Benedikt Beckenkamp

Self portrait

Johann (Kaspar) Benedikt Beckenkamp (born March 7, 1747 in Ehrenbreitstein , † April 1, 1828 in Cologne ) was a German painter from the Rhenish region.

biography

The early years

Johann Benedikt came from a family of brandy distillers who had settled in Ehrenbreitstein after the Thirty Years' War . He was the third child of the Weinbrenner and painter Lorenz Beckenkamp and his second wife Katharina Scholastika, née Hofmann. After his second marriage, the father first entered his father-in-law's painting business and advanced to become a painter and, in 1747, the year Benedikt was born, he became a court painter. The first name Caspar is not in the birth certificate, and Beckenkamp never signed with it. This first name is only found in the death certificate and the obituary written by his student Matthias Joseph de Noël . In the spelling of Kaspar it prevailed in later literature; it is unclear whether it had any meaning for Beckenkamp himself. The surname also changed: Beckenkamp signed with Bekenkam and Beckenkam and only from the 1820s with Beckenkamp .

Presumably Benedikt Beckenkamp learned the basics of painting and painting in his father's workshop. In 1762 the father died. After his death, his mother continued the painting business. Beckenkamp worked there until he was 34.

Portrait of Christian Georg Schütz

During a stay in Würzburg that cannot be determined in terms of time, he probably got to know Tiepolo's frescoes , the portraits of princes by Adam Friedrich von Seinsheim and the frescoes by Johann and Januarius Zick . According to de Noël, an apprenticeship with Januarius Zick in Ehrenbreitstein, which cannot be determined in time, followed. Then he learned from Christian Georg Schütz the Elder. Ä. in Frankfurt. Schütz is shown in a hand drawing by Beckenkamp, ​​which is in the National Gallery in Berlin .

1776, the first signed and dated work by Benedikt Beckenkamp is known as a painter; a religious painting for the parish church Heilig Kreuz in Ehrenbreitstein. Around 1778 a cycle was created for the parish church of Urmitz . It is possible, however, that a series of portraits of the horses and riders of the electoral court marshal was created in the early 1770s , through which Beckenkamp became known to the Trier elector Clemens Wenzeslaus . Further orders from the court followed, including one large and two small equestrian portraits of the elector. In contrast to his competitor Heinrich Foelix (1736-1803) Beckenkamp had no permanent position at the court. Even during this time he seems to have had commissions as a bourgeois portraitist. On the family portrait painted in 1779 with Niederlahnstein and the Lahneck ruins in the background, the sitters cannot be identified, but their membership of the bourgeoisie is likely. According to a biographical novel by Renate Feyl , he also portrayed the poet Sophie von La Roche .

Change to Cologne and years of upheaval

In 1781 he married Katharina Josepha Breitbach. She died in 1784.

In the 1780s Beckenkamp developed a network of relationships with Bonn and Cologne. He got to know the scholar and later Cologne University Rector Ferdinand Franz Wallraf . Maximilian Franz of Austria , elected elector of Cologne in 1784 , also became aware of Beckenkamp, ​​presumably through the mediation of Trier elector Clemens Wenzeslaus. The death of his first wife and the uncertain order situation at the Trier court were probably the reasons why Beckenkamp moved to Bonn in the mid-1780s. His brother Johann Peter lived there; his wife Veronika worked there as a court singer. Through her he got to know an important client and sponsor, Count Sigismund zu Salm-Reifferscheidt , director of court music and chief steward of the Cologne elector. It is not clear whether Benedikt Beckenkamp lived in Bonn during those years. The connection to the Beethoven family, into which Benedikt Beckenkamp was brought, is based on a mix-up of his biography with that of his brother Peter.

In the Cologne home of the zu Salm-Reifferscheidt family, Beckenkamp is said to have met his second wife, Anna Maria Zipperling from Bruchsal. The wedding took place on March 26, 1786 in the parish church of St. Jakob in Cologne. The zu Salm-Reifferscheidt family took over sponsorships for two of the children born in Cologne from this marriage. In addition to members of the zu Salm-Reifferscheidt family, Beckenkamp portrayed members of the aristocratic Sternberg family in Blankenheim , members of the Heereman von Zuydtwyck family during a stay at Schloss Wahn 1786–1787 and members of the Wolff-Metternich family at Gracht Castle from 1792–1793 . In December 1786 he sought admission to the Cologne painters' guild . The qualification fee was 40 Reichstaler . He also had to pay a considerable fee for acceptance into Cologne's citizenship. With her he acquired the right to settle in the city as well as the active and passive right to vote .

