Benjamin Vautier

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Benjamin Vautier , self-portrait, 1888
Benjamin Vautier, Photo Arnold Overbeck , Gebr. G. & A. Overbeck in Düsseldorf
Village church with devotees , 1858
Children at lunch
Bertha Vautier, 1864
Benjamin Vautier's grave relief, work of the sculptor Karl Janssen (1898)

Marc Louis Benjamin Vautier (born April 27, 1829 in Morges ; † April 25, 1898 in Düsseldorf ) was a Swiss painter and representative of the anecdotal narrative genre painting of the Düsseldorf School .

Life

Benjamin Vautier, son of the Vaudois parish candidate and grammar school teacher Rodolphe Benjamin Louis Vautier (1798–1871) and his wife Jeanne Marie Sophie, b. Chevalier was born in Morges on Lake Geneva . He spent his youth in Noville in the Rhône Valley , where his father was called as a pastor . He then attended the Lausanne grammar school and was supposed to become a pastor. In caricatures of the pupil Vautier the talent was shown early. His father, albeit reluctantly, gave permission to make art his profession. After a brief stint at the drawing school of the painter Jules Hébert , a master popular in Geneva at the time, Vautier began an apprenticeship as an enamel painter with Jacques Aimé and Charles Louis François Glardon. He attended evening classes in life drawing at the Akademie des Musée Rath, and in his free time he is engaged in watercolor and portrait painting. In 1848 he took up a four-year job with an enameller; he painted clocks and brooches there. After about two years, he bought himself out of this employment contract for 1,200 francs. Through a befriended painting dealer, Vautier came into contact with representatives of the Geneva art world, for example Jacques Alfred van Muyden , François Diday , Alexandre Calame , Jean-Léonard Lugardon and Joseph Hornung .

In 1850 Vautier went to the Düsseldorf Art Academy , studied under Karl Ferdinand Sohn and took lessons in anatomy and proportion theory from Heinrich Mücke . Vautier only stayed at the academy for eight months, "since the lessons under the Schadow dictatorship neither matched his talent nor his temperament." After leaving the academy voluntarily, he worked as a private student in Rudolf Jordan's studio from 1851 and worked as an illustrator at the same time.

In 1853 he left Düsseldorf for a short time and traveled with Ludwig Knaus to the Black Forest and the Bernese Oberland, among others . With Knaus he made in the following years repeatedly study trips to the Black Forest, where they in Gutach it were the vanguard of later artists' colony Gutach formed. In view of the great success of Knaus of the same age, he decided to take up the genre subject. He dedicated himself in particular to the description of peasant life, which he studied in the following years in rural areas in the Bernese Oberland. In 1856 he made a study visit to Paris with the Swede Carl d'Unker . There they met Knaus, with whom he had shared a studio in Düsseldorf.

In 1857 Benjamin finally settled in Düsseldorf. On May 26, 1858 he married Bertha Euler, the daughter of the Düsseldorf notary and politician Joseph Euler , "who, together with his wife, was an important driver of local cultural life". In Düsseldorf, Vautier quickly gained a reputation as one of the most important genre painters at the Düsseldorf School of Painting . In 1858 he achieved the first resounding success with the picture In der Kirche at the Munich exhibition. He got the title of royal professor . During his career, international students came to Düsseldorf to study with him, including the Czech Quido Mánes , the Swiss Jost Muheim , the Hungarian Mihály von Munkácsy , the Russian Nikolai Dmitrijewitsch Dmitrijew-Orenburgski , the Norwegians Vincent Stoltenberg Lerche and Carl Sundt-Hansen , the Finland Swede Karl Emanuel Jansson , also the painters Marie Helene Aarestrup and Catherine Engelhart from Denmark and Jekaterina Fjodorovna Junge from Russia.

From 1850 until his death he was an active member of the artists' association Malkasten . He supported the raffles initiated for works of art, the proceeds of which enabled the purchase of a permanent club bar, the purchase of the Jacobi'schen garden in 1861 and the construction of the Malkasten House, which was inaugurated in 1867 . Vautier took an active part in events, including the Living Pictures , in which his works were recreated to the accompaniment of music, the carnival redoubts and the preparatory work for performances on the paint box stage.

