In the second part of his article on Anton Schranz, John J. Schranz reformulates the question surrounding the artist’s coming to Malta with his family from Why did they settle in Malta? to Why did they leave Spain so suddenly?

Anton Schranz’s tribunal statement places his leaving home around 1786/1787. He was 17. The home he left was a humble farmers’ abode. Searching in 1983 for possible relatives, my father discovered Anton’s uncle’s line, Annalise Schuler being the last who was Schranz by birth. Our 1800s ancestors were simple farming folk; they bought their home in 1818, from Prince Metternich, as their carefully preserved contract shows.

Rafael de Riego, leader of the first successful Spanish revolution. His liberal constitution lasted for three years, till Ferdinand hanged him.Rafael de Riego, leader of the first successful Spanish revolution. His liberal constitution lasted for three years, till Ferdinand hanged him.

The beautiful home I visited in 2002 was still that in the 1904 photograph – what made that 17-year-old, 118 years earlier, leave his humble home in a tiny village at the heart of Europe, close to Austria’s and Switzerland’s borders, ending up, five years later, on that tiny Western Mediterranean island, 1,500 kilometres away, far from anywhere else?

Recent findings might review Egon Schneider’s suggestion of a grant from Bishop Weltin for Anton to study in Rome. Schneider suggests that Anton, then a pupil at Ochsenhausen’s Benedictine Abbey, may have helped Johan Anton Huber, director of Augsburg’s academy of art, in extensive fresco work at the abbey… Huber may then have helped with Anton’s grant.

Another artist, Phillip Jakob Herz frescoed nearby churches – interestingly, Anton’s mother’s maiden name was Herz. Another prompt comes from Menorca. Anton was paid a large sum of money for important painting, sculpture, stucco and gilding works on the Augustinian Al Soccors Church and on the Cathedral organ’s case. The work echoes Bavarian baroque – he may have helped Huber on such work in Ochsenhausen.

Inquiries regarding whether his German companions in Menorca received some study grant, together with these tenuous suggestions, might shed light on a major grey area regarding Anton’s travels. Investigations started soon.

Another grey area is now clearer. Malta’s shipping registers do not record Anton’s arrival, the only misplaced register being for the last half of 1817; it has long been assumed he arrived then. Menorca’s archives produce a surprise. On May 27, 1817, he and Isabella made a joint passport for Malta. Anton’s assumed June arrival is thus confirmed. However, we now discover Isabella came with him a year before her coming with the children. Why?

An objective answer will probably never be given, though a highly possible one can be deduced, starting from one certainty. Isabella was no ordinary early 19th-century woman.

She sailed here in her fifth month of pregnancy, returning to eight waiting children and vacating an 11-person residence. She prepared her belongings to bring over to Malta, delivered the baby and – seven months later – repeated the voyage with nine children, including a baby and five aged between three and 15.

Well in her 60s, she travelled with her daughter Margherita, once to Constantinople, returning six months later alone, and once to Menorca, returning nine months later from Algiers. This 1817-1818 saga is more impressive, however.

A curious aspect is that on her June 6 passport to Malta of her nine children Isabella listed seven. Juan (Giovanni) and Antonio do not feature. On July 6, she made out another passport – for José. The registration says “Joseph Schranz Howard, age 13, leaves for Malta with his mother, Isabella Howard.” His name was already on hers. Why a separate one for him? And why not one for Giovanni and Antonio? Could they have wanted to remain in Menorca? They were 23 and 17, their lives and relationships would have started delineating themselves. Both were becoming artists.

The Malta arrivals register lists all 10 together, Juan and Antonio heading the list, Isabella closing it. What is interesting is their seeming reluctance to leave. That, and their parents’ sudden decision, may be the reason for the sudden May 1817 departure. Eight months before, on September 13, 1816, Anton signed a contract purchasing a house – 12 Carrer St Pau, Maón – in a beautiful new area overlooking Menorca’s major harbour. Nobody desperate at years of lost clientele would pack up and emigrate eight months after buying a house.

The ‘clientele’ hypothesis is ethnocentric. That unfounded assumption, propagated in catalogues of various British auction houses handling Schranz paintings, appears to make perfect sense from that single point of view.

The great majority of Schranzes paintings sold were executed in Malta

By far, the great majority of Schranzs’ paintings sold, mostly Giovanni’s, were executed in Malta. His prolific opus spanned 64 years. Many are repertory commissions, British naval officers requesting ship portraits with Malta’s Grand Harbour as backdrop.

