Leopold Bode

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Leopold Bode , photo by Joseph Albert

Christian Leopold Bode (born March 11, 1831 in Offenbach am Main ; † July 26, 1906 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German history painter and graphic artist .

Life

Grave of Leopold Bode

Bode was born as the eldest son of the history and landscape painter Georg Wilhelm Bode (1801–1881) and his wife Anna Maria. He was the eldest of three sons. He took his first drawing and painting lessons from his father. From 1848 he studied at the Städel Art Institute in neighboring Frankfurt with Jakob Becker and Johann David Passavant . In 1851 he switched to Eduard von Steinle , who made him familiar with painting by the Nazarenes until 1854 .

In 1851 he married Catharina Elisabeth (née Geiger, 1826–1856), and this marriage resulted in four children. After the death of his first wife in 1859, he married her sister Maria Margaretha, with whom he had three children. For many years he had a studio at the Städelsche Kunstinstitut, but he also had a studio in Isenburg Castle in Offenbach, which he only gave up in 1883 in order to finally move to Frankfurt-Sachsenhausen . He made numerous exterior and interior views of the castle. Bode carefully divided his life and work into the rival cities of Frankfurt and Offenbach, which led to a violent newspaper feud, as both cities claimed the master for themselves.

On his 70th birthday in 1901 he was awarded the title of professor by the art-loving Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig von Hessen . Bode was buried in an honorary grave in the old cemetery Offenbach , a street in Offenbach is named after him. In 2011 Bode's diary, which had been missing since World War II, reappeared and is now in the Offenbach city archive.

plant

The discovery of the Frankenfurt by Charlemagne , watercolor, 1888. Historical Museum Frankfurt

At first, Bode still painted in the religiously founded Nazarene style influenced by Steinle, before eventually becoming a romantic history, genre and portrait painter . He completed his first important oil painting in 1855 and chose a popular religious motif with the “Maria's visit to Elisabeth”. In 1897 he created an altarpiece for the new Protestant Paulskirche in Strasbourg . From 1861 to 1864 he was Steinle's assistant with fresco paintings in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne. He then worked with Steinle until 1866 on the painting of the choir niches in the Marienkirche in Aachen , which were not preserved due to a technical error.

He carried out other paintings in parallel with Steinle: in 1870 the chapel of Prince von Löwenstein in Kleinheubach and then the pictures with themes on legends about Charlemagne for Wilhelm Hermann Carl von Erlanger for a hall in his Nieder-Ingelheim villa. After completion of the Frankfurt Opera House in 1880 he was involved with the painting of the staircase and the lunette pictures in the extension of the foyer based on outline drawings by Steinle. Numerous portraits of prominent Offenbach personalities followed. In 1896 he painted the niches of the mourning hall in Frankfurt's southern cemetery.

Bode was on friendly terms with the artists of the Kronberg painters' colony .

In 2011 the Offenbach City Museum acquired a bundle of 45 graphic landscapes and historical motifs by the artist.

Works

  • Schiller's song of the bell . With photographs based on original drawings by Leopold Bode. Heinrich Keller, Frankfurt am Main 1872. (The folder contains 12 black and white photographs)
  • Shakespeare's winter fairy tale . With fourteen photographs based on original paintings by Leopold Bode. Heinrich Keller, Frankfurt am Main 1881

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christiane Wolf Di Cecca: The Frankfurt Old Opera. Building monograph of an opera house 1869–1880. Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1997, p. 49.
personal data
SURNAME Bode, Leopold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bode, Christian Leopold (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German landscape, portrait and genre painter
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1831
PLACE OF BIRTH Offenbach am Main
DATE OF DEATH July 26, 1906
Place of death Frankfurt am Main