Heinrich Max Imhof

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Heinrich Max Imhof, 1834
drawing by Franz Xaver Winterhalter , Rome

Heinrich Max Imhof (* 14. May 1798 or 1795 in Bürglen , Uri , † 4. May 1869 in Rome ; full name Heinrich Maximilian Imhof ) was a Swiss sculptor of Classicism .

Life

Heinrich Max Imhof, 1869
drawing by Sebastian Buff

Heinrich Max Imhof was born in Bürglen as the son of the smallholder Johann Joseph Imhof and Katharina Barbara Arnold. He spent his childhood in Bifang near Bürglen, where he grew up in simple circumstances. The teacher and vedute painter Franz Xaver Triner (1767–1824), who gave the young Imhof drawing lessons, recognized his artistic talent early on. He convinced his parents to send the 16-year-old to an apprenticeship with the wood sculptor Franz Abart in Kerns in 1811 . When his teacher furnished the parish church in Kerns with sculptural work between 1814 and 1823, Imhof made his first well-known professional carvings on the portal. In 1818 the geographer Johann Gottfried Ebel became aware of Imhof and brought him to Zurich, where he mainly created portrait reliefs as a freelance sculptor. Among the clients was the Prussian Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm (IV.), Who had Imhof portray himself in 1819 during his trip to Switzerland. In 1820 his mentor Ebel sponsored further training in the studio of the Swabian sculptor Johann Heinrich Dannecker in Stuttgart and in 1824 financed the first study trip to Rome, which Imhof went on together with his fellow sculptor friend Johann Jakob Oechslin . There, in the workshop of the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen , he familiarized himself with his classical design principles, which were modeled on classical Greek art of antiquity. In the German artist colony, he maintained contacts with Oechslin, the German artists Ernst von Bandel and Bonaventura Genelli, and the Swiss sculptor and writer Heinrich Keller .

In 1827 Imhof began with the model work on the statue of David with the head of Goliath , which Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm had made in marble for the furnishings of the Potsdam summer palace Charlottenhof . In addition to statues, Imhof received more and more orders for busts, including from the Bavarian King Ludwig I , who ordered busts of the Bavarian Elector Maximilian I and 1835 of the humanist Johannes Reuchlin to furnish the Walhalla memorial . His son Otto I , King of Greece, appointed Imhof as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Athens , which was founded in 1836 , where he also dealt with the restoration of excavated antiquities and the caryatids of the Erechtheion. His poor health and lack of commissions led him back to Rome in 1838, where he lived and worked until the end of his life on May 4, 1869, apart from a short stay in Zurich and a few smaller trips. In addition to the German and English nobility and the upper classes, Duke Maximilian von Leuchtenberg from the de Beauharnais family and the Russian imperial family were among his customers. As a representative of the Thorvaldsen School, Imhof found it increasingly difficult to assert himself on the international art market from 1848, which also worsened his economic situation. In the last years of his life he suffered like many sculptors from rheumatic complaints, which increasingly impaired his work. Imhof was buried on the Campo Santo Teutonico .

The painter Carl Christian Vogel von Vogelstein portrayed Imhof in a painting that is kept in his collection of other artist portraits in the Dresden Kupferstichkabinett . Imhof's daughter Mariette married the Austrian painter Othmar Brioschi . His students included Marcello from Freiburg and probably also Ferdinand Schlöth from Basel , with whom the relationship later turned into a hateful rivalry.

family

Imhof had been married to the Protestant Henriette Ott (1825-1892) from Zurich since 1849. From this marriage there were five daughters and two sons. The daughter Franziska Auguste Sophie (* around 1854 in Rome; † March 16, 1944 in Dresden), called Fanny, married the engineer Oskar Ludwig Kummer in 1875 . Annarella Imhof (1856–1935) married the art dealer and gallery owner Fritz Gurlitt in 1881 . Maria Imhof, called Mimmy, had been married to the painter Othmar Brioschi since 1887 . Angela Imhof (1858–1940) married the painter Hermann Knackfuß in Rome in 1878 .

meaning

The marble statue of David with the head of Goliath , created in 1828/29 for the later Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Is probably the first sculpture that consciously sought to combine Thorvaldsen's classicism with the imagery of the Nazarenes . It stands at the beginning of Imhof's lifelong preoccupation with the figures of the Old Testament , which he knew how to depict in sensitive simplicity and to whom he owed part of his fame. He also achieved an independent position within the widely ramified Thorvaldsen School by integrating motifs of movement into the late classicist formal language, which was shaped by the Danish artist entrepreneur and focused on calm and restrained gestures.

