In his second article leading up to an exhibition in 2018 marking the bicentenary of the Schranz artists’ arrival in Malta, John J. Schranz considers hypotheses of why Anton Schranz came to Malta, framing his life in Menorca in the context of the 26 eventful years from his leaving Ochsenhausen, Germany, just before the French Revolution, to his arrival in Malta.

Anton Schranz was born in 1769. His coming to Malta is conjectured in two stages, each with a hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1: Leaving Ochsenhausen around 1790 with a grant to study painting in Rome, Anton somehow reached Toulon, a key harbour town whose anti-Revolution Royalist citizens sought international help; Naples’, Spain’s and England’s navies complied and took Toulon.

The Republicans besieged Toulon. A young captain, passing by when their general was grievously wounded, took command and won the siege, becoming famous: Napoleon.

Panic! In the frantic evacuation, 14,000 terrified Toulon­ese scrambled onto the allies’ ships – and Anton found himself in Menorca.

Hypothesis 2: Anton’s clientele in Menorca was the English navy. When its base mov­ed to Malta he lost his clien­tele. He decided to follow it.

Yellowed, fragile, typed sheets, evidently considered important, were distributed to Schranz families in the 1890s.

Supposedly synthesising our family history, its myth partly echoes the revolution hypothesis, firing my childhood imagination: two Schranz brothers arrived in Malta (wrong: Anton’s brothers never left Germany) escaping a revolution in Germany (wrong: Germany had no revolutions then), bringing Giovanni, aged seven (wrong: he was 23), disguised as a girl (!).

With the years I outgrew that yellowed sheet, learning that myths are ‘lost in translation’. That recurring word – ‘revolution’ – gradually made me question those hypotheses, mainly because mine was a family viewpoint.

Take the Toulon hypothesis. Naples’ archives show the fleets leaving Toulon and separating, each carrying thousands of refugees. A Neapolitan admiral’s apprehensive Livorno letter to his king, reporting thousands of refu­gees coming to Naples, says the English and Spanish fleets left for Hyères and Menorca respectively. British admiral Samuel Hood, Tou­lon operation comman­der, was later Commissioner for the Affairs of Toulon on emigrant and refugee pensions, indicating his ships’ refugees settled in England.

Without the de Cifuentes commission and its influence on Menorca’s circles it would be impossible to understand why the two 1798 municipal commissions went to Schranz and not Calbó

Maón’s historical archives hold Joan Roca’s 50-year Maón diary (1776-1826), show­ing thousands of Tou­lon­ese refugees arriving on December 29, 1793: adults, children, terrified, injured, sick, wounded, famished, given a loaf and one real daily. Menorca’s 31,548 population, crammed in eight small towns and villages, made housing refugees with families a nightmare.

It is difficult to imagine a Menorcan lady, in under 11 months, marrying Anton and producing their son – in that absolute pandemonium.

The ‘clientele’ hypothesis is equally incongruous. Al­though broken by a French seven-year capture (1756-1762), Britain’s 73-year-long possession of Menorca (1708-1780), sanctioned by the Treaty of Utrecht, might have favoured artists, however the hypothesis forgets that Anton’s 1792 arrival was 11 years after a Hispano-French invasion expelled Britain’s occupying force.

The following is simplified presentation of Menorca’s highly complex ‘ownership’ during Anton’s stay:

• 1792: Held by Spain, one year.

• 1793-95: Held by Spain, allied with England, four years.

• 1796-98: Held by Spain, allied with France, three years.

• 1799-1801: Taken by England, three years.

• 1802-03: Held by Spain after the Amiens Treaty – 18 months of peace in Europe.

• 1804/07: Held by Spain, allied with France, four years.

• 1808-14: Held by Spain, allied with England, seven years, England allowed harbour facilities.

• 1815-17: Held by Spain, no alliance, three years.

In Anton’s 26-year stay, Spain was France’s ally against England for seven years; England owned Menorca for a mere three years; Spain allowed England’s navy use of harbour facilities for 12 years; and for four years the situation was inimical. The ‘clientele’ hypothesis appears spurious – more on this later.

Ciutadella Diocesan Archive documents of a 1794 ecclesiastical tribunal provide a turning point. Anton wished to marry Isabella Howard-Tudurí. Spain’s king was titled “His Most Catholic Majesty”; the Inquisition held sway. The young German had to show he was a staunch, practising Roman Catholic, not a Protestant.

