. Again, a painting, this is a painting by Moritz von Schmidt on the left hand side. So lots of tales of chivalry and the middle ages and witches and goblins and all sorts of fantastic things. And again, there are both operas and songs dealing with this kind of material. This is a drawing by Moritz von Schmidt that I know very, very well because it belonged to a German collector. And when I lived in Munich, I lived in his house and I looked after it while he was travelling. And this is a drawing which is now in the collection of the National Gallery in Washington. And it goes rather well with this song by Carl Loewe, ‘Tom der Reimer’. And again, we’re going to hear the wonderful Richard Tauber. I just love what he does with the words of this song. And it’s a young boy who’s in the forest and he comes across this beautiful blonde lady who seduces him. And he, first of all, she’s so beautiful, he thinks she must be the Virgin Mary.

And she says to him, . I’m not the heavenly virgin. I am Queen of the fairies. I better move on. But he gallops off on her horse for the next seven years. Now one of the most characteristic of art forms of the Biedermeier period is the depiction of the domestic interior. This is by a Danish artist called Wilhelm Bendz, and it’s comfortable, although through most of Biedermeier period, you won’t find carpets on the floor. You find quite bare boards, which gives a slightly spartan look. But we find so many of the typical features of the Biedermeier period. The chair in the background is actually not a Biedermeier chair, it’s an 18th century chair. It’s more in the style of Sheraton. But we notice again the potted plants on the windowsill. Coffee pots, coffee being very, very important. This is, oh yeah, here is the, the coffee pot in the painting. And a very similar one, Biedermeier coffee pot. Very elegant. This is at the same studio actually. It’s the same artist. This must be a friend of his, I suppose, taking an afternoon nap on the very same sofa that we saw in the painting. This is, a lot of these interiors are anonymous and very often they’re not professional artists. They’re likely to be, more often than not, painted by women. I’m sure you know, from Jane Austin and so on, that women were expected to be accomplished to a certain point in painting and drawing. And this particular drawing, I took this photograph when I was staying in a castle. It was actually on the Danish border. It’s a castle . It’s a vast 18th century castle that looks rather like Versailles, but a bit smaller, not that much smaller actually. And this is clearly a member of the family, probably a female member of the family who’s made this drawing in, probably about 1820 to judge from all the furnishing in this room.

You can see the room itself is earlier, the decoration on the ceiling, on the walls, and it’s fussier and it’s 18th century. The furniture is very up to the minute of Biedermeier furniture. And what’s interesting here too, is the way it’s arranged. You find a kind, even though there are no people here, you can see that the room is arranged for different groups of people and most probably for different generations. So you’ve got the window seat, you have the window open, you have the work table by the window, and then you have a glass screen with another little zone for, with chairs around the table, but probably for older people who need to be protected from draughts. And then a third zone with a table and a sofa on the right hand side of the image. Again, very likely a drawing made by, inverted commas, ‘amateur’ female artist. And we notice here that the, the potted plant on its stand, the work table, which is so very important. And we notice lots of knickknacks. Lots of collectibles. That’s a new feature as well. And you get specialised furniture for the display of these knickknacks and collectibles and often very sentimental things. Recording an anniversary or the birth of a child. Another very typical element in a bourgeois interior to the right of the window, you can see a cheval glass. Now glass, that would’ve been expensive, you know, a mirror that size. It’s not till you get to the middle of the 19th century, say the period of the Crystal Palace, 1850s, that large sheet glass can be manufactured cheaply on an industrial scale. So it would’ve been a prestige item to have a cheval glass like this. In this interior, we see some very elegant chairs that I think we can identify quite, quite definitely, as by being the leading Viennese furniture maker called Josef Danhauser. More of the same features, this kind of zoning of the room, little areas of activity, the desk by the window, waste paper basket. That’s very important in this period.

