Carl Joseph Begas

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Self-Portrait, 1826
Wilhelmine Begas, 1828
Begas with his family
Carl Joseph Begas - Self-Portrait with Johann-Peter Weyer (1813) Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne
Grave site in the old cathedral cemetery of St. Hedwig's parish in Berlin-Mitte

Carl Joseph Begas , actually Begasse (born September 30, 1794 in Heinsberg , † November 24, 1854 in Berlin ), was a German painter . He is considered the progenitor of an artist dynasty spanning several generations and shaped German art between Romanticism and Realism .

Life

The Begasse family originally came from Belgium , from the area around Verviers and Liège . It has been traceable in the Heinsberg area since the 17th century. Carl Joseph Begas (se) was the third child of the lawyer Franz Anton Begasse and his wife Susanne Hofstadt. Begas spent his childhood in Randerath and in his grandparents' house Herb near Dremmen . When the family moved to Cologne in 1802, he received his first artistic training there from the draftsman and miniature painter Franz Katz (1782-1851) and later at the Lyceum in Bonn with Clemens August Philippart (1751-1825). In 1813 he began his training in Paris with Antoine Jean Gros with Johann Peter Weyer , who later became Cologne city architect . Here in 1814 the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. noticed him and from then on supported him with commissions and grants.

Begas stayed in Paris until 1821. In his first work he deals exclusively with Christian topics. In the painting Christ on the Mount of Olives acquired by the king for the Berlin garrison church , he combined elements of the French school with the strictness of drawing of the old German and old Dutch masters. Even in this early period his talent as a portrait painter was fully developed, cf. the early self-portraits from 1819 and 1820 in the BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg and in the National Gallery Berlin .

On his trip to Italy from 1822-25, made possible by a scholarship , he joined the Nazarenes painters group . In Italy he also began to sign with the Germanized form Begas instead of Begasse. In 1825 he settled permanently in Berlin and married Wilhelmine Bock, daughter of the Berlin palace builder Johann Ludwig Bock. Begas' home and studio at 10 Karlsbad was soon a meeting place for Berlin society. Begas had already been accepted into the Berlin Academy of the Arts during the trip to Italy, and in 1826 he was appointed professor at the academy. He taught until his death in 1854.

In the area of history and genre painting as well as in his altarpieces and portraits , Begas knew how to reconcile the different influences of his artistic studies in Paris and Rome and thus contribute pioneeringly to the development of Berlin painting between Romanticism and Realism. Around 1828, under the influence of the Düsseldorf School of Painting, he underwent a temporary stylistic change and increasingly created works with literary or historical references, including the painting Die Lureley (1835, Heinsberg, BEGAS HAUS, Museum für, based on the famous Rhine legend or Heinrich Heine's poem) Art and regional history Heinsberg ) and the historical picture of Heinrich IV. In Canossa (1836, former Rheineck Castle , whereabouts unknown), both of which are among his most successful creations. But Begas kept returning to portrait painting, partly for economic reasons, in which he performed his most important achievements. When the Peace Class of the Order Pour le Mérite was donated, Bega 1843 was to portray the awardees the order, including the sculptor Christian Daniel Rauch and Johann Gottfried Schadow , the philologist Jacob Grimm and Alexander von Humboldt (all Potsdam , Foundation for Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg ).

In 1846 Friedrich Wilhelm IV appointed Begas as royal Prussian court painter .

Begas died at the age of 60 after returning from a stay in Rome.

Four sons took up the artistic profession and received their earliest artistic impulses in their father's studio: the sculptors Reinhold Begas and Carl Begas the Younger and the painters Oscar Begas and Adalbert Begas . Three of them - Oscar, who succeeded his father as a portraitist and genre painter, Reinhold and Carl d. J. - later also worked for the Prussian royal house and the Hohenzollern family .

Works

As far as we know today, the oeuvre of Carl Joseph Begas comprises more than 300 paintings and drawings. An important collection of paintings, drawings and autographs by Begas the Elder. Ä. owns the BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg . Major works can still be found in the Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin, in the Berlin Cathedral , in the Foundation City Museum Berlin , in the Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg , in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud in Cologne and in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn .

