Greillenstein Castle

Anton Romako's Greillenstein Castle (1885) depicts one of the historic castles of Lower Austria — Greillenstein in the Waldviertel region, a Renaissance-era seat that has survived largely intact since the sixteenth century. Romako's landscape with castle participates in the Austrian Romantic tradition of Stimmungslandschaft — mood landscape — but filtered through his characteristic psychological intensity. The castle provides vertical drama against the Austrian landscape. Romako, whose artistic career was marked by struggle and neglect, found in landscape subjects an alternative to the portrait commissions that were his primary but often frustrating source of income.

Romako's castle landscape is handled with the animated, restless brushwork that characterizes all his mature work. The castle's architectural forms are described through agitated strokes rather than careful line, giving the stone masses a visual energy unusual in landscape painting. His palette combines the greens and earth tones of the Austrian countryside with the grey-white of castle stone under changeable light. The overall surface maintains the nervous visual tension that distinguishes all Romako's work from the more placid landscape tradition around him.