I think that’s a new item of furniture and there are lots from the Biedermeier period. Now here are, these are chairs from the Danhauser catalogue. Danhauser is by far the most famous furniture maker of the Biedermeier period. And his, it’s wonderful. His furniture is so timeless and so inventive. But I’m sure there are many other furniture makers who may have been just as good. But the Danhauser is famous and known because he published a catalogue. It’s the same as Chippendale, Sheraton, Hepplewhite is very, very famous furniture makers. They’re known because they published catalogues and or pattern books. And so what you could do with Danhauser was, you see something you like in the catalogue and you can order it in whatever kind of wood or finish that you desire or can afford. So more of the same here, work table by window, music being a very, very important part in the lives of Biedermeier families. Notice the lyre shape, the classical lyre shape of the pedals on the piano. And again, a large prominently displayed cheval glass on the right hand side. So I probably don’t need to comment in too much detail about all of these. By know, you’re able to recognise the typical features, the woman knitting by the window, the stove, very important in central Europe in the winter, the plants brought into the house and so on. So I think I’ll move through these quite quickly. This one, again, clearly I think it’s an amateur who’s made this drawing, but it’s very, very charming. The desk with the, all the plants on it, little sausage dog. Now I’m going to go through these quite quickly, and you get the message by now.

Now here, this is a furniture workshop. And the Biedermeier period is the last pre-industrial period of furniture making. Everything changes in the 1840s and fifties with the industrialization of the decorative arts in general, in particular in furniture. But at this point, it’s all handwork that’s done. And the furniture would, manufacturing is likely to be a family business with different generations involved in the production. This desk is the iconic piece of Biedermeier furniture. It’s the most famous. And it was very successful. And- As I said, you could order one of these from the Danhauser catalogue and quite a few have survived. In my years at Christie’s, I saw a couple of them come up for sale. So it looks curiously modern. It’s kind of timeless. It’s very streamlined, it’s very smooth. One of the great features of Biedermeier furniture, which may be inspired actually by English furniture, is the emphasis on the figure of the wood. The figure is the pattern in wood itself, used very effectively. You have large areas of smooth veneer. This is veneer, of course, it’s the surface of the wood that enabled you to enjoy the decorative beauty of the wood itself. So this is a piece of furniture that’s, it’s in some ways it’s very practical. You’ve got the leanness, you’ve got sort of areas where you’re clearly intended to put the potted plant. And you can see there is the comfort of the cushion to rest your feet on. So here is an actual Danhauser. This is what it looks like in the catalogue on the left. And there you can see an example on the right and you could, as I said, you could choose what kind of wood you wanted. You could have it in walnut. Usually in the the Biedermeier period, the typical thing with Biedermeier, is to have furniture made out of local fruitwoods, which are pale compared with, say the mahogany, that would’ve been used more frequently in wealthy households in England or in France.

And it’s often said, oh well, of course Germany was poorer and this is the end of the Napoleonic Wars. And so it’s an economic choice to choose the cheaper local fruitwoods. But I think that’s only partly true. I think it was also an aesthetic choice, they actually liked these local fruitwoods. And actually the difference in price between this desk made in mahogany or made in walnut was not that great. I think this must be walnut. Not too hot, I must admit on my, in identifying all the woods. But you can see how absolutely gorgeous the wood is. If my friend Robin is listening in New York, she knows all about this and she’ll put me right if I make any mistakes. You can have it ebonized as well. And if you are very vulgar and you are into French taste, you could even have it, the same desk smothered in French style ormolulu. That was the term invented by a friend at Christie’s, ‘ormalulu’, ormolu. This is a gild bronze decoration, which is very fashionable in France, but not so fashionable here in Germany and Austria. And so you, you find quite often, similar forms, similar classical forms in Austrian and German furniture and French furniture. But this, but you compare the two, this is Austrian on the left, this is French on the right. Much, much fussier, Not really letting the wood speak for itself. This is an Austrian Biedermeier cheval glass on the left hand side and a French one smothered in all the ormalu on the right hand side. And the same, a little work table, Biedermeier on the left, French on the right. Often quite bold classical forms. I mean, this is a chest of drawers that’s inspired by a classical sarcophagus. Again, notice the absence of gild metal decoration on it and allowing the wood, the beauty of the wood to speak for itself.

