Christoph Friedrich Dörr

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Christoph Friedrich Dörr (born October 14, 1782 in Tübingen ; † January 29, 1841 there ) was a Württemberg painter and drawing teacher at the University of Tübingen. He was the son of the portraitist Jakob Friedrich Dörr and a cousin of the landscape painter Carl (Friedrich) Dörr .

"The girl from Schwärzloch " - portrait of an unknown woman against the background of the Ammertal and Schwärzloch

Life

Single sheet from the registry of friendship sheets from Tübingen and Stuttgart with the entry by Christoph Friedrich Dörr (1798)
Franz Kidmeyer (watercolor, undated probably last years of the 18th century)
Councilor Christian von Kieser (oil on canvas, small format, undated, around 1810)
Frau von Kieser (oil on canvas, small format, undated, around 1810)
Frau Forstrat Gräter (oil on canvas, undated, after 1810)
Prof. Robert Mohl (steel engraving, undated, 1830s)

youth

Christoph Friedrich Dörr was born as the son of the Tübingen painter Jakob Friedrich Dörr in Haus Holzmarkt 5. His father died when Christoph was only 6 years old and the boy couldn't learn much from him. But his further career was determined by it; in contrast to his cousin, he learned to paint at an early age and was already doing commissioned portraits at the age of fifteen. Dörr's first teacher was the French émigré Lionné, then Johann Christian Partzschefeldt, a friend of his father, took over his training. At the age of about 13, Dörr moved to Nuremberg to continue his training with the art dealer and academy director Christoph Johann Sigmund Zwinger . In 1799 Dörr went to Stuttgart and became a student of Philipp Friedrich Hetsch , who held him in high regard. Training at Hetsch included a study visit to Dresden , which Dörr undertook in 1801. There, like many other art students, he copied the works of the great masters. In 1802 he returned to Tübingen, where he received numerous portrait commissions. After he had recommended himself to Elector Friedrich through a painting “on a theme of classical antiquity” , he received a travel grant from him.

Italy trip

In the years 1804–1806 Dörr stayed in Italy, mainly in Rome , but also in Naples , to study the masters of the Renaissance on site and to perfect his art of painting. In Rome, Dörr kept in close contact with the German artists living there, he joined Christian Gottlieb Schick as a student and friend . In 1805 he traveled to Italy with Joseph Anton Koch , whom he already knew from Stuttgart. During this time Dörr tried history painting. Schick initially said Dörr - not least because of these attempts - "the slightest bit of the spirit of a painter". Although Dörr was Schicks' only student, he was only able to stay under the spell of his great teacher for a short time.

Portraitist and university drawing teacher in Tübingen

After Dörr returned to Tübingen, he initially worked as a freelance portrait painter, but he had to supplement his livelihood by illustrating paperbacks and almanacs and taking private drawing lessons. During this time he developed a close friendship with Ludwig Uhland , whose sister Luise he had been giving drawing lessons since 1806. To get some social support, he applied for the position of a university drawing teacher. At the end of 1808 Dörr began as the "first drawing teacher" to give lessons in drawing and painting at the university, for which he received permission from Duke Friedrich on January 4, 1809. With this "attitude" he received neither a salary nor the title of university drawing teacher. He was allowed to designate himself as such from the winter semester 1812/13, when this position was created and drawing lessons were first announced in the course catalog. He was accepted into the university register in 1813. He still had to earn his income exclusively through painting assignments and private lessons. Dörr headed the drawing institute, which belonged to Johann Christian Partzschefeldt as the "second drawing teacher". Against the clear resistance of the senior studies directorate to the expansion of the position of the drawing teacher, the drawing institute was renamed the drawing institute in 1816, and only then did Dörr receive an annual salary of 150 fl . The offer of this institution was aimed particularly at students of the natural sciences: they should learn to draw objects of their work and research themselves. Dörr made complicated drawings "mainly of an anatomical nature" himself. Over time, the artistic aspect of drawing and painting came to the fore in the class. After Partzschefeldt's death in 1820, Dörr worked with his successor Ludwig August Helvig .

