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Tilgner, Victor (Oscar)
(b Pressburg [now Bratislava], 25 Oct 1844; d Vienna, 16 April 1896). Austrian sculptor. He arrived in Vienna in 1859 and attended the Akademie until 1871. During the 1860s he also worked in the studio of the sculptor Josef Gasser (1816–1900), and he was introduced into the circle of the medallist Joseph Daniel Böhm (1794–1865), whose collection formed at this time the focus of a private study circle for those interested in the history of art. Tilgner’s technical skill was much appreciated by his teachers, but his style was criticized for its lack of classical reserve. He nevertheless won several prizes and, while still a student, was given minor commissions in Vienna in the sculptural decoration of the Opera House and the Arsenal. After leaving the Akademie he could not find suitable employment and had already thought of a change of profession when he met the French sculptor Gustave Deloye (1838–99), who inspired him to continue, pointing him in the direction of the Baroque Revival, a style that Tilgner found much to his taste. He applied it very successfully to portrait busts: his first great triumph was with a polychrome bust of the actress Charlotte Wolter (1873; version in Vienna, Hist. Mus.). In 1874 Tilgner travelled with the painter Hans Makart to Italy, a journey that inspired his response to an imperial commission for a bronze Triton Fountain, produced on his return (1875–7; Vienna, Volksgtn). Tilgner continued, however, to be seen principally as a portraitist: he produced some hundred busts, mostly of prominent members of Viennese society, usually modelled in clay and afterwards executed in plaster, bronze or marble. He sometimes coloured his plaster casts; but even where no colour was applied, light and shadow, movement and a fine psychological observation reveal a strong sense of pictorial values. The vivacity of Tilgner’s busts surpassed that of all his rivals among Austrian portrait sculptors; but despite a frequent Rococo-like air his work still appears restrained if compared, for example, with portrait busts by Carpeaux. There was a certain classical element in Tilgner’s approach, inherited from the sculptural tradition established by Georg Raphael Donner. Among Tilgner’s best pieces are the Empress Elizabeth (1879; version in Vienna, Kstlerhaus), the marble bust of the poet Franz Grillparzer (before 1889; Vienna, Burgtheat.; see fig.), and certain busts used later for monuments and tombs such as the half-figure portrait of the composer Anton Bruckner (1891–2; monument in Vienna, Stadtpark, unveiled 1899). Tilgner also made numerous small sculptures and works of applied art, often in collaboration with other artists (e.g. a silver medal for the Habsburg Jubilee, 1882, with Stefan Schwartz; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.).
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