And again, for comparison, a French restauration bed from the same period. So go through this quickly because we’re running out of time, but that’s amazingly bold. Some quite startlingly, almost timeless, bold forms of Biedermeier furniture. It went very out of fashion, of course, in the middle of the 19th century and only came back again into fashion in the 20th century. I, again, I used to like playing tricks with my students at Christie’s and I’d show them these and I’d say, when? I’d like to, date me. These two pieces of furniture, what date is this? And usually they would say in 1930, but no, these are both dating, these are Austrian from 1820 with very simplified classical forms. This is, as you can see, a Danhauser desk on the left hand side. Actually it does have a relatively modest gild bronze mounts on it and chairs. Sitting, I think, there was people, there was a lot of sitting about in the Biedermeier period and chairs are very important. This is from the Danhauser catalogue. And as I said, these are wonderfully strange and inventive shapes of the Danhauser chairs. There’s a great museum in Vienna, of course. museum of decorative arts, of applied arts in Vienna, where there are rooms full of these absolutely amazing chairs. Now another big feature of Biedermeier furniture was the very startling and bold use of upholstery. And I’ve got some nice examples and run through quickly here of Biedermeier upholstery that again, looks amazingly modern. Could be by some fashionable designer today. The table, the circular table is the centre of every Biedermeier household. It’s where people come together to eat, to discuss.

Work tables, often very elaborate ones, even with mechanical elements and all sorts of quite specialised furniture like dumbwaiters and coat stands and perhaps not quite so charming, but quite important for the period. These are spittoons and composite pieces of furniture. They really like pieces of furniture that perform several different functions. So here is a keyboard instrument, so you can keep up your practise and at the same time it’s a toilette table. So you can do your makeup while playing the piano. And this extraordinary design on right hand side combines bird cage, fish bowls and jardiniere. And so some of the points I’ve made about furniture also apply to metalwork. If you didn’t see these in the context of this lecture, you might think that they were 20th century. You might think they were made today rather than around 1820. And the same to some extent of ceramics. Very bold, very simple. Sometimes classical forms that have a rather timeless look to them. Quite a lot of Biedermeier ceramics though, the simple form is used almost like a canvas for very elaborate enamelled painting on the simple form of the ceramic. This one is a nice one to finish with because it’s also such a delightful Biedermeier image of the two generations, the elderly woman and her daughter sitting at their work tables by the window.

And I think that’s, oh no, this is really to show, make the point that through the best Biedermeier furniture and design and interior is between 1815 and 1830. Over the last two decades, 1830s and forties, you still find lots and lots of these watercolours of interiors with all the features that I’ve pointed out, the work tables, the specialised furniture, and so on and so on, the zoning of the room. But there is an increasing fussiness, an increasing sense of clutter, and even a slightly oppressive sense of luxury with patent wallpapers and patent carpets. So this, I think, introduces an element of decadence into the Biedermeier style in the 1830s and forties. And what really knocks the furniture on the head, and I’m going to talk more about this next time when we get to the Ringstrasse period, is the introduction of industrial methods and particularly, the invention in Austria by the Thonet family, Gebruder Thonet, founded in the 1840s and the invention and development of Bentwood furniture. And these, this is the famous chair number 14 that was launched in 1859 and swept the world. Pretty well every cafe in the western world had these Thonet chairs by the end of the 19th century. And it’s estimated that there were 50 million of them made. So this is where I’m going to bring Biedermeier to an end and open up the questions and comments.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: As one who doesn’t do social media, can you make your list of Paris restaurants available in some other way?

A: How can, all I can do is give you a list that could be sent out to you, which I did before, but I’m happy to do again. Right. The name of the Israeli restaurant. I’ll put that on my list. It’s in the Rue de Lancry, L-A-R-N-C-R-Y. It was an Israeli restaurant, but as I was telling Lauren, it can’t be very- well it’s certainly not kosher, that I had the most unbelievably delicious squid, which I know one is not strictly supposed to eat on a Jewish menu. It was good, it was worth the sin.

The gallery where I purchased the art, it wasn’t a gallery, it was on the pavement at the flea market at Porte de Vanves, which I go to every Saturday morning. Oh, I couldn’t do it. I, a session on authentication stamps. I don’t know enough about it. I couldn’t do a whole session on it. But it’s very typical of, you know, things are organised here. The whole art world is organised in France in a very different way from other countries. And it’s quite normal that when an artist dies, for instance, and his studio will be full of stuff and it may be signed or it may not be signed, but anything on paper is likely to have the studio stamp on it to authenticate it. And that’s about as all I can tell you on that subject, I think.

