Heinrich von Liebieg | Collector and patron

The foundation of this collection is based on the legacy of the industrial magnate Heinrich Liebieg (1839–1904), a generous patron, collector, and member of the honorary curatorium of the North Bohemian Industrial Museum. This unique private collection was expanded over the years through acquisitions funded by the Liebieg Foundation, as well as acquisitions by the city of Liberec, the Liberec museum, and from 1953, by the Museum of Fine Arts Liberec.

19th Century French Collection

Heinrich Liebieg's legacy includes 32 oil paintings and 5 watercolors of 19th-century French landscape painting. The permanent exhibition showcases works by members of the so-called Barbizon School and a collection of paintings by Eugène Boudin.

The name "Barbizon School" was chosen after the French village of Barbizon, located 50 km southeast of Paris. In the 1830s, a group of landscape painters settled here and, amidst the Fontainebleau Forest, sought a new understanding of nature in visual art. The Barbizon artists were inspired by English and Dutch landscape painting; their main themes were forests and forest still lifes.

They began painting and drawing directly en plein air and gradually started to complete the entire painting in nature. In their handling of light, they sought natural light relations and often chose low horizons to offer the illusion of identity with their own perception. They aimed to create a "portrait of the landscape," capturing a natural slice of the landscape at different times of day. With these approaches, they made a significant step in the development of French landscape painting towards realism. By loosening their painting technique and capturing natural moods, they also drew closer to Impressionism. The Barbizon School is represented at the Museum of Fine Arts Liberec by paintings from artists such as Charles-François Daubigny, Narcisse Virgilio Díaz de la Peña, and Théodore Rousseau.

The collection of seventeen paintings by Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) held in the museum's collection is not only the largest outside of France, but also one of the most valuable. Boudin was a painter of the changing atmospheres on the coasts of Normandy, Brittany, as well as in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy. He is considered one of the direct precursors of Impressionism. Charles Baudelaire dedicated a long and famous passage to him in his critique of the 1859 Salon: "Mr. Boudin, in his paintings... presents to us the immense charms of air and water... All these clouds of fantastic and radiant shapes, those satin-black or violet skies, those mournful or molten metal-glowing horizons, all those depths, all those splendors, rose to my head like an intoxicating drink..."

19th Century German and Austrian Painting

The paintings of German artists provide a representative overview of the developmental trends in German painting in the second half of the 19th century. The group of artists studying or working in Munich is the most represented. The early Munich plein air painting is represented by the works of the painter Max Haushofer. Rare paintings with figurative themes by the realist Wilhelm Leibl are complemented by works by painters from the so-called Leibl circle, such as Wilhelm Trübner and Johannes Sperl. The Munich Biedermeier genre is represented by Carl Spitzweg, psychological depictions by Gabriel Max and Albert Keller, and rural scenes are presented in the works of Franz Defregger and Ernst Karl Georg Zimmermann.

Portraiture is dominated by works by Franz Lenbach. The art colony in Dachau is represented by the Art Nouveau landscapes of Ludwig Dill, while the Düsseldorf school is represented by works by Andreas Achenbach, August Becher, and Hugo Vogel. From artists working in Berlin, Adolf Menzel, Carl Langhammer, and Walter Leistikow stand out.

Austrian painting is characterized by a significant representation of several artists. The largest collection consists of works by August Pettenkofen and Eduard Charlemont, who, alongside his masterful small-scale paintings, also served as an advisor in matters of artistic acquisitions for the collection's owner, Heinrich Liebieg. August Pettenkofen is considered a representative of the so-called "mood Impressionism," alongside Eugen Jettel and Franz Rumpler. Eduard Charlemont’s works document the period’s fascination with the old masters, especially Dutch ones, as well as the late 19th-century fondness for genre painting, a rich color palette, and meticulous drawing. This attention to detail is also present in the works of Rudolf Alt, who realistically depicts panoramic views of European cities and individual buildings.