Asmus Carstens
Asmus Jacob Carstens (born May 10, 1754 in Skt. Jørgen (now St. Jürgen near Schleswig ), † May 25, 1798 in Rome ) was a painter of German classicism .
Life
Carstens was the son of the Graupenmüller Hans Carstens (1721–1762) and his wife Christina Dorothea, née Petersen (1726–1769), in what was then the village of Skt. Jørgen, which is now part of the city of Schleswig in Schleswig-Holstein . His brother Friedrich Christian was a well-known painter. Carstens first learned either the craft of a cooper in the Ratskeller in Eckernförde or he began an apprenticeship as a wine trader there. At the age of twenty-two he went to Copenhagen to attend the renowned Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts . However, he did not get along with the academy, did not attend classes, refused to take part in life drawing; the lack of this training is occasionally evident in his later drawings. The oil painting taught at the academy, as well as working with paint in general, remained alien to him in his further career.
Instead, he formed a self-taught on. He developed his drawing technique himself: while looking at nature, he memorized images, which he then drew solely from internal intuition. What matters to him is the impression and design of an inner world. He studied the mythology of the Greeks , Teutons and Celts, read the ancient classics and dealt with the philosophy of his time.
Carstens hoped in vain for a Rome scholarship from the academy, but rejected the silver medal he had been awarded. He was then expelled from the academy. He had to break off a trip to Rome with his brother due to lack of money. From 1783 he lived in Lübeck and earned his living as a portrait painter. In addition, he tried to realize his artistic ideals with allegorical and mythological works. He became friends with the writer Karl Ludwig Fernow , his later biographer, who introduced the painter to the aesthetic writings of Schiller and Kant . He made contact with some of the Lübeck senators who financed him a stay in Berlin in 1787.
Berlin 1789–1792
In Berlin, too, he initially had little success, until the Prussian minister von Heinitz became aware of him in the academy exhibition of 1789, at which his picture Fall of the Angels was exhibited , and gave him an order for wall and ceiling paintings in the royal palace. In 1790 he was finally given a professorship at the Academy in Berlin at the instigation of the minister . The drawing Bacchus and Amor comes from this time , in which he does not - as was usual up to now - depict a certain episode from the life of the god Bacchus , but instead developed a wide variety of suggestions from the history of art and literature to create his own picture idea. He took up this theme again in a cardboard box from 1795 in Rome and then worked on one of his rare oil paintings.
Rome 1792–1798
In 1792 he was given leave of absence from the Academy for a stay in Rome. There he dealt with the study of antiquity and, above all, studied the works of Raphael and Michelangelo . The examination of these painters and the ancient masterpieces is reflected in his subsequent works.
In 1795 he began working on the drawing The Night with Her Children , which is considered to be his main work.
- The night with her children sleep and death
The main character is the night ( Nyx ) with her children Sleep ( Hypnos ) and Death ( Thanatos ), who is juxtaposed on the left with Nemesis , the daughter of the night and goddess of retribution. Behind her stands fate ( Tyche ) with a veiled head with a book from which the three Fates Lachesis , Klotho and Atropos recite the fate of the people. Sources for his picture are, in addition to his friend Karl Philipp Moritz's doctrine of gods, the theogony of Hesiod and texts by Pausanias . The drawing is not a traditional allegory , rather it should be viewed with its mythical figures - in the sense of Moritz 's art-theoretical considerations as the language of the imagination ... as it were a world of its own ... and lifted out of the real context of things. The imagination rules in its own area to pleasure ... Carstens paints an oil version of this picture on behalf of a Danish patron, but it is lost.
- space and time
His first major public success came in 1795 in an exhibition in the former Pompeo Batonis († 1787) studio , where he confidently proclaimed that he “ does not belong to the Berlin Academy but to all of humanity ”. The picture space and time shown in this exhibition is an attempt to depict the Kantian categories of space and time . This attempt was perceived with astonishment by art critics and was honored by Friedrich Schiller with a mocking distich .
- Departure of Eteocles
One of his last works is the drawing departure of Eteocles , a topic from the tragedy Seven Against Thebes of Aeschylus . The layout and the relief-like architecture shows the proximity of this image to one of the icons of classicist painting, the oath of the Horatians by Jacques Louis David . However, there are clear differences when it comes to related themes and similar scenes: David shows the protagonists' submission to the law without contradiction, Carstens, on the other hand, focuses on the complaint of the sisters of Eteocles and shows that his hero is only going to commit to the deed required by the state must get through. His image is not suitable as a revolutionary icon.
Carstens died in Rome in 1798 and was buried in the Protestant cemetery near the Cestius pyramid . A relief created by Leopold Rau after Carstens' drawing "The night with her children" around 1879 adorns his gravestone.