Dörr married in 1812, but his wife died in 1820. In 1830 Dörr bought the house at Neckarhalde 35, and in 1831 he married for the second time. Dörr led a very sociable life in Tübingen, and went on various trips, including to Munich and Heidelberg , but also to Paris and Switzerland. In addition to working at the drawing institute, he continued to portray, his portraits were very popular and valued in Tübingen because they were very similar to those portrayed. In the 1820s and early 1830s, a change in his perception of images - a move away from classicism and closer to Biedermeier - can be observed. The increasing number of students led to an increased burden. This gave him less time for portraits, which made him livelihood, and in 1830 he was forced to ask for a raise. In 1831 his annual salary was increased to 200 fl. In the same year he received an offer to take over the position of gallery inspector in Stuttgart. He refused because he did not want to leave “his beloved Tübingen”. Despite the increase in salary, his income only enabled him to live a modest life, so that his friend from Tübingen, Immanuel Bossert, who became the foster father of his children after Dörr's death, soon - in March 1841 - addressed the king on behalf of the widow to ask for an annual pension for her and the four children.

Characteristics of the work and criticism

House Neckarhalde 35 in 1913.

In Dörr's artistic work, natural, simple portraits with only a few attributes dominate. At the beginning of his career in particular, he painted half-length figures and chest portraits. The first full-figure pictures emerged after 1810. Dörr's oeuvre is determined by a mostly smooth style of painting, by a faithful, albeit two-dimensional representation of the figures and the surroundings, while the color palette often consists of warm, harmonizing earth tones with only a few color accents.

Dörr's earliest works are already characterized by a reliable and fine characterization of the people portrayed and the confident handling of the modeling of the faces through light and shadow. Some of Dörr's earlier pictures (up to 1805, e.g. the portraits of the Helferichs) are still soft and indecisive, although it is clearly visible that he is concerned with both "great design as a whole" and details. Large forms are, however, powerless, the composition of the picture unfree and fearful, the faces somewhat empty and adapted to a soft ideal type. Other portraits (e.g. the Bosserts and von Flatt) in their natural, clear colors radiate unadorned factual freshness and are on a level with the work of his teacher Hetsch. It is obvious that Hetsch's imbalance and insecurity influenced the young Dörr: some of his pictures (e.g. the portraits of the Autenrieths and that of Hartmann) are petty-bourgeois-minded and technically unskilled. During this time too, Dörr was able to create pictures that are characterized by freer, larger design (L. Landauer) or powerful design and great sharpness of the physiognomy (JF Scheid).

Influenced by the Italian Renaissance painting, Dörr began to paint portraits with the landscape in the background after his trip to Italy. The expanse of the landscape with the deep horizon in somewhat pale tones (“Das Mädchen von Schwärzloch”, Karoline Steudel) create a calming, clear background. “In addition to lovely details, there are also some things that are unfree and unfeeling. But in the humanly free and relaxed, unconstrained harmony of the young girl figure with the landscape [...] the spirit of the greater master is reflected. ”These portraits are the high point of his work.

Quite soon, as early as 1812, this freshness began to disappear from Dörr's pictures. So are z. B. the portraits of the Gmelins are still monumental and their overall attitude clear and free, but the mental drawing is more indifferent despite the noble features. Many pictures from this period still show simple, strong forms and strong life (MK Baur, Bengels, H. Ch. Fleischmann), but the details of the accessories have become important in a Biedermeier sense. In the later pictures (Geschwister Knapp) the usual artifacts become a formula and "show a terrifying inability to master the monumental, sculptural form". At the same time, however, something new is being announced: in the life-distant, internally no longer fulfilled forms of classical art, “externally in the old German costume and clothes of the young man, in the cozy standing together of the siblings, in the vague merging of the hands, in the dreamily blurred Background landscape ”: Dörr suspected this new thing - romanticism - but was no longer able to bring it fully to fruition. Since 1812 Dörr has also been painting small pictures, with small figures in peaceful, gentle nature, like on an excursion or a walk. A petty-bourgeois taste with a slightly sentimental sentimentality penetrates. "Little pictures, like that of the young Friedrich Silcher and his bride Luise Enslin, are examples of the Biedermeier modesty even of Swabian romanticism in a seriously restrained festive mood." "Dörr can never penetrate the feeling of the oneness of man and nature in romantic portrait art."

The numerous, representative pictures of Tübingen professors were evidently created without any inner sympathy from Dörr. They are “skilfully laid out and neatly executed, but flat in their characteristics and formulaic in their design. Only outward appearances are reminiscent of the earlier pictures. ”Very occasionally (tellingly, especially in the small pictures) the feeling for real monumentality breaks through again, for example in the finely but not meticulously painted portraits of the Palmers.

