Oil painting Emil Orlik “Landhaus in Erlach” 1914

Emil Orlik was born in Prague in 1870 and attended Heinrich Knirr’s private painting school and the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich after graduating from high school. From 1899 to 1905 he was a member of the Vienna Secession, and in 1905 he became a professor at the state teaching institute of the Berlin Museum of Decorative Arts. As a member of the “Klimt Group”, which left the Vienna Secession in 1905, he also painted with Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka. He was friends with some of the most influential artists of his time and cultivated an international network of acquaintances.
This is particularly evident in his portraits, whose models included Gustav Mahler, Hermann Bahr, Albert Einstein, Rainer Maria Rilke and Jakob Wassermann. He painted the greats of the international art scene from his immediate surroundings: Käthe Kollwitz, Franz Marc, Otto Dix, Ernst Barlach, Marc Chagall, Camille Pissarro and others. His works are exhibited in countless important museums in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, France, the USA, England and other countries.
Our picture “Country House in Erlach” was painted by Orlik in 1914. The influences of the Viennese School, Impressionism and Fauvism as well as German Expressionism are clearly recognizable here. The significance of this work is emphasized above all by the numerous exhibition labels and inventory numbers, eleven in all, on the original frame. The “Country House in Erlach” was exhibited in Vienna, Dresden and Brno, among other places. It is an important painting by Emil Orlik from this period. It is representative of the most important styles and artist groups of classical modernism.