Yes, that’s a lovely performance of the ‘Trout Quintet’ with great Artur Schnabel and the ‘Pro Arte’ quartet. This is Eva saying that she, I transposed her to her grandparents’ room. That the, I think I told you about what, that in the end that was, of course, the room of the Archduchess Sophie.

Q: This theme of families as an ideal and appreciation of hobbies, you would see this as a parallel to Victorian values?

A: Yes, a little bit, yes. Not quite so, sort of, I don’t know, stuffy as the Victorians. I think Biedermeier, I’d rather have been around in a Biedermeier household, I think, than a Victorian one. Much more light actually, the rooms. Concept the kindergarten. I don’t know, there’s a lecture in that, but not from me.

Q: Was this period similar to the post World War II period, 1950s?

A: Yes, I think that is an, definitely an interesting parallel when there was, you know, think of, you know, home and mother and apple pie and family values and all that stuff that was, you know, put across in American TV in the 1950s. I think you can find a parallel there.

This is America. I don’t find Schubert or Schumann kitschy but you do find the paintings, not all of them. I wouldn’t, no, certainly Schubert and Schumann are not kitschy and some of the, I suppose you could say, Spitzweg, is bit kitschy, but Waldmuller can be quite a severe painter actually. And certainly Kobke. I don’t think all the pictures I showed you today could be described as kitschy.

Q: Do I notice a pejorative tone in your voice when you speak of Biedermeier?

A: No, I absolutely adore it and I certainly love the furniture. I love Biedermeier furniture.

Q: Were his love songs all for Clara?

A: Hmm. I don’t think so actually, but quite a lot of them were, I mean, he wrote them in, in sort of intense bursts of feeling that we’re talking about Schumann there, of course. Oh, America thinks it’s a good thing that the 1848 revolution came along to shake it all up.

Q: I always wonder how do painters manage to paint children’s portraits?

A: Well, they probably need a lot of patience. It’s, and certainly, I mean, I’m always, if when I draw people, I’m afraid they have to stand, sit still. But there are artists and wanted people to keep moving all the time. So that is a very special gift to be able to draw people while they’re moving.

Q: Did this reach America?

A: I, yes, I think so. I mean, there are certainly interiors in America, well into the middle of the 19th century. You know, think of all that classicism in the South America. There are interiors that are quite similar in America. Yes, I think it reached it to some extent.

Thank you for your kind comments. There’s a collection of Biedermeier furniture in the state apartments in the Albertina. America’s saying she loves Romanticism. The painting of the gentleman with the umbrella sitting amongst the greeny looks very- Yes, I mean, that’s Spitzweg. I don’t think that’s kitschy, do you? I think that’s a very charming painting. Now I see this, I realise that ‘bieder’ is an appropriate adjective. ‘Bieder’ being staid, conservative, almost stuffy. It became that. I don’t think it was actually the original meaning of the word. You know, how words changed their meaning. And certainly, by the mid to late 19th century, they were using the terms ‘bieder’ and ‘Biedermeier’ in a pejorative way. But I don’t think it started out that way. Herbert doesn’t like the wallpaper in the Grand Duchess’s room. Thank you, Karen, for your link. I hope people can see that and they can get onto it if they want to. While Art Deco reflects the emerging machine age aesthetically, it’s furnishings owe a debt to Biedermeier. That is very true. But I think also in Vienna, it starts earlier than Art Deco. And the later furniture of the secession is already very influenced by Biedermeier. Interesting how the women are knitting, crocheting while also reading while a man is reading, relaxing, folded over his body. Yes, there’s definitely a difference in the depiction of the gender in these paintings. It’s ‘Kob’, Kobke with a b. I’m not sure if he’s underrated now. I think he’s, I mean, that Danish golden age painting, there have been quite a few exhibitions of it and I think it is much more widely appreciated now than it used to be.

Q: Can you see more Biedermeier furniture?

A: Where are you? That’s the thing. Yeah, you probably need to go to Vienna, obviously to see the best collections of it. Other museums have a few pieces, just a few in the Victoria and Albert in London. I imagine most decorative arts museums have a few pieces. Thank you, Colleen. And for your nice comment.

Q: Did Biedermeier catalyse the arts and craft move?

A: No, I don’t think so. I don’t think the people in the arts and craft move, people in England in the second half of 19th century wouldn’t have had any knowledge of Biedermeier that would, there wouldn’t have been a connection there.

