August wake-up eater

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Rudolf von Wart's wife Gertrud von Balm pleads with Agnes of Hungary for her husband's life

August Weckesser (born November 28, 1821 in Töss (today Winterthur ), † January 11, 1899 in Rome ) was a Swiss painter. He is best known as a history painter .

Life

August Weckesser was the son of Johann Christoph Adam Weckesser (1786–1834) from Wertheim and his wife Elisabeth Furrer (1799–1852), a niece of the future Federal President Jonas Furrer . After he spent the first years of his life in Töss, he and his five siblings moved them to the Untermühle in Oberwinterthur , which was taken over by his father. At the age of 15 he left school and did an apprenticeship as a miller in the family business. The 19-year-old Weckesser was then trained as a painter by the Winterthur portraitist and history painter Eduard Steiner (1811–1860). In 1841 he attended the Munich Art Academy with financial support from Winterthur merchants .

In 1843 he opened his own studio in Munich. In 1848 he returned to Winterthur and attended further training there with Johann Caspar Weidenmann . In 1849 he received his first major commission: he painted the semi-arches above the bookshelves in what was then the boys' school in Winterthur (now the Oskar Reinhart Museum ).

In 1851 years of training followed in Antwerp, Paris and Rome. Weckesser's preferred city, however, was Munich, where he found his role models among the history painters there, especially Wilhelm von Kaulbach . Weckesser was financed and promoted by merchants who saw their own ideals such as courage, Christian values ​​and love for the country represented in the painted heroes and deeds.

Well-known works include “The Spread of Christianity, Gallus and Columban near Tuggen ”, today in the Kunstmuseum Winterthur (owner: Winterthur libraries ), or “ Zwingli's death on the battlefield”, today in the Kunstmuseum Winterthur. Weckesser's most figurative work hangs in Kyburg Castle . It was created in 1878 and is the wife of regicide Rudolf von Wart as before Agnes of Hungary vainly pleading for her husband's life.

In 1858 Weckesser undertook the first of several trips to Italy, which became his second home and where he died on January 11, 1899 after a kidney disease. After his death, a retrospective of his life's work took place in the Winterthur town hall .

August Weckesser remained unmarried. He was friends with the painters Ernst Stückelberg and Rudolf Koller and the sculptor Ferdinand Schlöth .

literature

Web links

Commons : August Weckesser  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Emil Stauber: History of the community of Töss (=  New Year's Gazette of the City of Winterthur . No. 240 ). Buchdruckerei Geschwister Ziegler, Winterthur 1926, p. 247 .
  2. ↑ August Weckesser 1841, entry in the register book
  3. ↑ Dione Flühler, Heinrich Boxler's: exhibition catalog Kyburg castle , Lehrmittelverlag of the Canton of Zurich, S. 31, Zurich 2001
  4. ↑ Stefan Hess / Tomas Lochman (eds.), Classical beauty and patriotic heroism. The Basel sculptor Ferdinand Schlöth (1818–1891) , Basel 2004, pp. 45 f., 73, 194.
personal data
SURNAME Wake up eater, August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss history painter
DATE OF BIRTH November 28, 1821
PLACE OF BIRTH Töss
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 1899
Place of death Rome