Benjamin Zobel
Benjamin Zobel (born September 22, 1762 in Memmingen , † 1830 in London ) was a German painter . He invented the technique of so-called sand pictures around 1825 . Several examples can be found in the Memmingen antiquity collection in the city museum, which is housed in the Hermansbau .
Life
Benjamin Zobel was born in 1762 in Memmingen, Upper Swabia, in Weinmarkt 7. He was the son of the confectioner Johann Georg Zobel and learned from his father the confectionery craft. At the age of 20 he already had the championship title and emigrated to Amsterdam . He lived there for two years before moving to London in 1784. His baked goods, made according to Swabian tradition, found good sales in London, so that a little later he was employed as a pastry chef at the English royal court. After Benjamin Zobel was also artistically very gifted, he was allegedly from King George III. commissioned to design the table decorations made of colored sugar, which were very fashionable at the time. These sugar decorations were created loosely on the tablecloths at a festive banquet in various shapes such as flowers, animals, fruits or coats of arms and were not durable, but were usually destroyed during the banquet. King George III expressed a desire to make these decorations more durable. However, the silver plates used as a base did not prove to be a solution. Benjamin Zobel used fine-grained sand instead of sugar, which he applied to a wooden or cardboard board coated with glue. Zobel is considered to be the inventor of sand painting.
Benjamin Zobel then experimented with different types of sand and underlays. Friedrich Kerler , also born in Memmingen, described in detail Zobel's sand paintings in the 1820s and was instructed by him in the art of sand painting. Benjamin Zobel died in his adopted home London in 1830. He was married to Elizabeth Windal. Descendants still live in England today.
Eighteen sand pictures of him have been preserved in Memmingen and around 200 in England. The number can be much higher because of private collections that have not yet been recorded.
literature
- Thieme-Becker 36, 1947
- Der Spiegelschwab - local supplement of the Memminger Zeitung , No. 7, year 1963, July 1986: Hilde Miedel - Benjamin Zobel's sand paintings
Individual evidence
- ^ Birth dates of Benjamin Zobel in a description of the Memmingen municipal museum. Retrieved May 22, 2011 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Sable, Benjamin |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 22, 1762 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Memmingen |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1830 |
| Place of death | London |