Dörr's artistic powers were very soon used up, the decline from the intellectual elasticity of the art of idealism to the petty-bourgeois, emotional and soft went on too quickly. The romantic world of ideas close to him posed tasks that he could no longer cope with. However, his strong philosophical sense and his training in the spirit of classical art stood in the way of the dignified impartiality and truthfulness of Biedermeier painting. Dörr was aware that his artistic strength was decreasing and he suffered as a result. It is possible that Dörr's decline in strength was partly due to the fact that he was largely isolated in Tübingen and therefore had little exchange with other artists.

Well-known works (selection)

  • Franz Kidmeyer (watercolor, small format; Stuttgart City Archives )
  • Mrs. Kidmeyer [wife of Franz Kidmeyer] (watercolor, small format; Stuttgart City Archives)
  • 1797 Karl Christian Helferich [landscape assessor and Kirchheim monastery administrator]
  • 1797 Henriette Auguste Helferich [daughter of Karl Christian Helferich]
  • 1800–1805 Portrait of a red-haired child with a flower thread slung around her neck (oil on canvas, 39 × 32 cm; Friedrichshafen Castle )
  • around 1800 Johann Immanuel Bossert [Tübingen trader and mayor]
  • around 1800 Johanna Rosina Bossert b. Fischer [wife of Johann Immanuel Bossert]
  • around 1800 theology professor Johann Friedrich Flatt
  • 1802 Gottfried Knapp with his son Albert [ Alpirsbacher monastery administrator]
  • 1802 Henriette Knapp b. Finckh with sons Paul and Albert [Gottfried Knapp's wife]
  • 1802 Karl Friedrich Hartmann [song poet] (small format; Schiller National Museum , Marbach )
  • Autumn 1802 Ferdinand Autenrieth [Chancellor of the University of Tübingen] (oil on canvas, 63 × 52 cm)
  • August 1803 Friedericke Autenrieth b. Böck [wife of Ferdinand Autenrieth] (oil on canvas, 63 × 52 cm)
  • around 1805 Rebekka and Eliezer at the well
  • 1806 Lebrecht Landauer [Mayor of Heilbronn ]
  • 1806 Johann Friedrich Scheid [Mayor of Winnenden ]
  • Councilor Christian von Kieser (oil on canvas, small format; Kunsthaus Bühler, Stuttgart)
  • Mrs. von Kieser [wife of Christian von Kieser] (oil on canvas, small format; Kunsthaus Bühler, Stuttgart)
  • 1807-10 Portrait of a stranger, also called: The Girl from Schwärzloch (oil on canvas, 52.5 × 44 cm; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart )
  • 1808 Karoline Steudel [young woman from Tübingen] (oil on canvas, 52 × 46 cm)
  • 1810 Ludwig Uhland (oil on canvas; German Literature Archive Marbach )
  • Mrs. Forstrat Gräter (oil on canvas; Stuttgart City Archives)
  • 1812 Dr. Eduard Gmelin [Senior Justice Procurator] (oil on canvas, 70 × 61 cm)
  • around 1812 Wilhelmine Gmelin born. Fleischmann [wife of Eduard Gmelin] (oil on canvas, 70 × 62 cm)
  • Henrike Christine Fleischmann (1763–1817) (oil on canvas)
  • Ottilie Autenrieth
  • 1815 Professor Ernst Gottlieb Bengel
  • 1815 Johanna Elisabeth Bengel b. Harttmann [wife of Ernst Gottlieb Bengel]
  • after 1815 Friedrich Silcher and Luise Enslin (oil on sheet copper, cabinet, 32.5 × 26.2 cm)
  • 1817 Maria Katharina Baur b. Burckhardt [widow of the former mayor of Tübingen Johann Jacob Baur ]
  • Spring 1820 Wilhelmine Miklota Freiin von Tessin (oil on sheet metal, 39 × 30 cm)
  • around 1820 Jurist Clossius from Dorpat [Hohentübingen Castle in the background] (oil on canvas, 63 × 52 cm)
  • 1821 Eduard and Maria Knapp [theology student and his sister]
  • 1830s Prof. Robert Mohl (steel engraving, LE Fues publishing house; Stuttgart city archive)
  • 1830s Moritz Mohl
  • 1830s Hugo Mohl
  • Dr. FC von Baur [professor of theology] (steel engraving, LE Fues publishing house; Stuttgart city archive)
  • around 1836 Christian David Friedrich Palmer [professor of theology]
  • around 1836 Wilhelmine Palmer b. Bossert [daughter of Immanuel Bossert and wife of Christian David Friedrich Palmer ] (oil on sheet copper, cabinet, 27 × 22 cm)

