View from the Window, Vienna
- Artist: Marie-Louise Von Motesiczky
- Date: 1925
- Medium: Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions: support: 625 x 310 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
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About this artwork
This is the View from the Window, Vienna by Marie‑Louise Von Motesiczky. Painted in 1925, it captures a snowy Viennese street seen from the fourth‑floor flat she lived in on Brahmsplatz. The upper centre cupola is the Johann Strauss Theatre, famous for light opera. The canvas is long and narrow, a format the artist favored in the 1920s. Unlike earlier works where she used dabbed, impasto strokes, here she adopts freer, looser brushwork, a change she attributes to the striking freshness of fresh snow. The scene is rendered in muted greys, pale pinks, blues and black, with a mustard‑yellow curtain adding contrast. The painting is a quiet, almost documentary snapshot: the artist’s note that she aimed to give exactly the impression she saw, with little invention. It was presented by the artist in 1986, a late addition to the collection.
See it in person
View from the Window, Vienna is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
