August Godtknecht

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Self-portrait, around 1850

August Godtknecht (born March 1, 1824 in Lübeck ; † August 11, 1888 there ) was a German genre painter.

Illustration of the Lübeck battalion

Life

Godtknecht was born the son of a Lübeck ship's captain. Since he showed a striking talent for drawing at an early stage , he was advised to devote himself to painting . Following this advice through constant diligence, he was already a sought-after portrait painter as a 19-year-old and received commissions from the first families in his hometown (the Fehlings , Tegtmeyers , ...).

These commissions enabled him to go to the academy in Munich for further training from 1845 . His talent led him to a detailed observation of nature. Since this did not exist at the Munich Academy, where the stylistic direction of Cornelius or Kaulbach prevailed at that time , he continued his studies in 1847 at the Dresden Art Academy . What he had not found sufficient in “Florence on the Elbe”, he found in Düsseldorf in 1851 , where he was a private student of the genre painter Carl Wilhelm Huebner . Huebner is said to have once called him his “most talented student”. At the Düsseldorf School of Painting , nature was studied, and a special trend in German genre painting developed there . Benjamin Vautier and Ludwig Knaus , for example, emerged from it.

Godtknecht earned through genre paintings and paintings in larger styles, such as B. in Teplitz , his livelihood. However, since he longed for a sphere of activity in which he could find support and recognition, he was persuaded in 1860 to go to St. Petersburg . But even there he couldn't find what he was looking for. As his hearing problem got worse and worse, he had to become a photographer in order to survive his life there, like so many portrait painters in those days .

Nine years later he was able to return to his home in Lübeck. There he got various assignments. Among other things, he was entrusted with the illustration of the chronicle of the Lübeck battalion of fusiliers of the 2nd Hanseatic Infantry Regiment in the Franco-German War in the form of several watercolors . When the pictures of the drafts were available, Wilhelm Livonius , chief of the 10th Company , was entrusted with the writing of the "Chronicle of the Fusilier Battalion". Emanuel Geibel sat him several times for portraits.

After spending two years in Stockholm , he went to Vienna at the age of 58 . Here the field of a new, rewarding activity presented itself to him. His plan to establish a new existence for his own people put an abrupt end to an incipient mental illness and he returned to Lübeck broken.

Works by Godtknecht were shown at the centenary exhibition of German art in Berlin in 1906.

Works

Epitaph Lindenberg

The following works have been in the Lübeck Museum's holdings since 1897:

  • Grandfather's Birthday (1859)
  • Self-portrait at a young age
  • Portrait of the painter Schmidt-Carlson
  • Folder with drawings

Also in Lübeck since 1943:

literature

  • Godtknecht, August . In: Ulrich Thieme , Fred. C. Willis (Ed.): General lexicon of visual artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 14 : Giddens-Gress . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1921, p. 298 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  • Biography of Lübeck. - VIII. - No. 13 - August Godtknecht. In: Father-city sheets. No. 16, edition dated December 21, 1896.
  • German exhibition of the century , Berlin 1906, catalog numbers 607, 608.
  • Wulf Schadendorf : Museum Behnhaus . The house and its rooms. Painting, sculpture, handicrafts (= Lübeck museum catalogs 3). 2nd expanded and changed edition. Museum for Art a. Cultural history d. Hanseatic City, Lübeck 1976, p. 59.
  • Gustav Lindtke: Old Lübeck city views. Lübeck 1968, No. 246 ( Engelsgrube with a view of the Jakobikirche 1857), No. 368 ( Travemünder lighthouse around 1857) and p. 99.

Web links

Commons : August Godtknecht  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Matriculation
  2. ^ Museum Kunstpalast : Artists from the Düsseldorf School of Painting (selection, as of November 2016, PDF )
  3. ↑ The author of his Lübeck biography remarked in his article "... it is to be deplored that he did not come to Düsseldorf immediately, where his talent would have developed fully."
  4. ^ "Foreword" In: Wilhelm Livonius : Chronicle of the Fusilier Battalion / 2nd Hanseatic Infantry Regiment No. 76 / From the establishment / to the return from the campaign 1870–71.
  5. ↑ Lübeckische Blätter 40 (1898), p. 531.
  6. ↑ The Lübeckers in Portrait 1780–1930. Museums for Art and Cultural History of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck, Lübeck 1973, p. 84 (inv. No. 1943/40)
personal data
SURNAME Godtknecht, August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German genre painter
DATE OF BIRTH March 1, 1824
PLACE OF BIRTH Lübeck
DATE OF DEATH August 11, 1888
Place of death Lübeck