After Carsten's death, his artistic estate was initially administered by Fernow, who eventually brought it to Weimar , where it is kept in the Duchess Anna Amalia Library . Only by Fernow learned Goethe the painter to know and appreciate it in the works in his Weimar Price tasks intended targets of an art that is formally in the works of classical antiquity and thematically on antique fabrics, especially on Homer saw realized oriented.
Effect and appreciation
For his drawings, given in clear outlines, he modeled plastic auxiliary figures and was thus able to give new spatiality to art, which was then flattened. He was therefore the leading figure of the Weimar School of Art , founded in 1860 , which was renewed in 1902 by the painter Hans Olde and the sculptor Adolf Brütt by founding the Weimar Sculpture School in 1905 under the sign of the secessions .
In the Schleswig City Museum there is a room dedicated to the painter Asmus Jakob Carstens. There is a monument to Carstens in Copenhagen. The bronze figure was created between 1880 and 1883 by the Danish sculptor Theobald Stein.
The street "Asmus-Carstens-Hag" was named after the painter in Eckernförde.
Works
- Self-portrait , colored chalk drawing, Hamburger Kunsthalle
- The morning , Copenhagen
- Bacchus and Amor , 1790, chalk drawing, Weimar art collections
- The melancholy Ajax with Tecmessa and Eurysakes , around 1791, watercolor over graphite, art collections in Weimar
- The Birth of Light , 1794, chalk drawing, Weimar art collections
- The heroes in Achilles' tent, 1784, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Berlin
- Passage of the Megapenthes , 1785, Staatliche Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
- The night with her children, Sleep and Death , 1795, chalk drawing, Weimar art collections
- Space and Time , 1795
- Oedipus with Theseus , 1796, chalk drawing, Weimar art collections
- Eteocles' departure to fight Polynices, 1797, chalk drawing, Weimar art collections
Quotes
The latest from Rome . One really painted space and time ; it is to be expected that with similar luck we will soon dance the virtue to us. Schiller, Xenien.
literature
- Drawings by Asmus Jakob Carstens in the grand ducal art collection in Weimar , outlines engraved and edited by W. Müller. With explanations by Chr. Schuchardt. Weimar and Leipzig, 1849
- Alfred Woltmann: Carstens, Asmus Jakob . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, pp. 29-35.
- August Sach : Asmus Jakob Carstens' youth and apprenticeship years according to documentary sources. Hall a. P. 1881
- Karl Ludwig Fernow : Carstens, life and work. Ed. U. supplemented by Hermann Riegel. Hanover 1897.
- Alfred Kamphausen : Asmus Jakob Carstens. Studies on Schleswig-Holstein Art History, Volume 5, Neumünster 1941.
- R. Zeitler: Classicism and Utopia. Interpretations of works by David, Canova, Carstens, Thorwaldsen, Koch. Uppsala 1954.
- Alfred Kamphausen: Carstens, Asmus Jakob. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, ISBN 3-428-00184-2 , p. 159 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Herbert von Eine : Asmus Jacob Carstens. The night with her children. Cologne 1958 (Working Group for Research of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, no. 78)
- Asmus Jakob Carstens: Goethe's acquisitions for Weimar. Inventory catalog of the art collections in Weimar. Edited by Renate Barth. Inventory catalog of the Weimar Classic Foundation, edited by Margarete Oppel. Neumünster 1992, ISBN 3-529-02548-8
- Werner Busch : First attempt at a typology of drawing. Chapter 1. Asmus Jakob Carstens . In: Yearbook of the Berlin Museums , 41 (1999), supplement. P. 13–18S ( full text as PDF )
- Mareike Hennig: Asmus Jakob Carstens - Sensible Pictures. A revision of the artist's myth and images . Petersberg 2005.
Web links
- Literature by and about Asmus Carstens in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Asmus Carstens in the German Digital Library
- Artist life in Rome
Individual evidence
- ^ A. Kamphausen: Carstens, Friedrich Christian . in: Schleswig-Holstein Biographical Lexicon . Volume 1. Karl Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1970, p. 103
- ^ Address book and business manual for the city and district of Eckernförde, page III; Published by C. Heldt's Buchhandlung, 1897
- ↑ Weilbach's Kunstnerleksikon , 1947 (Danish)
- ↑ Peter Springer: Asmus Jacob Carstens' grave monument at the Cestius pyramid , in: Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, Vol. 17, 1978, 185-208.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Carstens, Asmus |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Carstens, Asmus Jacob |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 10, 1754 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Schleswig |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 25, 1798 |
| Place of death | Rome |