Adolf Heinrich Lier

Adolf Heinrich Lier (born May 21, 1826 in Herrnhut ; † September 30, 1882 in Vahrn near Brixen in South Tyrol ) was a German landscape painter .

Life

Lier was a student of Richard Zimmermann at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich . From 1849 Adolf Heinrich Lier painted studies based on nature and still life .

There are pictures of Lier from Chiemgau , Staudach and from the Rosenheim area, Pang , Aising and Brannenburg .

Youth and apprenticeship

Lier was the son of a goldsmith from Mecklenburg and a bourgeois daughter from Upper Lusatia . Already at the age of 15 he expressed his wish to become a painter, but this was not supported by his father. He therefore attended the building trade school in Zittau and the building school in Dresden led by Gustav Heine . In 1846 he was awarded the small silver medal for the design for a “stately residential building on a river” for the academic exhibition. After that he succeeded for a short time in the studio of Gottfried Semper . In 1848, shortly after the death of his father, he was given the opportunity, under the direction of the architect Melchior Berri in Basel, to design the ceilings for a museum building. However, the building trade never offered him a satisfactory job. The painter Carl Adolf Mende confirmed Lier's decision to devote himself to painting after all . He went under the direction of the painter Seiffert, who recommended him to Munich. In October 1849 he moved to Munich. Despite Seiffert's recommendation, acceptance in Munich was initially difficult. When Lier asked the portrait painter Joseph Bernhardt , a pupil of Joseph Karl Stieler , to be admitted to his studio, the latter declined for reasons of space. Lier then met the painter Richard Zimmermann from Zittau by chance , who took him into his studio and became his advisor. After he was briefly occupied with portraits and genre pieces in his studio , including drawing heads and nudes for the painter Bedellé, he turned exclusively to landscape painting, which most suited his inclination and ability. Soon he showed himself to be Zimmermann's best student and a friendly relationship developed between the two. Initially, Lier did not go public with his works and only gained attention outside of artistic circles in 1855 with the exhibition of a “Village Party at Pabach” at the Munich Art Association . In 1856 he was elected a juror for a London art exhibition.

First artistic period

In his first period Lier concentrated on the mountain world of the Alps and the beautiful, quiet Upper Bavarian lakes, which he chose as the motif for his pictures. In the summers he went on study trips and extensive excursions that took him to Tyrol and Salzburg . He worked for a long time in Brannenburg, repeatedly in the Raumsau and on Lake Starnberg ; however, he preferred to stay at the Chiemsee on the Fraueninsel . But even then he felt that it was not the mountains but the plateau around Munich and the plains in general that corresponded to his artistic inclinations. Already in a letter from 1856 he stated that as a painter he preferred to have the mountains at a certain distance, which he often repeated later.

Second artistic period

In 1861 Lier made his first two-month trip to Paris . It was there that the great masters of the French landscape, such as Rousseau , Baubinan, Corrot, Dupré , Diaz and Trouon, who were then in their greatest bloom , met him for the first time . The unusual thing about that realistic direction initially struck him and did not reveal itself to him at first. However, the impressions received continued to work in him and did not let him go again and shaped in him every art conception that he had in mind in all of his further work. For Lier, the only true principle of landscape painting was to let nature work through its simple simplicity and he found that even the smallest piece of nature was still worth imitating and appealing - in itself for its own sake. So he looked for the great in the simple, spurned the whole apparatus of lines, overlaps, backdrops, the accumulation of details in favor of the overall effect and placed the main emphasis on the overall impression and the tone. “From the moment that this knowledge came to me,” he said himself, “I really believe that I have received an understanding of art.” Lier saw the French masters as bringing light and he praised this turn in his artistic outlook always as the most beneficial that happened to him for his work.

In 1864 he made his second long trip to Paris in order to perfect himself in this sense. He began studying older masterpieces in the Louvre , where he copied the images that most captivated him. Among the French painters living at the time, Jules Dupré exerted the greatest attraction on him, so that he followed him to L'Isle-Adam for the winter of 1864/65 in order to make studies of nature, still lifes and copies under his direction . The following year he undertook a three-month trip to England with a return trip via Hamburg , Mecklenburg, Herrnhut and Dresden, during which he practiced the painting style he had learned in France. The result was published in 1866 as evening landscape from Mecklenburg , which earned him good reviews.

In 1869 Lier was commissioned to invite French and Belgian painters to attend an international art exhibition in Munich and to contribute works themselves. He was represented there with the “four times of the day”, a “morning”, “noon”, “evening” and a “night”, as well as with an “Isar region near Munich”, which made him widely known and brought him orders.

In the autumn of 1869 he opened his own landscape painting school in his house. He first introduced the “paysage intime” of the French in Germany without losing its peculiarity and also educated his students in this sense. As early as 1873 he gave up this teaching activity in order to be able to create more freely for himself again and because his health was weakened.

A trip to Holland in 1873 inspired him to paint “The Beach at Scheveningen” .

Due to a heart condition, he was not as zealous as he was in the last years of his art from 1874 onwards, although several of his most important paintings come from these years.

The pictures, which were taken after his second stay in Paris, allow the subject of the drawing to recede proportionally. The emphasis is on the mood, the effect is primarily based on the fine coloristic treatment. The delicacy of the observation of nature and the magic of the poetic sensations living in it make these works of his second period artistically superior to those of the first.

Lier hoped to find rest and recovery in South Tyrol , where he wanted to spend the winter, but he died of a heart attack on the trip there on September 30, 1882 .

