Rural painting
Under peasant painting refers to a non-academic decorative and representation painting in rural areas.
History and motives
history
The form-supporting painting of wooden building parts can be seen as the oldest known form of rural painting. In the beginning it was just simple scoring lines that were provided with colored lines, but later simple carved decorations with stylized motifs customary in the area developed, which were decorated with colored decorations in many places. Increasingly, ceramic utensils - originally glazed unadorned and colorless - were provided with simple lines, wavy ribbons or dotted decorations; More elaborately painted individual pieces were mostly made for special occasions, e.g. B. wedding plates or wedding jugs . From the 18th century, the painting of furniture and small wooden objects, such as bridal boxes , shooting glasses or clock faces, began . Around the middle of the 19th century, the original rural painting almost completely came to a standstill, and the focus was increasingly on the cities. Painted objects were considered out of fashion, and desires - be it household items , tableware or clothing - were for the emerging industrial mass-produced goods . The few objects with motifs from the peasant canon that were still in demand, such as peasant furniture from the Tölzer Land or painted clocks from the Black Forest , became a semi-industrially produced mass product themselves, garnished with peasant paintings based on popular models.
The simplest color painting on a farmhouse in Jestedt (Werra-Meißner district) from 1586.
Colored painting at the town hall of Krempe, Schleswig-Holstein.
Schorndorf, Württemberg; 17th century.
Vlotho, North Rhine-Westphalia
Bünde, North Rhine-Westphalia
ornamentation
The ornamental motifs have seen little change over the centuries and have been used as decorative carvings for parts of buildings and furniture, as well as embroidery motifs for (Sunday) costume or on pottery. These ornaments are of different origins: from the mythical-Germanic folk beliefs come e.g. B. Sun wheels , sun crosses, the swastika , the tree of life or the five stars ( pentagram ) to ward off evil.
The cross , the five-petalled rose as a symbol of Mary or with a cross as a symbol of the resurrection , came from Christian religious symbolism . A symbol of early Christianity was also the anchor as a sign of anchoring in faith, or the trinity "cross-heart anchor" as a symbol for Christian virtue - called "faith, love, hope" for short. Later symbols of Christianity the heart of Jesus pierced by arrows , the monogram of Christ or the crossed heart with the inscription IHS . The representation of the Star of David was the confession of Judaism . From the late Middle Ages onwards, guild signs were used to identify the owner of a house or an object as belonging to a certain profession. From the Baroque onwards, stylized flowers and plant motifs found their way into the rural decorative canon: the Marian rose became an ornamental rose, supplemented by bellflowers and rosettes developed into simple flower shapes; Stick ornaments got leaves. At the same time, depictions of people and scenes found their way into rural painting and thus formed the transition to pictorial painting. The focus was on “modern” church decorations and “modern” buildings, furniture and household items from the nearby cities. An important prerequisite for the beginning of scenic painting was the spread of book printing , which made the first hymn books possible with simple illustrations or template tables and books at a price that was affordable for the rural population.
House inscriptions z. B. about the builder, the year of construction and an additional blessing remained until the end of the 19th century. Beautiful examples from 1616 to 1873 are documented from sub-deserts in the Lipper Land. With the beginning of simple school lessons in rural areas too, inscriptions on tiles, plates and small items became increasingly popular. Originally, the colors were sparse; regionally occurring earth and plant pigments were used . The prerequisite for greater color was the trade and affordability of color pigments from other regions. In general, until the end of the 19th century, the more colorful, the more affluent. Small farmers and poor people could hardly afford paint, colorfully painted goods, rural handicraft painters or, later, traveling painters to decorate their houses, household items and living rooms.
Regional differences
Northern Germany and the Lower Rhine
In northern Germany and on the Lower Rhine , the desire for decoration is met more through carving, on the one hand due to the Dutch influence, on the other hand as a result of the Reformation : due to the Protestant ethic of simplicity, the rejection of the representation of God and the renunciation of worship individual saints also omitted their representation. In this respect, a scenic rural painting is to be found on buildings as well as on furniture and other household items in Reformed areas less often. They stayed with the simple and occasionally pagan canon of forms for a relatively long time .
Deelentür on a courtyard from 1811 in Rödinghausen, Herford district.
