ArtistAustrianb.1855–d.1930
Emil Barbarini
7 active items
Emil Barbarini was born in Vienna in 1855, the son of Franz Barbarini (1804-1873), a well-regarded landscape painter and etcher who had built his reputation on alpine scenery. Emil learned his craft initially under his father's guidance and was clearly shaped by that apprenticeship - but the direction he took differed sharply from what Franz had done. While the elder Barbarini worked in the grand tradition of Austrian landscape painting, Emil turned toward the city, specifically toward its markets, crowds, and the particular quality of light that moves through urban space at different hours of the day.
The subject he returned to most persistently was the flower market in front of the Karlskirche in Vienna. He painted it repeatedly, at morning, midday, and in the lower light of afternoon, using the market's shifting human activity as a stage on which to study atmospheric effects. This approach - painting the same site across different times of day to isolate light from composition - puts him in a broader European current that included Monet and Degas, though Barbarini's orientation remained grounded in a more local, observational register. He also traveled to the Netherlands and Belgium, producing market impressions from those trips that show his interest in how northern European light - flatter, diffused differently than the Austrian alpine variety - transforms a similar subject.
Bararini worked within Austrian Realism while absorbing elements of the looser, more atmospheric handling associated with late nineteenth-century European impressionism. He is sometimes categorized primarily as a realist, but his consistent preoccupation with light conditions suggests a painter whose instincts pushed further than strict documentary depiction. He also signed some of his works with the pseudonym E. Rovier, the reason for which remains unclear from available records.
His work appeared regularly at major Viennese auction houses during his lifetime and has continued to be offered at sale in Austria since his death in 1930. Works in the Viennese Naschmarkt series have sold at Dorotheum for between EUR 7,000 and EUR 11,000 at hammer. A "Flower Market" oil on panel sold at EUR 8,750. These results reflect steady but measured collector interest, concentrated primarily in the Central European market.
In the Auctionist database, 19 works by Barbarini are recorded, with 7 currently active. His items appear almost entirely through two Viennese houses: im Kinsky (15 lots) and Dorotheum Vienna (4 lots), consistent with a market anchored in his home city. Categories recorded are Paintings and Decorative Arts. The top recorded sale in the database is "Mill by the Stream" at EUR 3,000, suggesting the current market favors his more modest-format pieces.