With great skill he created a network of relationships in Cologne that promoted his social advancement. Among his clients were Adolf von Hüpsch and the Imperial Count Fugger . He also maintained connections to his old home in Koblenz. In 1791 he portrayed the travel writer and art collector Joseph Gregor Lang there . In 1792 he painted a series of French revolutionary refugees who had lived in Koblenz since 1791 on behalf of Elector Clemens Wenzeslaus, who had moved his residence to Koblenz. It is unclear whether he also created the fine illusionistic stage decoration in the then newly built Koblenz Theater in 1788. It is more likely that it came from his brother Peter. In 1795, a few months after the French troops marched in, Beckenkamp became the younger magistrate of the Cologne painters' guild. In 1798 he ran unsuccessfully for the position of senior magistrate. Even if he had been elected, this would have been meaningless, since the guilds in Cologne were dissolved at the end of March 1798 by resolution of the municipal administration.

There are no dated paintings by Beckenkamp from 1799 to 1803, and there is also a gap in his curriculum vitae. The family may have suffered from economic hardship, as indicated in de Noël's obituary, which his wife alleviated through her artistic embroidery. De Noël also reports on several trips to Holland and the Aachen region as well as several years of employment in Groningen .

The years after 1800

Cologne churches were secularized by the French occupying forces; Paintings they owned were forcibly sold. This resulted in orders for Beckenkamp to estimate and restore such paintings. For example, together with the painter Nikolaus Zimmermann, he valued the triptych Lamentation of Christ by Gerhard ter Steegen de Monte from the Church of St. Andreas, which went into the collection of Ferdinand Franz Wallraf . He restored the late Gothic painting Achatius Martyrium for the Prussian government councilor Werner von Haxthausen .

From 1812 Beckenkamp dealt with copies of the Cologne cathedral picture by Stefan Lochner as well as with other copies of old paintings. The order situation seemed to be very good, because Beckenkamp assigned smaller orders to both his son Sigismund August and students. In 1818 King Friedrich Wilhelm III. with him a large copy of the cathedral picture, which Beckenkamp completed by 1821.

Beckenkamp was active until shortly before his death at the age of 81. His last pictures include a large family picture with the six sons of the engraver Johann Heinrigs (1781–1861) and the triptych of the Heereman von Zuydtwyck family.

children

The two marriages with Katharina Josepha and Anna Maria resulted in five children, of which only two, the painter Sigismund August Beckenkamp (1788–1823) and the daughter Elisabeth, reached adulthood.

plant

Portrait of the Elector Clemens Wenzeslaus of Saxony , around 1790–1794

overview

Bettina Mosler's major monograph on Benedikt Beckenkamp, ​​published in 2003, lists more than 150 well-known works, the whereabouts of which, however, could not be clarified in part.

The social upheaval triggered by the French Revolution influenced Beckenkamp's life and the choice of his subjects. His work can be assigned to the following topics:

• Religious history painting
• Landscapes and cityscapes
• Portraits
• Replicas of the Cologne cathedral image

Religious history painting

Stylistic echoes of Januarius Zick

De Noël's statement that Beckenkamp learned from Januarius Zick is not supported by any contemporary documents or testimonies, but plausible due to the contextual and stylistic references. Beckenkamp's painting Maria with her parents Anna and Joachim from 1776 takes up the topic that Zick dealt with twice in 1766, in the parish church of St. Peter in Koblenz and in the monastery church in Ottobeuren. Especially the similarity of the type of Saint Anne shows the stylistic dependence of Beckenkamp on Zick. Unjointed contortions and foreshortenings in Beckenkamp's portrayal show his then even less experience in figure painting.

The oil sketch of St. Martin and the Beggar , painted on a copper tablet, suggests stylistic echoes of an earlier phase in Zick's life from the collaboration with his father Johannes Zick , the so-called Rembrandt phase .

A self-portrait of Januarius Zick from the period between 1770 and 1775 in the Mainfränkisches Museum in Würzburg is possibly a work of Beckenkamp. In terms of image detail, body posture and eye position, it corresponds to two portraits painted by Beckenkamp from the 1890s. The impasto application of paint is characteristic of Beckenkamp, ​​while Zick preferred a loose brushwork interspersed with lights. The dating 1770–1775, which is beyond question due to the age of the sitter, would be evidence of the early style confidence of the young Beckenkamp.