Entrance at the Buntemöller farm in Rödinghausen, Herford district.
Entrance to a courtyard from 1871 in Rödinghausen-Bieren, Herford district.
Farm in Rödinghausen, Herford district, North Rhine-Westphalia.
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Hesse, Thuringia, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt
Today's federal states of Hesse and Thuringia, which are split up into small states, have always been very poor areas. Here, as in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, the Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815) with their devastation and pillage increased the hardship. In addition, there was the pietistic lack of decoration of the predominantly Protestant individual states, so that no peasant painting worth mentioning has established itself.
Bavaria
The national affiliated King Max II. (1811-1864) started an active promotion of arts and customs of the people to the German unification efforts a Bavarian in the 19th century nationalism oppose. Initially suspicious of the rural population themselves, the aristocracy and the affluent bourgeoisie quickly developed a commitment to rural culture and the preservation of the traditional. Elaborately designed farm furniture and small items were bought in the villages. At the same time, collections on rural culture were created so that, earlier than in other areas, simply designed things could be saved from destruction. The increasing demand for rustic painted furniture and small items (those who could afford it commissioned painting of entire rooms) led to a renaissance of rural painting, which, however, quickly demanded certain standards as a desired consumer item and was increasingly carried out by specialized workshops, so that no longer can we speak of peasant painting in the narrower sense, but of painting based on peasant motifs, i.e. peasant painting . The main center of this semi-industrially handcrafted and painted furniture was Bad Tölz ; Typical of the "Tölzer boxes" are lush rose motifs.
The depiction of rural life also gained interest: academic painters settled in villages in the summer months to paint peasants in their traditional costumes and scenes of everyday rural life, thus establishing peasant genre painting , which soon became increasingly popular in other areas pleased.
Austria, South Tyrol and Bohemia
The rural painting in Austria does not follow a uniform style canon. Tyrol and the Salzburger Land are stylistically close to Bavarian folk art, in the south and in South Tyrol the formally stricter, less flowery influence of Italy manifests itself , while the east and south-east as well as Bohemia are influenced by the joy of color and stylistic elements of the Slavic circle of forms.
Baden-Württemberg and Alsace
Here, too, there is evidence of a style delay in rural painting. Typical decorative elements of this region often consist of flowers, rosettes, geometric motifs, stars and symbols for the tree of life. There are local differences in the colors. In Upper Alsace, for example, turquoise surfaces were preferred, in Lower Alsace red and ocher-colored surfaces dominate; there are also significantly more scenic paintings to be found here. A special feature was the painting of clocks in the Black Forest , which, similar to the Tölz furniture industry, grew into a craft industry. Today it has become a tourist mass production, has nothing to do with rural painting in the narrower sense.
Switzerland
Furniture painting can be found around the second half of the 17th century. In the 18th century, ornamental, floral designs dominated the painted furniture, figurative elements were still rare. Baroque elements were added from 1750, and the rocaille at the end of the century . From 1800 onwards, cupboard door panels were increasingly painted in a scenic way. Out of it developed after 1850 preferably in Appenzell and Toggenburg the Täfeli painting or Appenzell peasant art , d. H. the rural painting of panel paintings (see below, "Performing painting"), while furniture painting fell out of fashion.
Forms of rural painting
Furniture painting
Foot end of a bed from 1781 depicting a wedding table. Austrian Museum of Folklore, Vienna.
Painting on a peasant cupboard with the scene of a young lover hurrying to his lover by snail mail. Trautenfels Castle Museum, Styria.
City with horse and cart. Detail of a furniture painting in the Museum of Thuringian Folklore, Erfurt.
Tyrolean chest from 1841, probably owned by a milker. Austrian Museum of Folklore, Vienna.
Wardrobe from the Oberjettingen area, late 18th century. Landesmuseum Württemberg, branch museum for folk culture Waldenbuch.
Painted cabinet from 1807. Museum of Thuringian Folklore, Erfurt.
Single-door cabinet from 1819. Württemberg State Museum, branch museum for folk culture Waldenbuch.
Chiemsee cabinet from 1825.
Hirschbacher farmer's sideboard; Mühlviertel Castle Museum in Freistadt.
