(Oberndorf 1891–1958 Kitzbühel)
“Tiroler Bergdorf” (Auracher Kirchl), 1947, signed A. Walde, on the reverse titled, signed and dated on original artist’s label A. Walde 1947, oil on cardboard, 39 x 29 cm, in original Walde-frame

Provenance:
Christie’s London, 7. 10. 1999, lot 33
Peter Kovacek, Fine Art, Vienna (2000, including an expertise)
Collection of Otto Glaser (1926–2017), Dublin (purchased by the above)
Private Collection, Ireland (by descent from the above)

Registered:
Alfons Walde Archive

Like no other painter of his generation, Alfons Walde introduced the idea of reproduction as a means of unmistakable branding into modern art as early as the 1920s. When in 1924 he won the competition for the design of an advertising poster for Tyrol with the motif of the charming church of St. Rupert in the small village of Aurach near Kitzbühel, he at the same time created an incunabulum for modern landscape painting in Tyrol. Focusing on essential pictorial motifs – snow, blue sky, picturesque Baroque onion dome and Tyroleans in traditional costume – and with an unmistakable impasto and dynamic painting gesture, Alfons Walde not only shaped the "brand" of Tyrol as a place of longing that is still valid today, but also consciously elevated the reproduction of a motif to an artistic statement – similar to what the artists of Pop Art were to cultivate decades later.

It is therefore not surprising that the motif of the lovely church of Aurach in this particularly color-intensive and balanced impasto version had been in the collection of Otto Glaser, the Irish telecom pioneer with Austrian roots. Having arrived in Ireland in 1938 on the last children transport Otto Glaser was to become a successful entrepreneur who spent many of his summers in Tyrol and acquired paintings in the local art trade, which reminded him of his old homeland. Alfons Walde's Tyrolean Mountain Village occupied a special place in his house overlooking the sea. Other works form his collection in this sale include cat. nos. 15 and 16.