Church paintings in the Koblenz district

From the cycle of paintings from around 1776–1778 in the Urmitz Church, it is very likely that at least six paintings were by Beckenkamp. There is a preliminary study for Saint George at the high altar in the form of an oil-painted copper tablet, similar to the Saint Martin mentioned above. This painting, too, has strong echoes of Januarius Zick.

This also applies to the two paintings on the side altars of the parish church of St. Laurentius in Beulich, dated 1784 . They show Zick's influence as well as a painting from the Middle Rhine Museum in Koblenz, Christ and the Samaritan woman at the well . For his part, Zick oriented himself towards Italian baroque painting. The last picture mentioned is a reproduction of a Budapest picture painted in 1757 by Annibale Carracci . On the other hand, the Beulicher picture Annunciation shows a noticeable development of Beckenkamp from Zick's baroque style to classicism.

Religious painting in Cologne

In 1807, on behalf of Ferdinand Franz Wallraf, Beckenkamp painted sixteen small copper tablets as fillings for the outer fields of the shrine of the Three Kings in the monastery church of St. Martin. They served as a replacement for relief tablets that had been stolen during the previous French occupation. In terms of content and in some cases only stylistically, the tablets draw on Raphael's 1516–1519 frescoes in the Roman loggias .

In his later years he created small devotional pictures in the style of Annibale Carracci, Carlo Maratta and Januarius Zick for private clients . Beckenkamp did not develop his own style in his religious paintings, but fluctuated between the baroque style of Januarius Zick and classicist forms and compositions. The innovations of the Nazarenes had no influence on him.

Landscapes and cityscapes

Presumably Zick established the contact between Beckenkamp and Christian Georg Schütz. Zick and Schütz knew each other well; they had created two pictures together, in which Schütz had painted the landscape and Zick the figures. There is no archival evidence of Beckenkamp's stay in Frankfurt. The contact between the two, however, is evidenced by the portrait that Beckenkamp painted of Schütz around 1780. Beckenkamp was probably introduced to landscape painting through Schütz. Landscapes can be found as backgrounds in a number of his portraits.

The copper engravings Rhine = area near Koblenz and the fortress Ehrenbreitstein (sic) and Rhine = area near the city of Kölln (sic) were made according to preliminary drawings by Beckenkamp. The preliminary drawing for the first of the two sheets can still be ascribed to the late Rococo. It was probably created in 1784 at the latest, as it does not yet show the palace of Elector Clemens Wenzeslaus, completed in 1784, with its large Rhine facade. The Cologne cityscape was drawn from a greater distance than on other contemporary sheets with the same motif. It still shows the roof turret of the cathedral, which was removed in 1812 and must therefore have been created before that. With its cheerful, idyllic atmosphere and the delicate structures in the water and in the sky, this leaf is also more in the tradition of the Rococo. It shows a different mood than the sometimes gloomy Rhine romanticism that emerged around 1800, which liked to put the medieval buildings in the foreground. It is possible that this drawing was also made before 1800.

A watercolor by Beckenkamp painted in 1795 with a view of the Waidmarkt from the south is in the graphic collection of the Cologne City Museum . It comes from the Peter Keyser collection. The collection of the Cologne City Museum also contains a colored photo enlargement of this image, as well as three other colored photographs of the same type from the same collection, The Waidmarkt von Norden , The Blaubach and The Mühlenbach . No originals have survived of the last three copies mentioned. It can be assumed that these are reproductions of a series of pictures by Beckenkamp - due to the context in the collection, due to the fact that all reproductions are streets from the vicinity of Beckenkamp's apartment, and due to stylistic similarities. The value of this series of pictures lies in the exact reproduction of the urban landscape and urban life in a not particularly emphasized district. Beckenkamp's Der Blaubach is the only pictorial representation of the old post house on Waidmarkt, which was demolished in 1876 .

Portraits

introduction

The art of portraits takes by far the largest share in Beckenkamp's work. He practiced it throughout his 50 years as a painter. Measured against this long time, the number of around 115 portraits preserved is small. It can be assumed that many of them have been lost.

The creative period from the 1770s to 1828 includes the three style epochs Rococo , Classicism and Biedermeier . Beckenkamp also followed this change in his personal artistic development. Furthermore, his portraits reflect the social change of that time in the Rhineland, especially in Cologne. He portrayed influential people of his time, such as Johann Friedrich Carl Heimann , the founder of the Cologne Chamber of Commerce, or Ferdinand Franz Wallraf , the founder of the museums of the city of Cologne.