Works (selection)

Statue of Miriam , Stuttgart, Rotunda of the State Gallery
Statue of Ruth , Stuttgart, Rotunda of the State Gallery
  • around 1814 carving on the portal of the parish church in Kerns
  • 1819 bust or relief of the Prussian Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm (IV.)
  • 1820 Profile portrait of the sculptor Johann Heinrich Dannecker, on permanent loan from the LETTER Foundation since 2003 in the Württembergisches Landesmuseum , Stuttgart.
  • 1827 portrait bust of the architect Melchior Berri , Museum an der Augustinergasse , Basel, stairwell
  • 1828 marble statue of David with the head of Goliath , for Charlottenhof Palace, Sanssouci Park, Potsdam
  • 1832 Bust of the Bavarian Elector Maximilian I, for the Walhalla
  • 1831/32 Atalante races to pick up the golden apples of Hippomenes , remains of the original made of plaster in the Kunstmuseum Bern
  • 1832/33 bust of the geographer Johann Gottfried Ebel, today in the Zurich Central Library
  • 1835 bust of the humanist Reuchlin, for the Walhalla
  • 1837 and after 1850 Madonna and Child Jesus , plaster cast in the Uri Historical Museum, Altdorf
  • 1838 Bust of the Greek King Otto I, today in the Otto King of Greece Museum, Ottobrunn Town Hall
  • 1838 bust of the Duchess Amalie von Oldenburg , then Queen of Greece, today in the headquarters of the Landessparkasse zu Oldenburg
  • 1841 Rebekka with the bracelet , original made of plaster in the Kunstmuseum Bern. Marble execution from 1867 in the Kunstmuseum Basel.
  • 1842 Hagar with the impoverished Ishmael , for Duke Maximilian von Leuchtenberg , Hermitage , Saint Petersburg. Another group in the Royal Museum and Library, Peel Park, Salford
  • 1845 The mother of Moses abandons her child on the water of the Nile , for Tsar Nicholas I.
  • Around 1845 marble relief on the cemetery wall in Altdorf, Canton Uri
  • 1845 Miriam , formerly in the Potsdam City Palace , today in the Raffael Hall of the Orangery Palace and in the State Gallery of Stuttgart
  • 1846 bust of the pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi , for the city library, today the central library in Zurich
  • 1858 bust of the Zurich mayor Johann Jakob Hess , (formerly in the Haus zum Lindental / Landolthaus Zurich, today in the Kunsthaus Zurich  ?)
  • 1859 Ruth the Gleaner , State Gallery Stuttgart
  • 1865 Eva before the Fall , Bern Art Museum
  • 1866 Jesus in front of the scribes , grave stele by Henriette Imhof-Ott, Protestant cemetery, Rome

Exhibitions

  • 1995: Altdorf, Uri Historical Museum

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Year of birth 1798 according to his necrology in the art chronicle 1869, also in Thieme-Becker and other sources. In some cases, however, the year 1795 is also given.
  2. ^ Albrecht Weiland: The Campo Santo Teutonico in Rome and its grave monuments. Volume I, Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1988, ISBN 3-451-20882-2 , p. 327 f.
  3. ^ Marianne Rolle: Marcello. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . August 21, 2008 .
  4. ↑ Stefan Hess , Tomas Lochman (ed.): Classical beauty and patriotic heroism. The Basel sculptor Ferdinand Schlöth (1818–1891). Basel 2004, pp. 26 and 47;
    Stefan Hess: Between Winckelmann and Winkelried. The Basel sculptor Ferdinand Schlöth (1818–1891). Berlin 2010, p. 22 f. and 46.
  5. ↑ Permanent access to the LETTER Foundation , accessed on February 13, 2020.
  6. ^ Collection online on the website of the Kunstmuseum Basel.
  7. ↑ The Stuttgart copy was made in 1859 (designation on the plinth: "HEINR. IMHOF. FEC. ROMA 1859").
  8. ↑ Designation on the plinth: “HEINR. IMHOF FEC. ROMA 1859 ".
personal data
SURNAME Imhof, Heinrich Max
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Imhof, Heinrich Maximilian; Imhof, Heinrich Maximus; Imhoff, Heinrich Max; In the courtyard, Heinrich Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1795 or May 14, 1798
PLACE OF BIRTH Bürglen , Canton of Uri
DATE OF DEATH May 4, 1869
Place of death Rome