Selection of works

  • St. John in the desert, 1810, copy after Raphael , oil / canvas, 186 × 120 cm, BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg
  • Self-portrait of the painter with Johann Peter Weyer, 1813, oil / canvas, 100 × 80 cm Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne
  • The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit, 1818–21, altar painting in the Berlin Cathedral
  • Self-portrait, 1819, oil / canvas, 60 × 49 cm, BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg
  • Portrait of a girl ( Fanny Mendelssohn ?), Around 1821, oil / canvas, 54 × 45.5 cm, BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg
  • The Begasse family, 1821, 78 × 85.5 cm Wallraf-Richartz-Museum - Fondation Corboud, Cologne; Handwritten repetition in the Lindenau Museum Altenburg, on permanent loan to the BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg
  • The Hufeland sisters, around 1822, Schweinfurt, Georg Schäfer Museum
  • Portrait of Bertel Thorvaldsen with a laurel branch, 1823, oil / poplar wood, 93 × 71.5 cm Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin; Second version in St. Petersburg, Hermitage
  • Portrait of Jakob Ludwig Salomon Bartholdy , 1824, oil / canvas, 72 × 59 cm, BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg
  • The artist's parents, 1826, oil / canvas, 40.7 × 81 cm Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin
  • Portrait of Wilhelmine Begas, the artist's wife, 1828, oil / canvas, 66 x56 cm Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin; Autograph repetition from 1828 in the BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg
  • Portrait of the horticultural director Peter Joseph Lenné , 1830, oil / canvas, 59.5 × 55.5 cm Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin
  • Portrait of Frau Gedike, 1830, oil / canvas, Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin
  • Portraits of the sisters Clara and Eugenie Hitzig, 1831, each 26 × 22.5 cm, Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin
  • Amor und Terspichore (apotheosis of the dancer Fanny Elssler ), 1832, oil / canvas, 206 × 165 cm, BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg
  • The Sermon on the Mount, 1833, oil / canvas, BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg
  • Oscar Begas, the artist's son, at the easel at the age of seven, 1835, oil / canvas, 30.5 × 25 cm Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen , Neue Pinakothek
  • Two girls on the mountain ( look at home ), 1835, Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn; earlier small version (1834) on copper or canvas in BEGAS HAUS Heinsberg; Repetition in the State Museum Schwerin
  • The Lureley , 1835, oil / canvas, 124 × 136 cm, BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg
  • Heinrich IV. In Canossa, 1836, former Rheineck Castle, whereabouts unknown; Personal pictorial oil study, signed and dated 1833, in the BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg
  • Christ predicting the fall of Jerusalem, 1840, oil / canvas, 230 × 270 cm, Administration of the State Palaces and Gardens of Hesse, Bad Homburg Castle , Castle Church
  • Portrait of Henriette Beerend, around 1840, oil / canvas, 120 × 90 cm, BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg
  • The Mohren Wash, 1841, oil / canvas, 66 × 86 cm, BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg; another handwritten version (of previously seven) in the State Museum Schwerin
  • Portrait of Étienne Barez, around 1842, oil / canvas, 65 × 62 cm, BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg
  • Christ Enthroned with Angels and the Four Evangelists, 1845, apse painting in the choir of the Heilandskirche at the Port of Sacrow , preserved in situ
  • Christ on the Cross with Mary and John , altar paintings for the Holy Cross Church in 1846 Sagan , commissioned by Dorothea von Sagan received,
  • Portrait of Christian Daniel Rauch, 1846, oil / canvas, Potsdam, Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg
  • Portrait of Johann Gottfried Schadow, 1847, oil / canvas, 105.5 × 86 cm, Potsdam, Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg
  • Self-portrait, 1848, oil on canvas, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum - Fondation Corboud, Cologne, on permanent loan to the Cologne City Museum
  • The winemaker family, 1850, oil / canvas, BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg (original pencil drawing from 1847 and small-format preliminary study ibid.)

literature

  • Hans Mackowsky : Begas, Karl (Joseph) . In: Ulrich Thieme , Felix Becker (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists from Antiquity to the Present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. tape 3 : Bassano – Bickham . Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1909, p. 181 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  • Eberhard Ruhmer :  Begas, Karl Joseph the Elder. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 744 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Wolfgang Cortjaens (Ed.): Family ties. The correspondence from Carl Joseph Begas d. Ä. with Oscar Begas 1840–1854 . Sources on German art history from classicism to the present, vol. 7, on behalf of the German Association for Art History, ed. v. Bernhard Maaz . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar 2018, ISBN 978-3-412-50919-4
  • Wolfgang Cortjaens: Oscar Begas (1828-1883). A Berlin painter between court and bourgeoisie . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2017, ISBN 978-3-7319-0410-6 (with catalog raisonné of the paintings, contains information on the apprenticeship in the father's studio, esp. Pp. 11–34, as well as copies and replicas after Begas the Elder ., Pp. 232–245)
  • Rita Müllejans-Dickmann and Wolfgang Cortjaens (eds.): BEGAS HAUS Heinsberg. Vol. 2: The Begas Collection, Cologne 2013
  • Wolfgang Cortjaens: Education for Art. The influence of Carl Joseph Begas the Elder Ä. on the work of his sons . In: Begas. Monuments for the Empire. An exhibition on the 100th anniversary of the death of Reinhold Begas (1831–1911) , ed. by Esther Sophia Sünderhauf on behalf of the German Historical Museum Foundation with the collaboration of Wolfgang Cortjaens. With a catalog raisonné by Jutta von Simson. Dresden 2010, pp. 37–47
  • Thomas Blisniewski : "... and works with diligent hands". Female handicrafts in works by R. Schadow, CJ Begas and JA Ramboux in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum - Fondation-Corboud . In: Cologne Museum Bulletin. Reports and research from the museums of the City of Cologne (3) 2001, pp. 4–18
  • Rita Müllejans-Dickmann , Dorothee Haffner , Udo Felbinger: Carl Joseph Begas (1794–1854). A look at home. Exhibition catalog. (= Museum publications of the Heinsberg district 15). Heinsberg 1994.
  • Irmgard Wirth: The Begas family of artists in Berlin , published by the Berlin Museum, Berlin 1968
  • Robert Dohme :  Begas, Karl . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, p. 269 f.
  • Skwirblies, Robert: Begas the Elder, Carl Joseph , in: Savoy, Bénédicte and Nerlich, France (ed.): Paris apprenticeship years. A lexicon for training German painters in the French capital. Volume 1: 1793-1843 , Berlin / Boston 2013, pp. 14-19.
  • Rita Müllejans-Dickmann :  BEGAS (SE), Carl Joseph. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 23, Bautz, Nordhausen 2004, ISBN 3-88309-155-3 , Sp. 61-68.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Administration of the State Palaces and Gardens of Hesse (ed.): Schloss Homburg Castle Church, official guide . Bad Homburg vd Höhe 1989, p. 22ff
  2. ^ Rheinische Post: Berlin Foundation supports Heinsberg Begas House

Web links

Commons : Carl Joseph Begas  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Begas, Carl Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Begasse, Carl Joseph; Begas, Karl; Begas, Carl the Elder
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH September 30, 1794
PLACE OF BIRTH Heinsberg
DATE OF DEATH November 24, 1854
Place of death Berlin