The first-ever UK exhibition of paintings by the 19th-century Austrian artist Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller has opened at the National Gallery, showcasing his range of landscapes, from arid to forested. He worked mainly around Vienna, Salzburg and later Italy, giving the works on display a slight air of tourist diary travelling around central Europe.
Waldmüller is one of the most important figures in 19th-century Austrian art, known for his work as both an artist and an influential teacher. Having enrolled at the Academy in Vienna in 1807, Waldmüller received a traditionally academic education in art, but taught himself landscape painting by copying Dutch 17th-century landscapes.
Waldmüller’s attention to detail, photographic clarity and equal treatment of elements in the landscape are said to have been comparable to the work of the British Pre-Raphaelite artists.
Waldmüller also visited London in 1856, bringing with him 34 works, all of which were sold at auction following a private audience with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, each of whom bought one of his paintings.
Waldmüller’s work has not been exhibited in the UK since then – until now.
Opening with a self-portrait, the exhibition is a collection of fourteen paintings, beginning with landscapes of the Prater, followed by his paintings of the Salzkammergut, an Alpine region near Salzburg, featuring trees and views of lakes and mountains. If it wasn’t Austria, you could almost imagine seeing Sherlock Holmes evading Moriarty in some of them.
The exhibition turns to the artist’s views of Sicily, showing that he was as gifted at arid scenes as at painting forests and mountains.
They’re quite modestly sized paintings, which is a pleasant change from the oversized, monumental portraits elsewhere, making this exhibition feel less daunting and more domestic.
The exhibition, Waldmüller: Landscapes, is at the National Gallery until 20th September 2026 and is free to visit.
You can find it in Room 1, next to the portico exit.
Details here.