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With the advent of richly decorated furniture with carvings and exotic veneers from the 17th century in court and bourgeois circles, the desire for ornate furniture also grew in rural areas. Simplifications of the carvings found their way into rural furniture production, but since exotic veneers were neither available nor affordable, they first began to imitate them in painting. The increasingly lush canon of forms soon ranged from stylized flowers and fruits to ornaments, rocailles and figures that corresponded to the respective style epoch - albeit always with a certain delay. The rose and the then still exotic tulip were particularly popular.
With the exception of Bavaria, the painting of furniture largely came to a standstill in the 19th century .
Small painting
Early clock from the Black Forest, 1751. Landesmuseum Württemberg, branch museum for folk culture Waldenbuch.
Beehive from 1812 with the illustration of David and Goliath. Trautenfels Castle Museum, Styria.
Death board , approx. 1840. Little Munich, Fürstenfeldbruck district, Upper Bavaria.
Detail of an iron grave cross from 1875. Dietenheim Folklore Museum , South Tyrol.
Figure on the riding house in Neusalza near Spremberg, Saxony.
This includes caskets, wedding boxes, wooden plates (cf. wood painting ), shooting targets , etc. These articles were mostly made for gift purposes. Above all, the Schützenscheiben, but also wedding and similar plates were increasingly decorated with scenic painting, often with verses for the recipient. These small items bear the peasant handwriting for the longest, as they are largely unique pieces that were often made on the farm and not by a carpenter.
Ceramic painting
Exhibits of the Gerstunger Museum, permanent exhibition on Werra ceramics.
Plate from the Gerstunger Museum, permanent exhibition on Werra ceramics.
Stove wall plate from Württemberg. Landesmuseum Württemberg, branch museum for folk culture Waldenbuch.
Stove wall plate, Württemberg 1786. Württemberg State Museum, branch museum for folk culture Waldenbuch.
Until the end of the Middle Ages, the earthen everyday objects of the rural household were mostly only colorless glazed, their basic color was the color of the clay deposits on site. Here, too, the first decorations such as bulges or incised motifs began to emerge from the material. From the 17th century potters began to paint better pieces with simple lines, wavy ribbons or polka dot ornaments, and the traditionally traditional motifs were soon also used here. They are characterized by simple shapes, simple ornaments and the use of less, regionally occurring earth colors. From the 18th century, more elaborately painted individual pieces are known, e.g. B. baptismal plates , wedding plates or wedding jugs , often with meaningful sayings, dates and the names of the gifts to be given. For a larger, more colorful design, as with furniture and small items painting, it was necessary to purchase color pigments from dealers. In places with good clay deposits, real pottery industries developed from the 19th century, which initially sold their products regionally and nationally via hawkers, so that there was a change here from rural-handicraft to manufacture-based production and painting. With the emergence of the folk art movement from the 1920s onwards, a number of ceramic paintings typical of the landscape have been preserved as more or less handcrafted or factory-made arts and crafts for tourists today. B.
- Hesse: Marburg ceramics ,
- Rhineland-Palatinate: Kannebäcker Land around Höhr-Grenzhausen
- Thuringia: Bürgel ceramics
- Alsace: Centers of Alsatian pottery art are Betschdorf and Soufflenheim
- Silesia: Bunzlauer sponge ware (also in Lausitz)
Wall painting ( fan painting )
Facade painting on farmhouses was especially common in southern Bavaria and parts of Austria. In the north German rural area it occurs very rarely, which is due to the execution of the outer walls (unplastered fired bricks are not suitable for this), and they are related to the ruling religion, i.e. H. It is precisely the lavish representations of sacred motifs that are a monopoly of Catholic regions.
Untergrimming near Pürgg, Styria: Saints Nikolaus, Florian and Leonhard.
Oberammergau: protective coat Madonna.
Samerberg, district of Rosenheim: painting from the 18th century.
Initially carried out by local artisan painters, professional painters, often traveling painters, were commissioned to do this as early as the 18th century. Only wealthy farms could afford this painting, so that this or its opulence can be seen not only in an art-historical, but also in a social context. The above examples show the qualitative gradation from native to professional painting.
Church painting
Village chapel in the open-air museum Tittling, Bavaria.
Inside of the Tittling village chapel with a neo-Gothic altar.
