August Grahl

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August Grahl, portrayed by Vincenzo Camuccini

August Grahl ( August Friedrich Joachim Heinrich Grahl ; born May 26, 1791 in Poppentin , Mecklenburg , † June 13, 1868 in Dresden ) was an important German miniature painter of the 19th century who portrayed many of his famous contemporaries.

Life

Portrait of his first wife on ivory (around 1819)
August Grahl self-portrait on ivory (1849)
Summer house in Loschwitz, around 1868
House in Loschwitz, Pillnitzer Landstrasse 63

August Grahl was born as the son of the Berlin court jeweler Johann Christian Gottlieb Grahl. From 1811 to 1812 he studied at the Royal Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin . In 1813 he joined the Black Hussars under Ludwig Adolf Wilhelm von Lützow in the Wars of Liberation and advanced to become an officer.

In 1816 Grahl received his first commission, a portrait of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. , based on a painting by the painter François Gérard in Paris. In the years 1817-1818 he traveled to Italy , Rome , Florence , Venice and Bologna . In 1818 he lived in Berlin at Jägerstrasse 25. In 1819 Grahl married his first wife Caroline Schlesikke in Potsdam . She died very young at the age of 25 on January 29, 1821.

In 1823 he went to Vienna and then again to Rome, where he lived until 1830 together with his friend Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld in the Palazzo Caffarelli as a guest of the German ambassador von Bunsen . His friend Wilhelm Hensel , who is in Rome on a travel grant, is also a guest there. Grahl painted small portraits on ivory, which were then fashionable. Among other things, various members of the de Beauharnais family , e.g. B. the stepdaughter of Napoleon I, Hortense , the young Napoleon , called Plon Plon and his brother Jérôme Bonaparte . In the winter of 1829/30 a portrait commission called him to Bad Gastein . There he got to know the Oppenheim family who had reserved the entire first floor of the Hotel Straubinger . The banker Martin Wilhelm Oppenheim commissioned Grahl to portray his daughter Elisabeth Julie, his future wife. In 1830 Grahl portrayed the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen in Rome .

In 1830 he went back to Berlin . In 1831 a commissioned trip to London followed . In Windsor , Grahl portrayed Queen Adelaide and many members of court society. After his stay in England, the artist followed the contemporary trend and added a piece of wood or cardboard up to a size of 40 × 40 cm to the ivory panels.

Back in Germany in 1832, he married 18-year-old Elisabeth on February 7, 1832 in her native Königsberg . They lived in Königsberg and Berlin.

In 1835 the Grahl family settled in Dresden and lived on Neumarkt . In 1840 they moved into the upper floor of Villa Rosa , which was built by Gottfried Semper as a summer house on Grahl's advice and on behalf of his father-in-law Martin Wilhelm Oppenheim . The ground floor of the Palais Oppenheim on the Bürgerwiese became the winter residence, in which the studio in the rear building was located. In 1865 August Grahl bought an old villa in Loschwitz on Pillnitzer Landstrasse 63. It belonged to a niece of Hieronymus Carl Friedrich von Münchhausen . His son Otto Gustav Grahl took over the expansion and expansion plans as the architect. The renovation could not be started until a year later, as the Prussian-German war was foreseeable at the end of winter . August Grahl had not seen the completion. He died on June 13, 1868 with his family.

He was sociable and his house was always open, every stranger was introduced and one brought the other. He was in contact with painters, musicians, actors, writers, philosophers: Christian Daniel Rauch , Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld , Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen , Eduard Bendemann , Julius Hübner , Peter Cornelius , Alfred Rethel , Hermann Hettner , Hermann Plüddemann , Ludwig Tieck , Ernst Moritz Arndt , Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt , Karl Gutzkow , Berthold Auerbach , Otto Roquette , Ernst Rietschel , Felix Moscheles , Fanny Lewald , the Devrients , Bogumil Dawison , Jenny Lind and many more.

As a miniature painter he worked for more or less 20 years. Many of his works are painted on ivory in the tradition of miniature painting. During the long years of his stay in Rome, he was primarily concerned with the painting technique of early Italian painters. He pondered over the colors and binders with which they would have painted in order to achieve the luminosity and brightness that never darkened. Of course the pictures were not painted with oil. The dry, pure colors were rubbed and bonded with a binding agent . And he searched for this connection well into his old age and not without result. Through countless attempts, already in Rome and later in Dresden, he succeeded in finding a binding agent and using it in his own painting; and many portraits of him bear witness that he might have found the right thing. This became known in Germany and countless painters came from abroad and visited him in order to acquire this knowledge. But he kept his invention to himself because he said that it was not just a matter of preparing the binding agent, but also of the way in which it was applied. He wanted a professorship at the Academy in Dresden to teach this painting, but this wish was not fulfilled and so he took his years of work with him to the grave.

family

Grahl's grave in the Trinitatisfriedhof in Dresden

In 1819 August Grahl married Philippine Ferdinandine Caroline Schlesikke (1795–1821) from Mecklenburg, who died very young with his child. Grahl met Elisabeth Oppenheim (1813–1905), daughter of the banker Martin Wilhelm Oppenheim (* 1781 in Königsberg i. Pr .; † 1863 in Dresden) through a portrait commission ; In 1832 the wedding took place in Königsberg . They had nine children, two of whom died very early:

  1. Maria Elisabeth Henrietta Philippina, called Marie (1832–1895) ⚭ 1850 Alfred Rethel , painter
    1. Elisabeth Rethel , known as Else (1853–1933), painter and singer ⚭ 1873 Karl Rudolf Sohn (1845–1908), painter and professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy; continue with Sohn-Rethel (painter family)
  2. Hugo Grahl (1834–1905) agricultural scientist ⚭ 1865 Anna Kummer (1844–1925), daughter of the painter Carl Robert Kummer
  3. Rose Grahl (1835–1909) ⚭ 1875 Adolf Stengel , agricultural scientist
    1. Lili Stengel (* 1881) ⚭ 1909 Friedrich Voelcker , surgeon and urologist
  4. Martha Grahl (* 1837), she was only five months old
  5. Anna Grahl (1838–1897) ⚭ 1865 Hermann Hettner , literary scholar
    1. Alfred Hettner (1859–1941), geographer ⚭ 1899 Bertha Rohde (1879–1902); ⚭ 1925 Marie Mall († 1955)
    2. Marie Anna Elisabeth Hettner (1860–1905) ⚭ 1886 Friedrich (Fritz) Wilhelm Jakob Ostermayer (1859–1925), curator and art warden in Dessau
    3. Hermann Martin Hettner (1862-1884)
    4. Franz Hettner (1863–1946), administrative lawyer, Saxon politician and judge ⚭ 1893 Anna Elise Stübel (* 1870)
    5. Rosa Hettner (1865–1934) ⚭ 1886 Richard Schmaltz (1865–1935), doctor
    6. Erich Hettner (1868–1933), entrepreneur, founder of the Hettner drilling machine factory ⚭ 1900 Grete Unger (1881–1959)
    7. Otto Hettner (1875–1931), painter ⚭ Jeanne Alexandrine Thibert
      1. Roland Hettner (1905–1978), painter and ceramist
      2. Sabine Hettner (1907–1985), painter
  6. Otto Gustav Grahl (1839–1875) architect
  7. Felix Grahl (1841–1842), he was only one year old
  8. Alexe Grahl (1844–1903), photographer
  9. Katharina Grahl, called Käthe (1847–1933) ⚭ Leopold Just (1841–1891), botanist
    1. Gerhard Just , chemist

August Grahl is the great-grandfather of the painters Alfred Sohn-Rethel , Otto , Karli Sohn-Rethel and Mira Heuser , as well as the great-great-grandfather of the economist Alfred Sohn-Rethel and the uncle of the doctor Gustav Adolf de Grahl .

The Grahl couple are buried in Dresden at the Trinity Cemetery , in a grave designed by Gottfried Semper for the Oppenheim family.

Artistic importance

Hans Christian Andersen (Dresden 1846)

Grahl is considered one of the most important miniature painters and portraitists of the 19th century. He became known in 1816 through a portrait of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. His portrait of Hans Christian Andersen from 1846 in Dresden , which hangs in the Andersen Museum in Odense , and his portrait of Wilhelm von Humboldt's daughter , Gabriele von Bülow, are still particularly well known today . In addition to the great quality of his pictures, his importance lies above all in the large number of significant contemporaries he met and whom he painted. Among the models were well-known personalities such as Tsarina Maria Fjodorowna of Russia , Countess Delfina Potocka , Countess Poniatowski, architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel , Queen Pauline of Württemberg , Laetitia Bonaparte , Queen Hortense de Beauharnais , Queen Christine of Spain , Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and many others more.

Seven miniature pictures are in art museums in Dresden, Karlsruhe, Nantes and in private ownership. It was long forgotten before Ernst Lemberger rediscovered it. Lemberger divided Grahl's miniature into three groups: originals, which came into possession of the models; Copies that he painted and kept for himself; Sketches in which he had only painted the head.

August Grahl has also achieved importance as an art collector of pictures and lithographs, primarily of Italian provenance. In April 1885, a large part of his collection was sold by Messrs Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge in London. In Germany, interested parties were referred to A. Twietmeyer from Leipzig.

Works (selection)

literature

Web links

Commons : August Grahl  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Grahl, August, painter, Jägerstr. N. 25. In: CFW Wegener (Hrsg.): General names and housing gazettes from state officials, scholars, artists, merchants, (...) in the Königl. Preuss. Capital and residence city of Berlin. Berlin 1818, p. 15.
  2. ^ Grahl, A., painter and professor, Dohna'sche Gasse 5/6, pt. In: Handbuch für Dresden. Volume 1, 1850, p. 200
  3. ↑ dresdner-stadtteile.de
  4. ^ Karl Woermann : Catalog of the royal collection of paintings in Dresden. 1887, in the addendum p. 11 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  5. ^ Catalog of the collection of drawings by the old masters. Formed by the late Professor August Grahl of Dresden . Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, London 1885 ( archive.org ).
  6. ↑ The antiquarian bookshop for foreign literature Alexander Twietmeyer was founded in Leipzig in 1843.
  7. ↑ Contact between Grahl and Kestner existed in Italy around 1829
personal data
SURNAME Grahl, August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grahl, August Friedrich Joachim Heinrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1791
PLACE OF BIRTH Poppentin , Mecklenburg
DATE OF DEATH June 13, 1868
Place of death Dresden