The genre’s abundance has unhappy consequences. Giovanni and Anton attributions recur continually and interchangeably, generating aberrations even for Antonio’s and Giuseppe’s works. For example, several precisely dated Antonio watercolours are attributed wrongly to Anton. Each caption bears Anton’s date of death, anteceding each painting’s date, implying he painted them posthumously.

Anton’s children’s formation feeds the problem. His teaching launched a dynasty. It is in pencil/ink drawings and sketches that personal characteristics emerge most. Immediacy reveals difference. In elaborate work, however, collective formation and years working together bring a certain standardisation… it is difficult for four children not to influence each other profoundly in a potent context where, apart from creating paintings, their father teaches all four to paint. Attributing their work becomes an unenviable task.

One of the paintings given to King William IV by Anton Schranz. Awaiting restoration, it is in storage, and so difficult to photograph.One of the paintings given to King William IV by Anton Schranz. Awaiting restoration, it is in storage, and so difficult to photograph.

Anton’s figures capture human action. There always is a dynamic energy, a combination of limbs in rhythmic, biological coordination. Their palette helps viewers’ eyes to design observation paths.Anton’s figures capture human action. There always is a dynamic energy, a combination of limbs in rhythmic, biological coordination. Their palette helps viewers’ eyes to design observation paths.

Borne partly of that problem, the ethnocentric assumption does Anton a grave disservice. Gratuitously, applying the ‘navy clientele’ label to his Menorca years, ignores his true Menorca work. Generating that simplistic (beguilingly plausible) ‘reason’ for Anton’s move to Malta, that assumption ignores crucial historical events. Focusing upon those events, instead of blocking them out, unravels that assumption.

Till then, however, that tawdry screen debases the events causing Anton’s move. The shock of that screen suddenly disintegrating reveals, in its well-known ugliness, a series of grave, tragic and highly complex events which rocked to its foundations a major Mediterranean, European country for nearly 80 years. One is shocked at not having remembered it before.

I am of the opinion that Anton’s decision to leave Menorca urgently was borne of a deeply apprehensive déjà-vu.

Many of us Maltese, myself included, succumbed to that ‘Anton Schranz’s lost clientele’ lure, its facile solution dulling our critical faculty. Capitulating to it, we viewed history through the British 19th century Empire’s lens, foregoing that of the Mediterranean wherein Malta is steeped.

In the first part of this article, published on July 31, we saw the powers playing snatch and grab using Menorca. Bereft of usable ships and its treasury empty, Spain could neither reap its American colonies’ revenues nor curb their independence aspirations. An 1817 moment of éclat was the leak of Ferdinand’s top secret dealings with Russia for eight quality warships. Ferdinand offered to mortgage all revenues from his American and European dominions. Furore… Russia could step into America and Menorca. Throughout Anton’s stay there instability ruled. England’s use of Menorca is minimal, it couldn’t be otherwise. The ‘clientele’ hypothesis is gratuitous.

Sections of the extensive decorative works by Anton in the Augustinian church Al Soccors in Ciutadella.Sections of the extensive decorative works by Anton in the Augustinian church Al Soccors in Ciutadella.

One needs to look elsewhere. 19th century Spain’s labour-pangs call loudly enough. Everything happened to Spain’s kings – resignations, abdications, re-enthronements, trickery, cajoling, conspiracies, revolutions, house arrest, endless wars. The main causes were Napoleon and his wars, impoverishment as South American colonies challenged the colonialism leeching them, the seeds of liberalism sown across the border by France’s revolution into a land steeped in stifling practices and, above all, Spain’s sovereigns’ concoction of indolence, absolutism and internecine warring.

Born 20 years before the French Revolution and having lived it, Anton Schranz senses what’s coming:

• 1812, the first revolution, abolishing the Inquisition and absolute monarchy, establishing male suffrage, constitutional monarchy and press freedom;

• 1814: Ferdinand abolishes the Constitution, launching his iron-fist absolutism. His popular nickname, ‘The Desired’, becomes ‘The Felon King’. Spain is bankrupt, taxes escalate, spreading unrest, dismissals, arrests, imprisonments, hangings, summary street executions, burgeoning liberal forces confront reactionary absolutism;

• 1820: a revolution restores the constitution;

• 1823: Ferdinand again quashes it, hanging its leader, Rafael Del Riego; years of iron-fist atrocities;

• 1833: Ferdinand dies, and worse follows;

• 1834-1876: The devastatingly internecine Carlist Wars engulf Spain.