Trinity painting on a wayside shrine ("Polzerkreuz" from 1680 in Leisbach, municipality of Keutschach am See, Carinthia).
The interior painting of churches, even in rural areas, was given to professional painters early on. Many of the small churches, originally designed by talented painters on site, were rebuilt and professionally painted over, especially during the Baroque and Rococo periods, or torn down due to disrepair and replaced with new buildings. Only a few churches with an early, regionally typical lay painting are still preserved. In the simple Protestant village churches of the post-Reformation period, the painting of the interior was mostly limited to a purely handcrafted painting of the galleries and the stalls.
It was often traveling painters who decorated the interiors of rural churches and synagogues, e.g. B. the Polish traveling painter Eliezer Sussmann the synagogues in Unterlimpurg and Georgensgmünd . Whole families also worked as traveling painters, such as those of the Baschenis from the Bergamasque village of Averara , who decorated a large number of churches in western Trentino between 1450 and 1550 .
In contrast, in the Catholic region of southern Germany and the Alpine region, so-called wayside shrines and stations of the cross or small wayside and court chapels can be found in far greater numbers . Although these too were often decorated by traveling painters, there are plenty of examples here, the representations of which are not commissioned work, but rather, in terms of their style, can be assigned to rural painting.
Votive painting
Votive picture from 1792 in the pilgrimage chapel Fronreute-Staig, Baden-Württemberg.
Votive picture from 1837 with the Black Madonna von Altötting. Museum of European Cultures, Berlin.
Votive picture from 1882 “Maria helped!” Museum of European Cultures, Berlin.
Votive tablet from Pilgramsberg from 1882 in the Asbach Monastery Museum, branch museum of the Bavarian National Museum.
The votive image is a pure phenomenon in Catholic areas; it was also banned by the French Revolution . It is a gift of thanks - in the early days simple, later supplemented with allegories of the advocating saint - and always represents a personal experience of the donor, which ended well through the intercession of God or a saint. The custom of votive pictures seems to have come from Italy . The oldest votive pictures can be found in Morbio Inferiore in Ticino and date from the beginning of the 16th century. From there they spread from the 17th century in the Catholic regions of the Alpine region. Originally painted by the thankful or more talented neighbors themselves, from the end of the 17th century open-air painters settled in many large pilgrimage sites who paint the thanks of the believer on request, so that here a transition to the mostly non-academic, but still amateurish, professionalized, but above all rather stereotypical painting took place. There is an extensive collection of votive pictures in the Bavarian National Museum in Munich .
Reverse glass painting
Stations of the Cross (5th station), reverse glass painting from the 19th century.
“Maria Magdalena as penitent”, Oberammergau 1st half of the 19th century. Landesmuseum Württemberg (branch museum for folk culture in Württemberg, Waldenbuch.
Behind glass picture "Jesus in the Schohs Maria" (Pietà), Black Forest or Lorraine, 1st half of the 19th century. Landesmuseum Württemberg, branch museum for folk culture Waldenbuch.
Behind glass picture to remember the dead, dated 1875. Landesmuseum Württemberg, branch museum for folk culture, Waldenbuch).
Reverse glass painting is a special form of peasant painting . Reverse glass painting began to establish itself from the 16th century and was particularly popular in Austria-Hungary , especially in Bohemia , and in Romania . Her focus was on glassworks . Whole farming families found a winter livelihood here with the commercial production of mainly saints and votive pictures, which were sold by hawkers. Initially, the motifs came from the imagination of those who carried out the work, but later they were ordered for sale as devotional objects, especially from places of pilgrimage, based on templates, the quality and execution of which, however, always reflected the amateur skill of the painter. The small town of Sandl in the Mühlviertel in Upper Austria developed into a center of commercial reverse glass painting in the 19th century . The place takes this tradition into account with a reverse glass museum.
Performing painting
Portraits of the householders or views of the farm were more likely to be commissioned by wealthy farmers, mostly to traveling painters who offered their services for board and lodging and a small fee. A typical example is the view of the courtyard of the Hinterkaifeck courtyard, made famous by a multiple murder, by a traveling painter named Max Binder. They also made small panoramas of the respective location.