Portraits until 1805

Portrait of Joseph Gregor Lang

In the 1770s, the elector's court stable master commissioned Beckenkamp to depict the horses of the court stables and their riders. According to de Noël, he had great success with this commission and subsequent equestrian portraits. That was the reason why he turned away from landscape painting and turned to portrait painting. This is initially astonishing because the people and horses in his early equestrian portraits appear stiff and awkward. Probably the main value of the paintings for the client was the documentary representation of the valuable pedigree horses.

In 1790 and 1792 Beckenkamp was commissioned to portray Elector Clemens Wenzeslaus on the occasion of an imperial coronation, riding on a white horse in front of the Frankfurt Römer , in an elector's coat with an ermine collar .

The other portraits of this phase are portraits of people, couples and families as well as self-portraits. In the portraits from the 1780s he shows himself to be a mature portrait painter. One of the earliest signed portraits from those years is the portrait of an unknown lady , probably a lady-in-waiting in Trier; a typical courtly portrait with a pyramid-shaped picture construction in the style of the French painter at the Prussian court, Antoine Pesne . What is remarkable, and typical of a Rococo portrait, is the fine depiction of the clothing fabrics in varying degrees of transparency up to the delicate openwork lace fabrics. Nevertheless, he maintains the naturalness of the depiction, in contrast to some French rococo portraits, whose expansive draperies overwhelm the person.

The influence of the father Lorenz Beckenkamp can be seen in a gentleman portrait of the Cologne cathedral capitular Clemens August Maria von Merle from 1794. It shows the same kind of representation in half profile, the same stiff seriousness as some of the few surviving pictures of the father. In the depiction of the facial features, however, Benedikt Beckenkamp's portrayal shows liveliness, warmth and sympathy that the father was unable to express in this form.

Clerics found themselves among Beckenkamp's clients throughout his career. Another portrait of Merle, showing him as auxiliary bishop in 1798 , is interesting in terms of church history. It is one of the last portraits of clerics under the Ancien Régime . In 1801 the Archdiocese of Cologne was abolished.

Other models from Ehrenbreitstein and the surrounding area can be found in the portrait of the Hofbrunnendirektor Georg Heinrich Kirn and his family from 1783. The composition corresponds to a lost portrait of Anton Wilhelm Tischbein from 1773, which depicts Sophie, Maximilian and Georg Michael La Roche. Furthermore, French and English influences are noticeable in his portraits. The portraits of his two children are reminiscent of the portraits of children by Jean-Baptiste Greuze and Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun in the depiction of their silky, shiny hair, clothing and round face shapes .

A picture that shows the aged elector Clemens Wenzeslaus in half profile is surprisingly relentless: It shows the prince with bags under the eyes, a double chin, limp, luscious facial features and a receding forehead; but dressed with his ermine regalia. The renunciation of fining and pathos suggests that the prince sought rapprochement with the bourgeois classes. A similar renunciation of idealization can be found at other courts since the 1760s, for example in the portraits painted by Heinrich Carl Brandt and Johann Georg Ziesenis at the Mannheim court .

A self-portrait from 1797 shows the artist at work. Drawing with a pen in a large sketchbook, facing the viewer in half profile, he looks openly and confidently towards the viewer.

Portraits of the ripening period

Around 1805 Beckenkamp had reached the height of his stylistic skills. This was particularly evident in the representation of hands and heads. The portrait of Johann Baptist Fuchs shows the Cologne lawyer writing with a quill pen in a simple, classicist interior. This portrait, as well as that of Fuchs' wife Sabina with her daughter, show faces and shapes with rich contrasts and sparing use of color. Beckenkamp thus adapted the portrait style of French classicism, as it was expressed for example by Jacques-Louis David , François Gérard and Antoine Gros , but also by German painters such as Heinrich Christoph Kolbe , Johann Baptist Bastiné and Carl Joseph Begas . The latter are all a generation younger than Beckenkamp, ​​but had learned directly from David or Gérard in Paris.

The portraits of women by Maria Susanna Heimann and Bernadine Nolden, dated 1806 and 1815, depicting the two women in light empire clothing and in a classic sitting posture against a neutral background, are typical classical portraits of people.

However, Beckenkamp did not completely adopt the hard, three-dimensional style of painting that can be found, for example, in the later works of Gérard, but instead stuck to the slow build-up of paint layers with glazes and the modeling of outlines with color and light. In this regard, his way of working remained conservative and late baroque.