His witnesses, German friends of his family, vouch­ed they always knew him frequenting Mass and the sacraments regularly. How did these three, long-standing German friends happen to be in Menorca?

Some five years after leaving Germany Anton joined the S. Gallen, Graf von Thurn regiment (formerly Von Ruttimann) en route to strengthen Menorca against Revolutionary France invasions. All three friends were in it – and Spain only enlisted Catholic soldiers. Joan Roca’s diary registers its arrival on February 15 and 23, 1791. The Toulon hypothesis collapses.

Anton also presented an honourable discharge certificate. Signing it, Lieutenant Ulrich Bettemann said that after serving honourably and faithfully for 21 months, Anton wished to “find his fortune elsewhere”. The certificate’s date, September 30, 1792, means Anton joined in January 1791. His saying he left home some five years before joining, would place that as 1786-7.

The prestigious Swiss regiment probably left for Menorca from Naples: Ferdinand IV, brother to Spain’s Charles IV, was strengthening his armies too, fearing the French revolution.

A Naples stay would break Anton’s unaccounted four years between leaving Germany and reaching Menorca, strengthening the supposition that he studied in Rome.

Rome’s Accademia di San Luca has no records of him “but so many of our students were like that in those days”, I was told. Anton’s signature, however, discovered recent­ly but on a Palazzo Falson painting depicting Lago Albano and Castel Gandolfo, strengthens the probability.

Ochsenhausen’s burnt archives prevent our accounting for those four years. Another research path might open, however: what if neighbouring towns’ archives reveal that one of Anton’s witnesses, both family friends, studied painting in Rome...?

Anton’s first Menorca commission was from one of Spain’s foremost grandees, Juan de Silva Pacheco Meneses, whose endless list of titles includes Lieutenant General of the Royal Armies, XIV Conde de Cifuentes, Knight of the Golden Fleece, mayor of Castile, Governor of Menorca, ambassador to Portugal... and more.

He requested a two-metre-high, full portrait of his friend, Rev. Antoni Pons y Mercadal, holding a letter addressed “to Conde de Cifuentes, Captain General of the Balearic Islands, my dear friend”.

A 19th-century family diary entry records the date of completion, October 24, 1791. The sitter, it adds, died on March 26, 1791. Anton had arrived in Menorca on February 23, 1791, barely a month before.

The count was probably aware his friend was dying. It is surprising that this high-flying nobleman should have discovered this young soldier’s capabilities within days of his arrival in Menorca with 2,000 other soldiers, although there is an explanation.

Battlefield drawings, battle plans, and battle report images made army artists indispensable – army commanders knew their artists well. Anton’s name would have come up when, as Governor of Menorca, de Cifuentes met the regiment’s general, probably on arrival, formally and socially.

That commission was the recognition 21-year-old An­ton needed. No wonder that 11 months after finishing the portrait he told Bettemann: “I want to find my fortune elsewhere”!

Still hanging on its original nail, the work deteriorated badly, as the house remained closed for many years. Though professionally res­tored, damage was great: damp caused very extensive flaking.

Something about that first commission portrait must have shown him he could live from art. Clearly, Anton was far from being a painter of ship portraits, as he is often described

Another two portraits, both commissioned by the municipality, are that of Bishop Antonio Vila y Camps, dated 1798, when Pius VI restored Menorca’s see, vacant for eight centuries, and that of George III, marking an English conquest of Menorca. Seven years separate these from the first.

A reflection is called for.

The gap between the ‘upper crust’, 1791 private commission and the two important 1798 official ones seems to be a seven-year artistic ‘silence’. Such inactivity would never have procured the official commissions.

Commissions like de Cifuentes’s prompt others – in certain circles, however. They don’t hang in public places, but in those circles, affluent and influential, they exert considerable influence, promoting other ‘inside’ commissions.

A fine landscape, signed on the back by Anton, might be a case in point. I saw it with three other unsigned possibles (all the right period, equal dimension landscapes, not of Menorca) in a baron’s stately Ciutadella home. The baron knows they were obtained together.