In Switzerland, preferably in the Appenzeller Land and Toggenburg , a unique painting tradition developed in the 19th century, poya - or senntum painting , which arose entirely from the creative art of the peasantry. The commissioners for these amateur paintings were farmers and herdsmen who wanted to have their world depicted more or less real: The focus was on the cattle - preferably during the alpine drive ( alpine drive ), as well as the surrounding mountains, the farm or the dairy farm. Typical of the Poya pictures is their long rectangular shape.
It was villagers who specialized in this genre and founded a school of Appenzell and Toggenburg peasant painting , which is still shaping the style of an art that has become popular today, in which numerous painters found their way into by name, e.g. B. Bartholomäus Lämmler (1809-1865). It is in him that the transition from painting furniture to painting is manifested. The black and white silhouette of the “Lämmler cow” was printed in long rows to form so-called dairy stripes and is still very popular today. Johannes Müller (1806–1897) shaped the genre with his accurate arrangement of animals, people, houses in the staggered landscape and is considered the nestor of herd painting. A permanent exhibition on Senntum painting can be found in the Appenzell Folklore Museum in Stein.
Traveling painter
A special form of rural painting is the so-called traveling painting, i. H. wandering painters who moved from place to place and offered their services for food, lodging and a corresponding fee. Wandering painters represent an intermediate group between folk art and academic art, as they were recruited from talented laymen or artisanal painters as well as from the army of hapless or less talented academic painters. Mostly it was a lack of local income in times of need that produced numerous rural hiking painters in whole areas, such as B. in South Tyrol or Lombardy . They mixed different regional motifs from the late 18th century onwards. For example, hiking painters moved from the South Tyrolean Fassatal (e.g. from Mazzin, the "village of the Pitores " ) to Tyrol and as far as southern Bavaria, in order to get their money there by painting facades, rooms and furniture, but also churches deserve, their South Tyrolean motifs also found their way into the northern Alpine region. Examples of rural furniture painting in Fassa can be found in the Museum Ladin Ćiastel de Tor and in the Tyrolean Folk Art Museum .
Collections and museums
Museums with larger collections of folk art in German-speaking countries (selection):
Germany:
- Museum of European Cultures , Berlin
- Museum for Saxon Folk Art , Dresden
- Altonaer Museum , Hamburg-Altona
- Bavarian National Museum , Munich
Austria:
- Austrian Museum of Folklore , Vienna
- Tyrolean Folk Art Museum , Innsbruck
- Mühlviertel Castle Museum , Freistadt
Switzerland:
- Appenzell Folklore Museum, Stein AR
Interesting exhibits can also be found in numerous museum villages .
literature
- Wolfgang Bauer, Irmtraut Dümotz, Sergius Golowin, Herbert Röttgen: Lexicon of symbols. Fourier, Wiesbaden 1986 (8).
- Sigrid Hinz: Interior and furniture from antiquity to the present. Henschelverlag, Berlin 1989.
- Franz Sales Meyer: Handbook of ornamentation. Leipzig, Seemann 1927 (12). Reprint ibid. 1986 (2).
- Alexander Schöpp: Old German farmhouse parlors. Interiors and household items. Munich 1934. Reprint, Edition libri rari, Hanover 1983.
- Josef Heinrich Baum: jewelry techniques and colored furniture painting. VEB Fachbuchverlag, Leipzig 1961.
credentials
- ↑ Archway in the Lipper Land
- ↑ Swiss furniture painting
- ↑ University Museum Marburg
- ^ Ceramics Museum Höhr-Grenzhausen
- ↑ Ceramics Museum Bürgel
- ↑ Bolesławiec Museum (Bolesławiec)
- ↑ The synagogue in Unterlimpurg (City of Schwäbisch Hall)
- ↑ Georgensgmünd Synagogue
- ↑ Walter Pippke, Ida Leinberger, Lake Garda. Verona, Trentino, Mantua. Art and history in the center of the Alpine arc. Cologne, DuMont, p. 366
- ↑ Votive painting in Swiss folk art ( Memento of the original from October 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Back glass museum Sandl
- ↑ Hinterkaifeck
- ^ Exhibition on Senntumsmalerei in the Appenzell Folklore Museum, Stein AR.
- ↑ Hiking painter from the Fassa Valley
- ^ Appenzell Folklore Museum, Stein AR