Retirement works

In the late creative years from around 1815 onwards, Beckenkamp turned away from classicism and towards Biedermeier naturalism. The dignified staging of the personality gives way to a more objective portrayal of the person. This can be seen, for example, in the two related individual portraits of Maximilian von Kempis and his wife Anna Lucia, completed in 1822.

Between 1824 and 1828 he turned to the large format. These include the portraits of Nikolaus and Katharina Hackenbroich from 1824 and above all the two portraits of the Heinrigs family from 1824 and 1828. The persons depicted were painted in a series of individual portraits.

Cologne cathedral picture

With the secularization at the beginning of the 19th century, numerous works of art were released from churches. This resulted in a lively art trade and numerous copy orders for artists. The picture Lamentation of Christ by Joos van der Beke from the Church of St. Maria in Lyskirchen was lost to the city through secularization. The copy made by Beckenkamp, ​​dated 1816, is used by de Noël as evidence of the skill and craftsmanship of his teacher. The copy is still in the church of St. Maria in Lyskirchen today .

In 1819 the art collection of the Bonn cleric Franz Pick was dissolved and sold. The collection contained the portrait of Agrippa von Nettesheim by Barthel Bruyn the Elder , which was then ascribed to Hans Holbein the Younger . Ferdinand Franz Wallraf wanted to get the picture for Cologne; however, the original was unaffordable for him. Beckenkamp copied the picture on his behalf.

By 1815 Beckenkamp's reputation as a copyist was so widespread that high-ranking foreign art lovers also approached him. Most of the orders, however, were for the altar of the city patron , originally created by Stefan Lochner . Beckenkamp produced a large number of depictions of this motif from 1812 to 1828. Most of them are replicas in reduced dimensions, with a reduced number of figures and, in some cases, a different arrangement of figures. The version that Beckenkamp produced from 1819 to 1821 on behalf of King Friedrich Wilhelm III comes closest to a true-to-original copy . made by Prussia . To the right and left of this copy, the rear parts of the cathedral image are added. They show the Lord's preaching . This copy therefore consists of five planar wings. Today it is in the library of Schloss Friedrichshof in Kronberg im Taunus .

Other known versions are:

• Partial copy for Prince Wilhelm of Prussia , 1812–1814 on behalf of Princess Marianne ;
• Oil sketch for Count Heinrich Ludwig von Dohna-Wundlacken , 1814;
• Detail copy for Peter Beuth, 1814; today in the picture gallery of the state museums in Berlin;
• Detail copy of Maria with the child for Princess Marianne of Prussia, probably 1815;
• Partial copy, presumably for Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, presumably 1815; at Stolzenfels Castle;
• Partial copy of the Dreikönigsbild , presumably for Prince Friedrich of Prussia , presumably 1815–1817; today in the Dreikönigsgymnasium Cologne;
• Drawing for Eberhard von Groote , 1823;
• Triptych for the Heereman von Zuydtwyck family , probably 1826–1828; today in the vestibule of Cologne City Hall.

In addition, Beckenkamp produced a large number of graphic reproductions of Stefan Lochner's city patrons, including a copper engraving as an illustration for the paperback for Friends of the Old German Times and Art for the year 1816 .

literature

• Elisabeth Moses: Caspar Benedikt Beckenkamp (1747–1828). Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch: Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 1925, 2, pp. 44–77.
• Bettina Mosler: Benedikt Beckenkamp. 1747-1828. A Rhenish painter . Publications of the Cologne City Museum, Cologne 2003. ISBN 3-927396-91-5 .
• Matthias Joseph de Noël: Necrology by Caspar Benedikt Beckenkamp. On the history of painting in Cologne. Kölnische Zeitung 1828 No. 7, supplement, column 3–5.

Web links

Commons : Benedikt Beckenkamp  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Benedikt Beckenkamp in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biography at the historical portal of the Rhineland Regional Council
• Some works by Benedikt Beckenkamp. In: Beethovenhaus Bonn. Accessed June 1, 2020 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Unless other sources are explicitly mentioned, the following description follows the monograph by Bettina Mosler
2. ↑ Otto Beckenkamp: Die Beckenkamps, family tree of a Rhenish family , Würzburg 1951
3. ↑ Mosler, p. 85
4. ↑ Unless expressly stated otherwise, the presentation of the work also follows Bettina Mosler's remarks in a very summarized manner.