Menorca was a markedly hierarchical society, far enough from Spain to be a small ‘State’ ruled by the Governor, with an Universitá of ‘elected’ (manipulated at all levels) people (jurats) and a wide, disproportionate array of ecclesiastics, marquises, counts, barons, knights, lawyers, notaries, doctors, merchants (and weal­thy ship owners, trading and privateering, in 1820 owning 149 ships, on this small island with its small population). In those circles, de Cifuentes’s painting, and the baron’s, would be seen, prompting other commissions, including official ones.

Official commissions, such as those of the bishop and George III, are in the public domain and have become part of collective memory.

The seven years following de Cifuentes’s commission probably saw it generating other important ones, bringing the two official commissions Anton’s way.

I saw various landscapes in museums and two important Menorcan collections; other commissions need not have been portraits, such as the wonderful view of Maón harbour, with its beautifully dynamic characters.

An important consideration supports this theory.

Two much admired artists were working in Menorca at the end of the 18th century. The Italian Giuseppe Chiesa died in 1789, two years before Anton arrived. The other artist, Pasqual Calbó (1752-1817), was a much loved Menorcan, best known for portraits throughout his life, until he suffered paralysis in his hands in 1812. Having studied first under Chiesa and then in Rome, he was a court artist in Vienna.

In 1787 he went to America, returning three years later, in 1790, one year before the de Cifuentes commission, when he was living where de Cifuen­tes lived, in Maón. Without the de Cifuentes commission and its influence on Menorca’s circles it would be impossible to understand why the two 1798 municipal commissions went to Anton Schranz and not Calbó, who, moreover, had painted the count’s portrait.

This raises another question, perhaps never to be an­swered: why did this key Royal Court personage not commission the renowned Menorcan Calbó, going, in­stead, to an unknown, 21-year-old soldier who had just arrived?!

For a number of reasons, the deductive process behind that theory is more important than the theory itself.

Firstly, it raises the possible existence of more portraits by Anton in Menorcan homes. The de Cifuentes one is em­blematic: it came to the notice of Maón’s museum only in the bicentenary context. Surely, it cannot be the only one.

Equally surprising is the George III portrait. For many years it had hung unnoticed, in a pub! It was discovered only when grapevine information reached me in the Bicentenary Exhibition context, following which I relayed it to the Menorca curator, who promptly set out on a ‘pub crawl’ lasting weeks.

Reasons there surely are for Chiesa’s and Calbó’s names being more on people’s ton­gues than Anton’s in Me­norca. Anton was not considered a Menorcan. He arrived when he was 21, with 2,000 other foreigners – already reason enough. Furthermore, after 26 years he left.

Unlike Anton, Chiesa lived practically all his life there, he painted, designed Maón’s cathedral, ran an art school, and died survived by two sons who remained there and who were also artists. Calbó, then, is Menorcan born and bred, much beloved for having ex­ported Menorca to such pla­ces as Rome, Vienna and South America, but still re­turning to his native land. Chiesa’s and Calbó’s names are bywords.

What is important is not the theory, but action on it, in the hope that more of Anton’s work may come to light. A cam­paign will be launched there.

The (hypothetical) discovery of more Menorca works would not be an end in itself. More important could be the genre of those works. Documents in Menorca invariably call him a pintor. For 26 years he lived from it, maintaining a large family, even buying a house. Something about that first commission portrait must have shown him he could live from art. The portraits, their subjects and the entities commissioning them are important pointers. Equally, of the 18 works I saw there, only four were of naval vessels, while another shows small boats, fishing craft and a small Menorcan merchantman. Clearly, Anton was far from being a painter of ship portraits, as he is often described.

To be concluded.

John J. Schranz is a descendant of Anton Schranz’s eldest son Giovanni.

The exhibition is being organised by Heritage Malta in collaboration with the Schranz Bicentenary Exhibition Committee 1818- 2018, accompanied by a publication to be launched by Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti. Both will feature all eight Schranz artists, born in three generations in 70 years, between 1769 and 1839.

The committee members are Helga Ellul, Francis Vassallo, Franco Azzopardi, Joe Zammit Tabona, Kenneth de Martino and John Schranz.

The curatorial team members are Marquis Nicholas de Piro, Bernadine Scicluna of Heritage Malta, Antonio Espinosa Rodriquez, Joseph Schiró and Christian Attard.

Heritage Malta has launched a specific page on its website regarding the exhibition: http://schranz.heritagemalta.org .

To lend works for the exhibition, e-mail schranz@heritagemalta.org.