Vautier sat on the board of directors of the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen , which promoted the Düsseldorf school on a local and regional level. He was a member of the academies of Berlin, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Vienna and Munich. His house was at Goltsteinstrasse 29.

He lived in Düsseldorf for three decades, honored, respected and much sought after as an artist, until he died of pneumonia at the age of 69. In 1898 the sculptor Karl Janssen created the grave relief "The mourning painting and the genius of immortality, driving away death" in the form of a cross, which Friedrich Schaarschmidt described in 1902 as the "Vautier monument". The grave was located in the Nordfriedhof Düsseldorf , was redesigned in 2004 by a Düsseldorf family for their own purposes and taken to the Unterrath cemetery .

family

Benjamin Vautier and Bertha Margaretha Luisa Vautier, b. Euler, (1837–1886?) Had a daughter and three sons:

  1. Charles Joseph Benjamin Vautier (1860-?), Active as a painter in Paris
  2. Clara Antonia Vautier (1862–1944) ⚭ 1880 Hermann Nicolaus von Wätjen (1851–1911), manor owner, city councilor and secret councilor in Düsseldorf
    1. Otto von Wätjen (1881–1942), active as a painter in Paris and Düsseldorf ⚭ 1914–1921 Marie Laurencin (1883–1956), painter
    2. Elisabeth Luise (Lilli) von Wätjen (1884–1966) ⚭ 1905 Paul Clemen (1866–1947), art historian
    3. Gerda Agnes von Wätjen (* 1886) ⚭ 1st marriage to Carl Friedberg (1872–1955), pianist; ⚭ 2nd marriage 1909 Hermann Haller , Swiss sculptor
    4. Hans Hermann von Wätjen (1905–1922)
  3. Otto Adolphe Paul Vautier (1863–1919), active as a painter in Switzerland ⚭ Louise Marie Schnell
    1. Otto Vautier (1893–1918), Swiss painter
    2. Benjamin Vautier (1895–1974), Swiss painter
  4. Paul Louis Vautier (1865–1930), businessman, art collector, numismatist ⚭ 1897 Gladys Marguerite Moss (1874–1963)
    1. Benjamin Hermann Vautier (born August 20, 1898 in Tokyo) ⚭ 1925 Rosina Viva (1899–1983), Italian painter
    2. Max Ferdinand Vautier (* July 4, 1900 in Düsseldorf) ⚭ Janet Giraud († 1989)
      1. Ben Vautier (* 1935), Swiss-French artist of the 20th century ⚭ 1959 Jacqueline Robert; ⚭ 1964 Annie Baricalla
    3. Paul Vautier (born July 22, 1902 in Tokyo) ⚭ 1942 Frida Maria Beer

plant

His first pictures depicted the population on Lake Geneva and in the Bernese Oberland. Pictures from popular life, such as the interior of a Swiss village church with worshipers . In 1858 he began his studies in the Black Forest, where he found the majority of all his motifs. He immersed himself in the study of Swabian rural and small town life and especially of the Black Forest farmers and created a series of captivating pictures in quick succession, through which he earned the position of one of the first German genre painters. Later, after 1870, pictures from Alsace also followed .

His oeuvre mainly comprised narrations rich in figures, in which he exhausted the spectrum of topics between birth and burial. In addition to children and dignitaries, Vautier described small towns, preferably the country folk. Didn't paint the peasants at work or glorify the poetry of country life, the landscape receded completely. He portrayed his characters on special occasions, in grief and bereavement, now as a fine humorist, now as a benevolent philanthropist, always with the caricaturist's interest in mine games, but never with scorn, and above all not with sweetness.

A number of early pictures also dealt with the relationship to religion and clergy with the activities of the clergyman and his community, which must have attracted him from childhood with the attention of the pastor's son. “The devout congregation” was followed by “The lesson” (1861), “Surprise of the farmers who play cards during the service by their wives” (1862), “Sunday afternoon in a Swabian village” (1863), “funeral feast " around

Vautier was also active as an illustrator , especially between 1865 and 1870. In the 1860s, Carl Leberecht Immermann commissioned him to illustrate the story “Der Oberhof” from “Münchhausen” with depictions of Westphalian peasant life. He also worked for Berthold Auerbach's Barfüßele, among others.

