Tina Blau was an important Austrian painter, graphic artist and teacher. At first she taught privately but after the death of her husband, horse painter Heinrich Lang she co-founded the Vienna “Kunstschule für Frauen und Mädchen” (painting school for women and girls)
Blau, Tina later Tina Blau-Lang (Vienna 15-11-1845 – 31-10-1916 Vienna)
Impressionist landscape painter and graphic artist. Daughter of Jewish physician Simon Blau, doctor in the Austro-Hungarian military Medical Corps and was very supportive of her desire to become a painter.
Born as Regina Leopoldine Blau in the Vienna military barracks (“Kaserne am Heumarkt 27”). Her father originated from Prag and changed his career towards dentistry while the family moved to the Wipplingersttrasse. Her older brother Theodor Blau (1844–1934) also became a dentist and her younger sister Flora Blau (1847–1930) also married a dentist.
She took lessons, successively, with August Schaeffer von Wienwald (1833-1916) and Wilhelm Lindenschmit in Munich (1869–1873). Later, she studied under Emil Jakob Schindler (1842-1892) at the art colony in Plankenberg Castle, near Neulengbach. They shared a studio from 1875 to 1876, but apparently broke off the arrangement after a quarrel. In 1883, she converted from Judaism to the Evangelical Lutheran Churchand married horse painter Heinrich Lang (1838–1891), specialised in painting horses and battle scenes. They moved to Munich where, from 1889, she taught landscape and still life painting at the Women's Academy of the “Münchner Künstlerinnenverein”. In 1890, her first major exhibition was held there. After her husband's death in 1892 she moved back to Vienna and spent ten years of extensively travelling in Europe: Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands (Amsterdam but also Friesland). After her return, she established a studio in the Rotunde, a domed structure built for the World exhibition of 1873 at that time the largest ever build. In was destroyed by fire in 1937. In 1897, together with Olga Prager (1872-1930), Rosa Mayreder (1858-1938) and writer Karl Federn (1868-1943), she helped found the "Wiener Frauenakademie", and “Kunstschule für Frauen und Mädchen”, an art school for women, where she taught until 1915. She spent her last summer working in Bad Gastein, and then went to a sanatorium in Vienna for a medical examination. She died there of cardiac arrest. She was given an “Ehrengrab" (honourary grave) in the “Zentralfriedhof”. The “Vienna Künstlerhaus” auctioned off her estate and held a major retrospective in 1917. (Source: Wikipedia).
The Vienna Künstlerhaus (“Künstlerhaus Wien”) is an art exhibition building in Vienna. It is located on Karlsplatz near the Ringstrasse, next to the Musikverein. It was built between 1865 and 1868 by the Austrian Artists' Society (“Gesellschaft bildender Künstler Österreichs, Künstlerhaus”), the oldest surviving artists' society in Austria. It has served since then as an exhibition centre for painting, sculpture, architecture and applied art. Since 1947 it has also managed a cinema, which is used as one of the screening venues for the annual “Viennale” film festival.
She is considered the first German artist to embrace impressionism after meeting the School of Barbizon painters in the 1869 International Exhibition in Munich and the painters of the Dutch “The Hague-School” in the World Exhibition in Vienna in 1873. Exhibited in the World Exhibitions of 1885 (Antwerp), 1889 (Paris) and 1893 (Chicago).
