Before turning to painting Theodor von Hörmann chose a career in the military. Although self-taught from an early age, he did not seek a professional artistic education until he was 33, when he studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts from 1873 to 1875. In this early period his artistic relationship with Emil Jakob Schindler had a decisive influence on him, resulting in realistic works in clayey, earthy tones. In 1884 he left the military to work as a freelance artist. His study trips to Hungary effected a change in his style, with his brushwork becoming less restrained and his colours lighter. The works of artists from the Barbizon school and of the French Impressionists exhibited at the Vienna World’s Fair of 1873 prompted Hörmann to spend the years from 1886 to 1890 in France. There he worked a lot under the open sky, which lent his works an impressionistic quality of light. Upon his return to Vienna, he suffered from the lack of understanding with which his art was received back home. In 1892 he visited Adolf Hölzl in Dachau and at the end of his stay exhibited a number of his works, along with those of two other artists, at the Kunstverein in Munich. The following year he exhibited for the first time at the Vienna Künstlerhaus. Already suffering from poor health he travelled to Sicily with Josef Engelhart and Johann Viktor Krämer. His ?uvre is characterised by lines, light and colour as well as his quest to truthfully portray reality.
Literature
T.Braunegger, Theodor von Hörmann. 1840-1895. Österreichischer Landschaftsmaler, Phil.Diss., Innsbruck 1970; T.Braunegger/M.Hörmann-Weingartner, Theodor von Hörmann, Vienna 1979; H.Giese, Richtig muß es sein. Bemerkungen zu Theodor von Hörmann, in: Parnass, no. 4, Vienna 1992, pp.36.; Theodor von Hörmann. 1840-1895, Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck 1995; Lexica: Thieme-Becker, Boetticher, Bénézit, Müller-Singer