Hugo Darnaut, son of a court actor and painter, came to Vienna at the age of eighteen and served an apprenticeship with the court theater painter Heinrich Burghart. In 1871 and 1872 he studied at the Vienna Academy under Eduard Lichtenfels, and from 1873 to 1876 he stayed in Düsseldorf. His teachers were Andreas Achenbach, Robert Meyerheim and Johannes Wortmann. After this period of study, Darnaut returned to Vienna. In 1877 he became a member of the Künstlerhaus, of which he was later - from 1913 to 1918 - president. At the age of 44 he went to Karlsruhe for another year to take lessons with Gustav Schönleber. A number of honorary memberships and prizes honored the artist and his work. Hugo Darnaut was a landscape painter and an important representative of Austrian mood painting. In contrast to Emil Jakob Schindler and his circle - the central concern of these artists was to convey moods of light, air and color - for Darnaut the motif is the starting point, the other factors shaping the picture have a supporting function. Characteristic for his pictures is the moment of idyll, forest landscapes, motifs from Upper and Lower Austria, Tyrol and the Carpathians offered him a rich world of motifs for this. In his late landscapes, his style developed into "velvety breadth". Darnaut's atmospheric landscape painting was already widely accepted during the artist's lifetime.
Literature
L. Hevesi, Österreichische Malerei im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, Leipzig 1903, S. 263; H. Mlnarik, Hugo Darnaut. 1850 - 1937, Diplomarbeit, Wien 1993; Natürlichere Natur. Österreichische Malerei des Stimmungsrealismus, Kunsthaus Mürzzuschlag 1994, S. 242ff; Nachschlagewerke: Thieme-Becker, Vollmer, Bénézit, Boetticher, Schmidt, Busse Nr. 18776