The Artist's Road Painting the World's Beautiful Places

Ladies Can’t Come to the Opening!
Perspectives from The Artist’s Road


Lilies     Olga Wisinger-Florian

   The name, Olga Wisinger-Florian (1844-1926) is not a common one in our art history books, but the work of this Viennese artist was well recognized in her own time. Her paintings were exhibited across Europe and in the World Fairs in Chicago (1893), Paris (1900) and St. Louis (1904), affording her work world-wide acclaim. Her clients included such illustrious luminaries of the time as Emperor Francis Joseph 1, Archduke Karl Ludwig and the Rothschild family.

   Wisinger-Florian's work is considered to be Austrian Mood Impressionism, or Stimmungsimpressionismus, a name bestowed upon a group of artists who were considered avant-garde in the late 1800s in Austria. She studied with prominent artists Melchior Fritsch, August Schaeffer and Emil Jakob Schindler. She was invited early in her career to exhibit at the prestigious House of the Artists, an institution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but, as with all women at the time, was prohibited from being present at the vernisage.

   She wrote:  “Ladies can’t come to the opening! But our pictures are fine for them!” After requesting her work be placed in a more prominent position, and being ignored, she removed the work from the wall altogether until the jurors complied.

   Wisinger-Florian fought for the rights of women in the arts as President of the Society of Women Writers and Artists. She co-founded the Austrian Association of Women Artists in 1910.

Falling Leaves          1899          Olga Wisinger-Florian


Summer's Evening - Roses in Full Splendor     1896  Olga Wisinger-Florian


Pansies and Butterflies     Olga Wisinger-Florian


White Roses     1895     Olga Wisinger-Florian