A Scottish soldier reports from the front: “The Christinos and Carlists thirsted for each other’s blood, with all the fierce ardour of civil strife, animated by the memory of years of mutual insult, cruelty and wrong. Brother against brother, father against son, best friend became bitterest foe, priests against their flocks and kindred against kindred.”

On March 17, 1834, the infamous Fusilamientos de Heredia is no once-only monstrosity. It was ‘normal’ – 118 soldiers taken prisoner in battle one day and shot the next. Being on the move, both armies, unable to keep prisoners and unwilling to set them free, unashamedly executed them summarily.

Minorca suffers it – impossible taxes, insurrections, murders, arrests in dead of night (Roca describes that of El Fiscal Moreno, his property confiscated, denied paper and ink in his cell, an eerie “etc etc” closing the entry. A later entry says “last night 12 soldiers took him to Barcelona”).

A 1904 photograph of the Ochsenhausen home Anton left to start his journey.A 1904 photograph of the Ochsenhausen home Anton left to start his journey.

A very early photograph of the organ case of Ciutadella’s cathedral, sculpted, stuccoed, guilded and painted by Anton. The cathedral was vandalised and the organ destroyed in the civil war of the 1930s. Only this one photograph remains.A very early photograph of the organ case of Ciutadella’s cathedral, sculpted, stuccoed, guilded and painted by Anton. The cathedral was vandalised and the organ destroyed in the civil war of the 1930s. Only this one photograph remains.

Due to conscription, mass emigrations, economic meltdown and crop failures, Anton envisages his family stuck on a tiny island in a seething cauldron, his eldest sons ripe for the killing. He decides. Isabella, of Spanish mother and English father, does not challenge her husband’s insight. She decides to accompany him to sense their future homeland.

“He painted our two harbours for King William IV,” says Anton’s obituary. Those simple words led me straight to two impressive paintings in Buckingham Palace. There is no record how they came there. Much larger than any Schranz I’ve seen (183cm x 145cm), they represent the Grand Harbour and Marsamxett.

The Grand Harbour view is unique as a Schranz work. The harbour practically undefined, its true subject is the wharf in the foreground.  Crowded with figures, the foreground is tumultuous, as with all busy harbours. Composition and execution emanate a surprisingly gripping feeling of movement and bustle, even conjuring in the mind a cacophony of sound, triggered by the foreground boatman’s centripetal force.  The word “tumultuous” would never occur in discussing Schranz works, barring their masterly storms. There, however, the tumult is of elemental forces, not human beings.

The wharf and sea-edge foreground pulsates with action and life. Some 60 persons crowd it. Others, small and barely visible, row distant boats. Also unique for a Schranz is the complete social spectrum represented – stevedores, boatsmen, fishermen, layabouts, sailors, coachmen, street vendors, tradesmen, merchants, friars, soldiers, upper-middle class men and women, nobles and a bevy of children, apart from dogs and horses – an impressive range for a Schranz.

It is as if Anton were presenting all Malta’s population to the King. Unrepresented, however, is the artist. Could this constitute, via absence, a request for citizenship, as a family myth goes?

The figures are much larger than in other Schranz’s works, the closest ones some 20cm high. As mentioned earlier, Anton’s figures are always active. These are exceptionally so… no limb is at rest. Feet are caught in mid-step, heads swivel, hands grab, push, pull, lift, carry, reach out, furl sails, touch, grasp, point, restrain, climb, heave, pick, hold animals, finger food, row, pull ropes, mend nets, hold rods, tug dogs, criss-crossing boats risk colliding and fingers point everywhere. Forced to dart around continually, our eyes draw that tumult into our system.

All that… but, then, at sea, in the wide harbour, all is becalmed, sails limp, flags likewise, vessels reflected in liquid mirrors. The contrast is exhilarating. Nature at peace with itself, on the one hand, and ever-restless, over-busy humanity on the other.

It is often said Schranz’s works fall short in handling human figures, always present in their landscapes and seascapes. “Who says the Schranzes can’t do figures?!” asked English art historian Briony Llewellyn, as we saw this painting’s carriage roll out of its pre-restoration storage in Buckingham Palace.

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.

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