Contrary to today's perception, Anton Romako's work “Tegetthoff in the Naval Battle of Lissa”, which is astonishing in its modernity,

was almost universally rejected and ridiculed when it was first presented at the Vienna Künstlerhaus in the summer of 1882.
The painter left all the conventions of historical battle painting behind and assumed that the audience was familiar with the course of the naval battle and the decisive ramming of the Austrian battleship. He shifted the dramatic tension of the event entirely to the viewer's imagination.
This marked a fundamental change: it was no longer the historical event itself that was being reported, but the feelings and experiences of the people involved during a single moment. Romako's “Tegetthoff in the Naval Battle of Lissa” can thus be seen as a legitimate precursor to our current narrative techniques of “suspense”. His painting was also to serve as a model for Austrian Expressionists such as Oskar Kokoschka.
In order to grasp the revolutionary nature of the painting, this richly illustrated book sheds light on the historical, military and artistic context of the time and of Romako's oeuvre.