Albert Berg (painter, 1825)

Members of the Prussian East Asia Expedition, No. 8 Albert Berg

Watercolor mountain of a gate at the castle of Edo

Albert Berg (born June 15, 1825 in Berlin , † August 20, 1884 in Hallstatt in the Salzkammergut ) was a German landscape painter and museum director.

Life

Originally intended for the diplomatic service, he first studied law in Geneva from 1842 and also took drawing and painting lessons. After a stay in Italy in 1844, Grand Duke Friedrich Franz von Mecklinburg-Schwerin accompanied him on a journey of several months through Sicily via Malta to Constantinople and concentrated more and more on landscape painting. At the suggestion of Alexander von Humboldt , he took a trip to New Granada in 1849 and published a work on the local vegetation in 1854. Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Became aware of Berg through Humboldt. In 1853/54 he made an official trip to Rhodes and West Asia Minor . From 1860 to 1862 he took part in the Prussian East Asia expedition to Japan and China as a landscape painter .

He was appointed the first director of the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in Wroclaw in 1880 and ran it until his death in 1884.

Thieme-Becker simply describes his drawings as "extremely well executed and scientifically valuable, but not artistically meaningful".

Fonts

• Physiognomy of the Tropical Vegetation of South America; represented by a series of views from the primeval forests on the Magdalenenstrome and the Andes of New Granada, together with a fragment of a letter from Alexander von Humboldt to the author, and a preface by Friedrich Klotzsch . Colnaghi, London 1854.
  • English: Physiognomy of tropical vegetation in South America. A series of views illustrating the primeval forests on the river Magdalena, and in the Andes of New Grenada . Colnaghi, London 1854 ( archive.org ).
• About the Chimaera. Mitgeth. v. Mr. Al.v. Humboldt. In: Journal of General Geography. 3, 1854, pp. 307-314. (Digitized version)
• The island of Rhodus. Described historically, geographically, archaeologically and painterly from personal experience and according to the available sources and illustrated by original etchings and woodcuts based on one's own natural studies and drawings . 2 volumes. Westermann, Braunschweig 1861/62. (Digitized volume 1 , volume 2 ).
• (Staff) The Prussian Expedition to East Asia . 4 volumes. Berlin 1864–1873. (See also works (as digital copies and full text) by Albert Berg in the German Text Archive .)

literature

• Works by Karl Graeb, Otto Günther and Albert Berg . Mittler, Berlin 1884. (digitized version)
• Berg, Albrecht . In: Ulrich Thieme , Felix Becker (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists from Antiquity to the Present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. tape 3 : Bassano – Bickham . Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1909, p. 385 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
• Renate Löschner: Latin American landscapes by painters from the Humboldt area. Dissertation. TU Berlin 1976, DNB 770767087 , p. 8, 88-95, 110-111.
• Renate Löschner: German artists in Latin America . Catalog. Bonn 1978, ISBN 3-496-01006-1 , pp. 12, 20, 22, 107-110.
• Susanna Partsch : Berg, Albert . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 11, Saur, Munich a. a. 1995, ISBN 3-598-22751-5 , p. 295.

Web links

• Literature by and about Albert Berg in the catalog of the German National Library
• Etching, with biography (copy from General Artist Lexicon)