Yeah, I so agree with you, Herbert. I mean Tauber, he paints a picture with his voice in both those songs I played you, but actually, particularly ‘Tom der Reimer’ is just amazing, the variety of expression as he puts across the text, that’s his genius for me.

Q: Did they have kidney shaped desks during this period?

A: Kidney shaped? I’m not sure quite how I would describe. They certainly had curved desks in this period. It’s a depiction of middle class upwards. Well, you know, the trouble is, there’s always less information about the, you know, the peasantry, the working classes and so on. And there is about the middle classes upward. But I think one of the interesting things is, that the fact that the aristocracy and royalty are living like middle class people and that the image I started with at the Archduchess’s room, it looks like it should be a room in a wealthy middle class household rather than in an Imperial Palace.

Q: Where did they keep their books?

A: Well, as we did, I think in bookcases and bookshelves. Yeah, a lot of the images are very, there’s a real sense of light, isn’t there? In a lot of those interiors. Furniture design is so interesting, surprises me. It’s so early in the 19th century. I wonder if the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements- Art Deco, yes, Art Nouveau, not, except, unless you count secession style in Vienna as being a form of Art Nouveau. I would say, that actually the appreciation of Biedermeier came quite early in the 20th century with a reaction against the excesses of the Art Nouveau style. It’s interesting to contrast the solidity of non-seating Biedermeier furniture with a spindle like lightness of the Biedermeier chairs. Yes, yes. Some of them do look very delicate.

Q: Is there a relationship between Biedermeier and Regency?

A: They’re contemporary and they’re both of them variants of Neoclassicism. So yes, I don’t think there’s a, if there’s an influence, it would be from England to, to Austria at this point, not the other way around. Through English catalogues, pattern books. And as I said, I think there is an influence in the way that the wood is used. Forget the name of the art style showing inanimate objects, primarily home objects such as food in Holland. This seems, I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about, but maybe Dutch 17th century still life. So I will definitely update my Parisian restaurant list as I found several very good new ones, recently. You thought the, the cushion under the desk was for the dog. Hmm, maybe. I think also nice to keep your feet comfortable and warm. version, gorgeous. Birch burl wood is common of one of the pieces that I showed.

Q: Burled wood… for shoeless feet?

A: I don’t know about that. I don’t. Let me see. Would love a lecture on collecting paintings, drawings, print, sculptures. I did one actually last summer about all the stuff I’ve collected in this flat and I could do a talk about how to collect in Paris if you like, all the galleries and flea markets.

Q: You’ve got, you had, we had, well, what happened to your Thonet chairs?

A: They’re quite valuable these days. I hope you kept them. Kindly repeat the name of the diplomatic Frenchman of the period. Was Talleyrand. It’s on my list if you bring up the list that was sent to you this morning. Very fascinating character. You can find a good biography of him and famous for his sharp wit and funny stories.

Myrna wants to redecorate. Consider the 1826 ballet, ‘La Sylphide’ by Bournonville, comes to the Sylphide, comes to disrupt Biedermeier serenity. Yeah, that’s very much all the period.

And I’m glad Hannah, that you don’t think that squid is a sin, but this served in this Israeli restaurant was unbelievable really, with the sauce, it was and with little chickpeas. Right. I think I’m probably running out of time. Paris flea market at, it’s at Porte de Vanves, V-A-N-V-E-S. There are several big Paris flea markets, but that’s the one I go to every Saturday. And I said, I’ve forgotten the name of the restaurant. It, the Isreali’s, in Rue de Lancry, L-A-N-C-R-Y. So you could look up Rue de Lancry and you’d find the name, but I will put it, I’ll find it out for you and I’ll put it on my list. Right. I think I better come to an end or we’ll never get through all this.

Thanks, everybody. And oh this is- This is Fran telling me that she was born in Vienna in 1935. Father, architect. Concepts very familiar and Tauber. Although my parents always, yes, he’s got a slightly throaty, he’s got a very Germanic throaty voice production, which I don’t like in a lot of singers, but I like it in him because he’s really special.

So I’m going to finish now and I’ll come back to you with the next big period in Vienna arts and design, the Ringstrasse period. And I’ll be talking to you about that on Wednesday. Bye, everybody.

• Bye-bye. Thank you. Thanks, Lauren.