In the 1870s, a whole cycle of paintings was created that dealt with love life and other main events, such as “The first dance lesson” (1868), “Dance hall in a Swabian village”, “Overheard advertising”, “Farewell of the bride and groom from the father's house ”(1875),“ dance break ”or“ Alsatian wedding ”(1878),“ visit of the newlyweds ”(1880),“ involuntary confession ”(1881). In addition, the two main works: "The purpose of eating in the country", "Rural burial" (both 1871), and "At the sick bed" (1873).

He had only hinted at the damage to peasant life with tragic effect. Mention should be made of the picture “Debt Builder” (1865), where a Jewish realtor is cheating off his last piece of land from a smallholder, later published as an illustration under the title “Von Haus und Hof” and in “Verhaftung”. A peasant fight like the "Interrupted Dispute" is an exception in his works.

In the later years his interest in the comic situation came to the fore. Benjamin Vautier now liked to talk about his experiences on study trips and has often been the hero of the situation himself. Shamelessness, shyness, naive astonishment, small harmless embarrassments of the country folk, but also unabashed city lords, with court and administration, now formed an inexhaustible topic: "The gallant professor" (1885), "The escaped model", "The willing model" ( 1886 and 1887), "The Pocket Player".

Vautier's style of painting had changed little over the years. He had achieved what he liked early on and stayed at the same level for a long time. In the first works, the coloring of his pictures is a little livelier. Later everything turns into a fine gray. The color moods are most finely worked out in the paintings that were created shortly before and after 1870. His works are characterized by the certainty of drawing, a characteristic of the greatest diversity, depth and delicacy, a consistently noble, elegant conception, an atmospheric coloring, which is subordinate to the composition, by depth and truth of the sensation and where the material brings it with it , distinguished by amiable humor.

Works (selection)

  • The candidate for marriage. (1856)
  • Village church with devotees . (1858, Heylshof , Worms)
  • The sewing school. (1859)
  • Peasants playing cards, surprised by their wives (1862, in the Leipzig Museum)
  • Sunday in Swabia, the funeral feast (1865, Museum zu Köln)
  • The private tutor (1865, Germanisches Nationalmuseum , Nuremberg)
  • Funeral Feast (1866, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud , Cologne)
  • The first dance lesson (1868, National Gallery in Berlin)
  • Farmer and Broker, Toast to the Bride (1870, in the Kunsthalle zu Hamburg)
  • A purpose meal (1871).
  • The funeral (1872).
  • Departure for the honeymoon (1875).
  • Local council meeting (1876).
  • At the registry office (1877).
  • The dance break (1878, Dresden Gallery)
  • The Arrest (1879).
  • Black Peter (1883).
  • The escaped model (1886).
  • The anxious hour (1887).
  • Visiting the Sick (1887).
  • The new parishioner (1888).

Illustrations (selection)

Digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf :

  • In: Friedrich Bodenstedt (ed.): Album of German art and poetry. With woodcuts based on the artist's original drawings, made by R. Brend'amour. Grote, Berlin 1867. (Digitized edition)
  • In: Aquarelle Dusseldorf artists: dedicated to the art-loving women. Arnz, Düsseldorf 1861. (English edition: Aquarels of Düsseldorf artists. Arnz, Düsseldorf 1852) (digitized German edition ; digitized English edition)
  • Berthold Auerbach: Barefooted. Cotta, Stuttgart 1870. (digitized edition)
  • In: Düsseldorf picture portfolio: original drawings. Grote, Berlin 1866. (Digitized edition)
  • In: Mary Botham Howitt: The Dusseldorf artists' album. Arnz, Dusseldorf 1854. (digitized edition)
  • Fun and pastime: pictures from life in 12 pencil drawings. Ackermann, Munich 1884. (digitized edition)
  • In: Fairy tales and legends for young and old. - Arnz: Voss, Düsseldorf 1857, volume 2. Digitized edition
  • Karl Immermann: The Oberhof: from Immermann's Münchhausen. Hofmann, Berlin 1863. (digitized edition)
  • In: K. Stieler, H. Wachenhusen, FW Hackländer: Rhine trip: From the sources of the Rhine to the sea. Kröner, Stuttgart 1875. (digitized edition)
  • In: E. Diethoff: From the Rhine. Pictures and stories from old and new times. Payne, Leipzig 1871. (digitized edition)
  • Poems . Arnz, Düsseldorf 1852 (digitized edition)

