OUT INTO THE GREEN
French bulldogs were part of Vienna's cityscape around 1900, accompanying fashionable ladies on their walks through the well-kept parks. The small, muscular and friendly dogs descended from the English bulldog, which was eventually bred in France with the typical raised ears. Owners included celebrities, stage stars and crowned heads, such as the hotelier Anna Sacher in Vienna, the English King Edward VII with his black "Frenchie" Peter, the Russian Tsar family and subsequently the fashion-conscious society of the big cities, well into the Golden Twenties.
The "French Bully" made of porcelain is a work by the sculptress Karin Jarl (1885-1948) from 1925. Registered under model no. 1544, it belongs to the early designs of the Viennese artist. As the daughter of the distinguished Swedish sculptor Otto Jarl (1856-1915), she grew up amidst the versatile and glamorous artistic circles of the fin-de-siècle. Her father studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts between 1880 and 1884. His future father-in-law and later grandfather of Karin Jarl, the architect Friedrich von Schmidt, promoted the portraitist and animal sculptor Otto Jarl, who incidentally also provided designs for the porcelain factory in Meissen around 1905. Otto's daughter Karin Jarl (Jarl-Sakellarios after her marriage to the sculptor Viktor Sakellarios) was fascinated by the expressive possibilities of animal sculpture and herself created more than twenty models for the Viennese porcelain manufactory Augarten. Among her designs are hunting scenes, horses, an amusing series of animals playing music in the manner of a dance bar orchestra, a cat, a naturalistically executed desert fox and a number of different breeds of dog, including a dachshund and terrier. Franz Barwig supplied the Augarten manufactory with some impressive animal models at the same time.
Less well known is Karin Jarl's musical career. In May 1907, the magazine Sport und Salon reported on her great talent and a concert evening with her "masterly performances at the piano" as well as her appearance at the Vienna Musikverein: "One generally praised her excellent technique, the soft beautiful touch, warm feeling and independence in her performance." Qualities that also explain the fine modelling of her animal models and their subtle painting. "Generously decorative" is how her porcelains were described by contemporaries. Last but not least, it was the "musical sensibility", as the art journalist Armand Weiser wrote in 1925, and the "musical sensuality" of Viennese porcelain (Robert Breuer, 1930) that enabled the new manufactory in the Augarten to achieve its distinctive character.
Photo: Bettina Fischer