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Weyr, Rudolf (von)
(b Vienna, 22 March 1847; d Vienna, 30 Oct 1914). Austrian sculptor. He at first wavered between the study of architecture and that of sculpture, but the success of his sculptural sketches while a student at the Vienna Akademie determined his choice of career. His mentor, Josef Cesar (1814–76), provided contacts with the architects Gottfried Semper and Carl Hasenauer, who in 1875 contracted Weyr, in advance of all others, to execute sculptural decorations for the Naturhistorisches Museum and Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, on which they were at that time engaged. Among Weyr’s contributions were many of the spandrel figures, the major part of the cupola decorations and several polychromed caryatids. He afterwards became one of the main artists at work on the new Ringstrasse buildings (e.g. the Justice and Medicine groups for the university). Weyr, like the sculptor V. O. Tilgner, was influenced by French models and was attracted to the neo-Baroque, contributing with his relief compositions and silhouette effects to the very climax of the style. His preference for refinement and rich compositions meant that he was at his best in scenic works and designs for such small-scale objects as medals or table centrepieces in precious metals. When, on the occasion of the Imperial Silver Wedding in 1879, Hans Makart designed and directed the main part of the legendary pageant—the cultural climax of the Ringstrasse era—Weyr made a celebrated contribution, executing the Railway float, in which the theme was symbolized by the fire god’s triumphal wedding with a water nymph. The influence of the Rococo revival can be seen in Weyr’s figures, which are more formally and decoratively inventive than involved with sentiment or action. His virtuosity in architectural sculpture may be seen especially in the Bacchus frieze (1881–2) on the main façade of the Burgtheater, Vienna, in which sublime sensuality and a dissolution of the composition in light and shadow are held in check by an unobtrusive compositional balance. For the Hofburg he produced one of the multi-figured fountains of the Michaelertrakt, showing Austria’s Power at Sea (1895). In collaboration with Hasenauer and Carl Kundmann, Weyr executed a monument, largely after his own design, to the poet and dramatist Franz Grillparzer (1876–89; Vienna, Volksgarten), in which the large illusionistic reliefs depict the most famous scenes from Grillparzer’s plays. The Art Nouveau influence, already visible in his oeuvre before 1900, developed after that date, although the French element remained important. The partly unresolved conflict between tradition and renewal, however, characterizes his later public monuments in Vienna (e.g. Hans Canon, 1905, Stadtpark; Brahms, 1902–8, Resselpark). More successful in this respect are the tensely watching lions for Otto Wagner’s Nussdorfer Wehr (1898) and the numerous memorials, such as that to the victims of the Ringtheater fire (1886; Vienna, Zentralfriedhof) executed in collaboration with Otto Hofer (1847–1901). Weyr’s style is highly typical of the Viennese fin-de-siècle milieu, combining historicism’s exquisitely furnished dreams with a concise realism and modernist features.
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