Works (selection)

Period 1856 to 1865
image	title	year	Size / material	Exhibition / collection / owner
	Evening landscape with an approaching thunderstorm	1856	Oil on canvas
	Stone figure with chapel at the Biber near Brannenburg	1857	Oil on canvas
	Grain harvest in the mountains	1857	98.5 × 150 cm, oil on canvas
	Summer landscape on Lake Starnberg	around 1857	76 × 42 cm, oil on canvas
	starnberger Lake	1858	90 × 128.5 cm, oil on canvas	Bayer. State painting collections (loan from Bay. Hypoth. And exchange bank)
	The Starnberger See from Pöcking	1856-1863	90 × 128.5 cm, oil on canvas
	Area near Dachau	1859	Oil on canvas
	Summer morning	1860	63 × 54 cm, oil on canvas
	On the Fraueninsel with a view of the Kampenwand	1861	44.5 × 66.5 cm, oil on canvas
	Evening on the Isar near Munich	1862	Oil on canvas
	Beach at Etretat on the Normandy coast	1863	Oil on canvas	Dresden gallery
	Evening on the canal near Schleissheim	1863	Oil on canvas
	Summer day on the plateau near Munich	1863	engraved by J. Richter
	Summer day	1863	98 × 150 cm, oil on canvas	Galerie D. Heinemann , Munich; Hofkunsthandlung EA Fleischmann, Munich; before 1928 German private ownership
	Landscape with a flock of sheep	around 1865	69 × 50 cm, oil on canvas

Period from 1867
image	title	year	Size / material	Exhibition / collection / owner
	Autumn morning. Avenue in the fog	1867	Oil on canvas
	Village alley in England by moonlight	1867	Oil on canvas
	Moon night at the Dise	1867	Oil on canvas
	Lot on the Elbe near Pillnitz	1868	Oil on canvas
	Game near Schleissheim	1868	Oil on canvas
	Four times of the day (morning, noon, evening, night)	around 1869	Oil on canvas
	Embankment with willows	around 1870	20.5 cm × 30 cm, oil on cardboard	North German private ownership, a watercolor study of this painting is in the Munich Pinakothek
	Potato harvest	1870	Oil on canvas
	In the English garden	1870	Oil on canvas
	Four Seasons	1871	Oil on canvas
	Country road in the rain	1872	Oil on canvas
	Fog morning at the Chiemsee	1872	Oil on canvas
	The beach at Scheveningen	1873	Oil on canvas
	Chapel on a wooded hill	1873	49.5 × 77 cm, oil on canvas	2005 auctioned at Christie's , Amsterdam
	Beech forest (in autumn)	1874	45 × 75 cm, oil on canvas	Lenbachhaus, Munich
	Winter evening	1875	Oil on canvas
	Autumn landscape in the evening with herd returning home	1876	Oil on canvas
	Evening on the Isar	1877	Oil on canvas	Berlin National Gallery
	In the oak forest	1877	Oil on canvas
	Evening in the Moose	1878	Oil on canvas
	starnberger Lake	1879	Oil on canvas
	Pond on the country road near Pang	1879	Oil on canvas
	Moos area near Giggenhausen	1881	Oil on canvas
	Freisinger Moor near Dachau	1881	Oil on canvas
	Theresienwiese with Hall of Fame	1882	205 × 110 cm, oil on canvas	Neue Pinakothek , Munich, detail: Hall of Fame
	Sunset on the Scottish coast	1882	65 × 128 cm, oil on canvas	Rudolf Kosch, Berlin .; State Gallery Stuttgart , Gallery Paffrath, Düsseldorf
	Etzenhausen		62 × 75.2 cm, oil on canvas	Stühler Coll
	Herd of cattle at the Amper		35.8 × 77.7 cm, oil on canvas	Stühler Coll
	To Frauenwörth		59 × 90 cm, oil on canvas
	Children playing in the snow		Oil on canvas	Elgin Court Designs Ltd., London
	Summer day in the pastures		Oil on canvas
	Morning mood near Seefeld		Oil on canvas
	Moonlight on the Oise		Oil on canvas
	Bog landscape with deer and ducks at sunset		45 × 95 cm, oil on canvas	1988 auctioned at Christie's, London
	On the chicken hunt		21.5 × 37.5 cm, oil on oak	2008 in auction at Fischer Auctions
	River landscape with ships		20.3 × 40.6 cm, oil on panel	1995 auctioned at Christie's London; The Watson Galleries, Montreal
	On the farm		Oil on canvas	2006 auctioned at Christie's London
	Ducks on a lake at dusk		Oil on canvas	2008 auctioned at Christie's London
	Return from the harvest		17.5 × 39.7 cm, oil on panel	Kunsthalle Bremen (legacy Consul General Eugen Kulenkamp 1897)

literature

• Hermann Arthur Lier:  Lier, Adolf . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1883, pp. 631-636.
• Theodor Mennacher, Adolf Heinrich Lier: Adolf Lier and his work. Piloty & Loehle publishing house, 1928.
• Lier, Adolf Heinrich . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 23 : Leitenstorfer – Mander . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1929, p. 211 .
• I. Kallmeyer: Adolf Heinrich Lier 1826–1882. Dissertation . Innsbruck 1967.
• Sigfried Wichmann: Master - Student - Subjects, Munich landscape painter in the 19th century. Schuler Verlag, 1981, p. 247 No. 531
• Sigfried Asche:  Lier, Adolf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 535 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Paul Pfisterer, Claire Pfisterer: Signature Lexicon. de Gruyter, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-11-014937-0 . S.?
• Stéphanie Baumewer, Jennifer Fischer-Falckenberg: Lier, Adolf Heinrich In: Bénédicte Savoy, France Nerlich (ed.): Paris apprenticeship years. A lexicon for training German painters in the French capital. Volume 2: 1844-1870. de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2015, p.

Web links

Commons : Adolf Heinrich Lier  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files