Anton Braith
Anton Braith (born September 2, 1836 in Biberach an der Riss ; † January 3, 1905 there ) was a German animal and landscape painter and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich .
Life
Anton Braith was the son of a day laborer in Biberach, who later became manager of a farm. As a child he helped herding cattle. In 1851 he entered the Stuttgart art school on a scholarship to study with Bernhard von Neher , Heinrich von Rustige and Heinrich Funk . After initial successes, he and his classmate Albert Kappis moved to Munich in 1860 , where he met Christian Mali and made contacts with the artist colonies in Brannenburg, Pang, Aresing and on the Fraueninsel in the Chiemsee.
In 1867 he traveled to Paris with Mali, Kappis and Carl Ebert. After successful exhibitions in Munich, Paris and Vienna, he and Mali acquired the no longer existing house at Munich Landwehrstraße 46, which was henceforth called "Schwabenburg" and at times also served as a studio for other painters such as Josef Willroider . In 1874 he was with Mali on Lake Constance, in 1875 he bought a villa in Biberach as a second home. In 1884 he made his first trip to Italy, and in 1889 another. He also came to north-west Germany in 1886.
When the Munich artists split in 1892, Braith did not join the Secession , but remained loyal to the Münchner Kunstverein. In 1903 he fell ill with the liver and in 1904 took a cure in Bozen. Half a year before his death he went to Biberach to be cared for, where he also died. He was not married and bequeathed his artistic estate to the city of Biberach. This set up the Braith Museum in 1906. Mali, who died shortly afterwards, was persuaded to bequeath his estate to the city as well. The friends were buried next to each other in the Old Catholic Cemetery in Biberach.
plant
Braith is assigned to the Munich School and after the death of Friedrich Voltz was considered the leading German animal painter, a rank that was later taken from him by Heinrich von Zügel . His subjects were the farm animals cattle, sheep and goats, and more rarely poultry. He mostly painted them in small, mixed herds and different races and thus represented the premodern animal husbandry, which was actually already considered outdated in his time. But this was precisely what made his success in the age of industrialization possible, as the townspeople longed for the unadulterated country life. Occasionally Braith also showed encounters between obviously estranged city dwellers and animals in the country.
His work is divided into four phases:
- From 1851 to 1860 he tried to compose still somewhat stiff and sweet, idyllic country and animal scenes in the style of the Dutch.
- 1860–1873 he specialized in animal portraits, most of which are associated with a landscape frame and with genre representations (shepherds).
- 1874-1894 he was at the height of his work and painted animal scenes of unprecedented drama and movement.
- From 1894–1904 he was sidelined from the current art scene and only painted calm animal scenes on alpine pastures above the tree line
Braith mainly painted large-format studio pictures for sale, which he put together from individual studies. Formats of this size were not used for animal pictures before him. In addition to the animal pictures, Braith is also familiar with small-format landscape pictures and plant studies, some of which were also created outdoors and testify to great skill, but which he probably did not sell.
Braith knew the animals well because of their origins. He painted with great knowledge of animal anatomy and behavior. The strongest impressions were made by those pictures of him which show animals in dire need and danger. Braith is therefore also assigned to realism . However, it cannot be overlooked that his scenes are artificially composed and do not depict reality, but an artistically enhanced view of things. His work shows many parallels with that of Anders Askevold .
His best-known pictures include Troubled Peace , Cows in the Krautacker (1868), A Train of Oxen (1870, Kunsthalle in Hamburg), Grazing Cows (1872), Cattle Returning Home (1873), Cattle and Shepherd's Boy and The Flight of a Herd from a Thunderstorm , Cows in front of a footbridge destroyed by the mountain stream (around 1873), return of the large flock of sheep from the alp (1880), stable fire (around 1882), and mutual surprise (1893).
Honors
Braith was made an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. The town of Biberach awarded him on 4. August 1891 , the honorary citizenship . A street was named after him in the Ramersdorf-Perlach district of Munich .
estate
The richly furnished studio rooms from Munich with the bequests of Anton Braith and Christian Mali can be seen today in the Braith Mali Museum in Biberach. These rooms, which were moved from Munich, served less for the production of art than for exhibition and sale. The actual work rooms have not been preserved.
literature
- Adam Kuhn: Anton Braith. A picture of his life and work . Edited by the art and antiquity association Biberach. Anzeiger vom Oberland GmbH, Biberach an der Riss 1926
- Hans-Peter Bühler: Anton Braith, Christian Mali. Animal painting of the Munich School . Von Zabern, Mainz 1981, ISBN 3-8053-0534-6
- The Braith Mali studios . Exhibition guide. Braith-Mali-Museum, Biberach an der Riß 2000, ISBN 3-933614-03-1
- Uwe Degreif (Ed.): Anton Braith. Animal painter in Munich . Kunstverlag Josef Fink, Lindenberg im Allgäu 2005, ISBN 3-89870-252-9
Web links
- Literature by and about Anton Braith in the catalog of the German National Library
- Gerhard Raff about Anton Braith
- Biberach Museum
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Braith, Anton |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 2, 1836 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Biberach an der Riss |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 3, 1905 |
| Place of death | Biberach an der Riss |