Notes and individual references

  1. ^ Franziska Boll: Christoph Friedrich Dörr , p. 67
  2. ↑ Werner Fleischhauer: Das Bildnis ... , p. 87
  3. ↑ Christina Melk: Tübingen Views and Painters in the 19th Century , p. 32
  4. ↑ Silke Schöttle: "Mahler Glocker ..." , p. 20
  5. ↑ Franziska Boll, p. 70
  6. ↑ The house stood immediately north of the Hirschauer Steg (which later replaced the Alleenbrücke ) and fell victim to the transport policy of the time in the 1960s.
  7. ↑ Franziska Boll, p. 68, after Hans-Otto Schaal
  8. ↑ a b Franziska Boll, p. 69
  9. ↑ Franziska Boll, p. 70, with reference to the letter of March 8, 1841 in the Tübingen University Archives, files 117/815.
  10. ↑ a b Franziska Boll, p. 68
  11. ↑ Werner Fleischhauer: Das Bildnis ... , pp. 87-88
  12. ↑ Werner Fleischhauer: Das Bildnis ... , p. 88
  13. ↑ Werner Fleischhauer: Das Bildnis ... , p. 168
  14. ↑ Werner Fleischhauer: Das Bildnis… , pp. 168–169
  15. ↑ Werner Fleischhauer: Das Bildnis… , pp. 169–170
  16. ↑ Werner Fleischhauer: Das Bildnis ... , p. 171

bibliography

swell

  • Franziska Boll: Christoph Friedrich Dörr . In: Artists for Students. Pictures of the university drawing teachers 1780–2012 , ed. by Evamarie Blattner, Wiebke Ratzeburg, Ernst Seidl, Stadtmuseum Tübingen 2012 (= Tübingen Catalogs, No. 94), ISBN 978-3-941818-13-2 , pp. 66–71
  • Silke Schöttle: "Mahler Glocker informs in the Zaichnen". Traces of first drawing lessons in the 18th century . In: Artists for Students. Pictures of the university drawing teachers 1780–2012 , ed. by Evamarie Blattner, Wiebke Ratzeburg, Ernst Seidl, Stadtmuseum Tübingen 2012 (= Tübingen Catalogs No. 94), ISBN 978-3-941818-13-2
  • Werner Fleischhauer : The portrait in Württemberg 1760-1860. History, artists and culture , Metzler: Stuttgart 1939

Further literature

  • Elke Schulze: Nulla dies sine linea: University drawing lessons, a problem-historical study. , Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004. S. 67 u. 91
  • Stefanie Mnich: Dörr (Doerr), Christoph Friedrich . In: Günther Meißner (Hrsg.): General artist lexicon. The visual artists of all times and peoples , vol. 28, Munich a. Leipzig 2001, p. 253
  • Stefanie Mnich: The painter Christoph Friedrich Dörr: a Biedermeier classicist? , Master's thesis, University of Tübingen 1998
  • Helmut Hornbogen: Painter Dörr and civil sufficiency. Local reminiscences of the large exhibition in the Stuttgart State Gallery , In: "Schwäbisches Tagblatt", August 2, 1993, p. 21
  • Otto Fischer : Swabian painting of the nineteenth century , German publishing house: Stuttgart, Berlin a. Leipzig 1925, pp. 21-22
  • Friedrich Noack : Dörr, Friedrich . In: Ullrich Thieme (Ed.): General Lexicon of Fine Arts from Antiquity to the Present , Vol. 9, Leipzig 1913, p. 372
  • Hans Otto Schaal: The Tübingen university painter Christoph Friedrich Dörr (1782–1841) . In: “Swabian Kronik. Sunday supplement ”, September 21, 1912, 2nd sheet.

Web links

Commons : Christoph Friedrich Dörr  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Dörr, Christoph Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Wuerttemberg painter and university drawing teacher
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1782
PLACE OF BIRTH Tübingen
DATE OF DEATH January 29, 1841
Place of death Tübingen