Honors

Statements of honor such as the Franz Joseph Order (1868), the Red Eagle Order (1869) and the Bavarian Order of Michael testify to Benjamin Vautier's high reputation.

In Düsseldorf, a street and a stop for the Düsseldorf Stadtbahn are named after Vautier .

literature

Web links

Commons : Benjamin Vautier (1829-1898)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jacques Longchamp: Marc Louis Benjamin Vautier (the elder). A monograph . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg, 2015, p. 41.
  2. ^ Jacques Longchamp: Marc Louis Benjamin Vautier (the elder). A monograph . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg, 2015, p. 44.
  3. ^ Jacques Longchamp: Marc Louis Benjamin Vautier (the elder). A monograph . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2015, p. 45.
  4. ^ Wend von Kalnein (ed.): The Düsseldorf school of painting . Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1979, ISBN 3-8053-0409-9 , p. 492.
  5. ^ Jacques Longchamp: Marc Louis Benjamin Vautier (the elder). A monograph . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg, 2015, p. 48.
  6. ↑ Volker Frech: Living pictures and music using the example of Düsseldorf culture . Diplomica Verlag, 1999, ISBN 3-8386-3062-9 .
  7. ^ Address book entry Benjamin Vautier , address book of the Lord Mayor's Office Düsseldorf 1889.
  8. ↑ Figure "Vautier Monument", Karl Janssen , in Friedrich Schaarschmidt: On the history of Düsseldorf art; especially in the XIX. Century. Edited by Kunstverein for the Rhineland and Westphalia, p. 380
  9. ↑ Wolfgang Funken: History of works of art and cultural symbols in the public space of the state capital , Ars Publica Düsseldorf, 2012, volume 3, object no. 1286, ISBN 3837507750 , p. 1325.
  10. ^ Jacques Longchamp: Marc Louis Benjamin Vautier (the elder). A monograph . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg, 2015, p. 49.
  11. ^ Civil status marriage vows July 30, 1880: Government assessors Hermann Wätjen and Klara Vautier, bvh , in Düsseldorfer Volksblatt, No. 205, dated August 3, 1880
  12. ^ Vautier, Otto, II (Swiss artist, 1893-1918)
  13. ↑ Vautier, Benjamin, the younger (Swiss painter, 1895-1974)
  14. ↑ Paul Louis Vautier is the son of Marc Louis Benjamin and Bertha Marguerite, nee Euler
  15. ↑ Rosina Viva, name variant Vautier , on SIKART Lexicon on Art in Switzerland
  16. ↑ Portrait of Max Vautier, 1923 , Portrait of Max Vautier by Rudolf Levy , on Artnet, accessed on May 27, 2016.
  17. ↑ Biographical overview Benjamin Vautier: was born on July 18 in Naples as the son of Irish-born Janet Giraud from Antibes and Max Ferdinand Vautier from a Swiss family of painters. Barbara Rosen: Benjamin Vautier , University of Bonn, Diss. 2007. (PDF, 50 MB), accessed on May 27, 2016.
  18. ↑ used for illustration in: Friedrich Hofmann : How he skips the church and the mess' . In: The Gazebo . 1863, p. 266 ff . ( Full text [ Wikisource ]).
personal data
SURNAME Vautier, Benjamin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vautier, Benjamin the Elder Ä .; Vautier, Marc Louis Benjamin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss painter
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1829
PLACE OF BIRTH Morges
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 1898
Place of death Dusseldorf