TINA BLAU-LANG (1845-1916) Resting in the countryside

signed 'T. Blau' (lower right) oil on canvas 31 x 40.6 cm Tina (Regina Leopoldine) Blau, born in Vienna in 1845, was the only Jewish woman artist in her generation to be professionally recognized. Encouraged by her family to pursue art, Blau made her artistic debut in 1867 and her paintings were included in the 1873 Viennese World Exhibition. She studied with various artists and traveled to Italy, the Netherlands, France, and an artist colony in Hungary. She returned to Vienna in 1875 and shared a studio with the landscape painter Emil Jakob Schindler until 1879. Blau rose to international fame with shows in Vienna in 1882 and Paris in 1883, and she was praised for her modern and innovative uses of light and color. Tina Blau represented her own innovative position within Austrian landscape painting in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. She painted in the so-called Austrian Stimmungsimpressionismus (atmospheric Impressionism).