Carl Morgenstern

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Carl Morgenstern (born October 25, 1811 in Frankfurt am Main ; † January 10, 1893 there ) was a German landscape painter .

Life

Prospectus of Frankfurt, seen from the new Brueckenmuehle , watercolors and opaque paints, 1828
The village of Hausen an der Nidda , oil painting, 1832
View of Frankfurt am Main from the west , oil painting, 1850

Morgenstern was the son of the architecture and landscape painter Johann Friedrich Morgenstern, who had lived in Frankfurt since the early 19th century . He was already the fourth generation of the artist family originally from Rudolstadt in Thuringia . Like his ancestors, Carl also had fatherly painting and drawing lessons in his youth. From 1826 onwards, his works are entered in the family's work book, which his grandfather started in 1800. A distant relative was the writer Christian Morgenstern .

At the age of 21 he went to Munich in 1832 and became a student of the landscape painter Carl Rottmann . In 1834 he spent three years in Italy , after which he returned to Frankfurt am Main in 1837, where he founded his own household in 1845.

With the exception of short trips to Switzerland in 1840, 1849, 1851, 1856 and 1864, to the Riviera in 1841, to Holland in 1843, France in 1844 and Venice in 1846, Frankfurt am Main remained the center of his life.

In 1866 Carl Morgenstern was appointed professor. At the age of over 81 he died January 10, 1893 in the city of his birth. His grave is in the Frankfurt main cemetery in Gewann F 864. The grave is an honorary grave .

The landscape and marine painter Friedrich Ernst Morgenstern (1853-1919) was his son.

plant

When it came to the theme of Italian landscapes, the young Carl Morgenstern consciously broke with the old-fashioned painting, which was passed down from the family, in the old Dutch tradition. This is to be regarded as daring, as his ancestors achieved local fame with it and among the conservative citizens of the old imperial city there were also plenty of buyers for art in the style of the 18th century. Even his later pictures, but especially those related to the Frankfurt theme, repeatedly show recourse. This reflects the balancing act between contemporary art and financial livelihood.

Morgenstern, like his Munich teacher Rottmann, can be assigned to romanticism , from which he did not break free later. The pictures from his early time, influenced by the trip to Italy, show predominantly landscapes that surprise with their special lighting effects. This established his nickname "Italianist" in the Kronberg painters' colony . Morgenstern was rarely to be found here; because of his friendship and a. with Jakob Fürchtegott Dielmann , Richard Fresenius and Josefine Schalk, some consider him to be part of this artists' association.

His studio pictures of Italian motifs, executed on the basis of sketches, made Morgenstern famous and gave him the reputation of an "Italianist". His striving for artistic innovation flagged early. By 1850 at the latest, he switched to mainly making repetitions of popular motifs for his clients.

In addition, he dealt with motifs in the area around the city as well as from the Taunus and along the Rhine .

One of Morgenstern's most important works is a picture, 162 cm wide, painted in 1850 for 1,000 guilders on behalf of the Senate , which shows a view of the city from the Main side. Today it is privately owned by the Bethmann family . The recipient of the gift at the time, Senator Eduard Souchay , who often worked for the city , liked the picture so much that he ordered a small copy (75 cm wide) for his brother from Morgenstern, which can be seen today in the Städel . The rest of his work is now in roughly equal parts in mainly Frankfurt museums and private collections. Measured by the number of pictures sold, he was the most important member of the family of painters.

literature

  • Inge Eichler: Carl Morgenstern. With special consideration of his creative phase from 1826–1846. Roether, Darmstadt 1976 ( Art in Hesse and the Middle Rhine. 15/16, ISSN  0452-8514 ).
  • Inge Eichler:  Morgenstern, Carl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 109 ( digitized version ).
  • Heinrich Weizsäcker among others: Art and artists in Frankfurt am Main in the nineteenth century. Published at the instigation of the Frankfurter Kunstverein. Volume 2: Albert Dessoff: Biographical Lexicon of Frankfurt Artists in the Nineteenth Century. Verlag von Joseph Baer et al., Frankfurt am Main 1909, p. 98.
  • Heinrich Weizsäcker:  Morgenstern, Carl . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 52, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1906, pp. 478-480.
  • Carl Morgenstern and the landscape painting of his time: [to the exhibition "Carl Morgenstern and the landscape painting of his time" in the Museum Giersch, Frankfurt a. M. from September 25, 2011 to January 29, 2012] / [Authors: Sophia Dietrich… Ed .: Museum Giersch, Frankfurt a. M.]. Petersberg, 2011. - ISBN 978-3-86568-676-3

Web links

Commons : Carl Morgenstern  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Morgenstern, Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German landscape painter
DATE OF BIRTH October 25, 1811
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH January 10, 1893
Place of death Frankfurt am Main