Elisabeth Kelly

Elisabeth Kelly (illustration from the St. Gallen Yearbook 1942)

Watercolor by Johannes Schiess

Hornbach estuary into Lake Constance , oil painting (1876)

Goat pasture , oil painting

Pencil study

Tree study, pencil drawing

Study brook, pencil drawing

At the brook in Mettendorf , India ink drawing

View over the Guggisbleiche towards St. Leonhard, St. Gallen , watercolor

Elisabeth Kelly (born April 10, 1825 in St. Gallen ; † May 1, 1890 there ; actually: Anna Elisabeth, known as Nette ) was the first known St. Gallen painter . She mainly painted in oils , but was also a skilled draftsman and watercolorist . Are known etchings , which she created for her own oil paintings.

Life

The artist was born in St. Gallen, where she grew up and lived. She spent the summer months with her family in the park in Mettendorf, a district of Gossau , where her father ran a Turkish red dyeing and printing company. Many early watercolors and drawings were also created here. In later years she was often the guest of her sister Marie Billwiller-Kelly in the Waldegg house in Tübach .

Together with her sisters Marie and Henriette, she received a middle-class education. The father hired a tutor from the canton of Neuchâtel to ensure perfect learning of the French language . The conservative, royalist lady was called Laure Monnet. There is a portrait of her by Jean Mieg, 1791–1862, a painter from Mühlhausen. They received their first lessons in drawing and watercolor from Karl Friedrich Bartholome Fehr and later from the watercolorist Johannes Schiess von Herisau (1799–1844). Another teacher was Johann Wilhelm Schirmer . She painted repeatedly with Emil Rittmeyer, Gottlieb Bion and Johann Gottfried Steffan. For a while she also worked under the supervision of Rudolf Koller .

From 1854 she regularly took part in the annual art exhibitions of the St. Gallen Art Association . She was an honorary member of the St. Gallischer Kunstverein. But it was only because at that time the association could not accept women according to its statutes.

Her younger sister, Judith Henriette Kelly (1826–1883), often accompanied Elisabeth during her training at home and abroad. The two sisters also went on several study trips together. Judith Henriette was less successful. There are hardly any works of her that can be assigned.

plant

Elisabeth Kelly painted landscapes from her surroundings. Many oil paintings from the shores of Lake Constance , particularly the Untersee near Ermatingen, have been preserved . Others show Lake Walen and the Lake Geneva landscape at Clarens VD . Often individuals or a small group of people are used as a kind of staffage in the landscape.

Early pictures are restrained, painted rather dark, later works are flooded with more light.

The Art Museum St. Gallen and the Historical Museum St. Gallen own a number of works by the artist. Many of the pictures are unsigned and dated. The art historian Dora Fanny Rittmeyer therefore suspects that many works were subsequently assigned to other artists. The artist often added her initials EK in red to smaller oil paintings .

Thanks to Rittmeyer's research, however, we have a good, if not complete, catalog raisonné .

literature

• Daniel Studer: Kelly, Anna Elisabeth. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Dora Fanny Rittmeyer: landscape painter Anna Elisabeth Kelly. In: St. Galler Jahrbuch 1942. Biography with catalog raisonné , H. Tschudy & Co., St.Gallen 1942 and addendum 1947.
• Roland Wäspe (Ed.): Catalog of the graphic collection: Views from Fürstenland and Toggenburg St. Gallen 1982, pp. 63–64.
• Rudolf Hanhart (Ed.): Art Museum St. Gallen, catalog of the collection. St. Gallen 1987, pp. 123-125.
• Marina Widmer (Ed.): Blossom white to raven black - St. Gallen women - 200 portraits. Limmat, Zurich 2003, pp. 235–236.

Web links

• Daniel Studer: Kelly, Anna Elisabeth. In: Sikart

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Office for Culture of the Canton of St. Gallen (Ed.): Sankt-Galler Geschichte. St.Gallen 2003, ISBN 3-908048-43-5 , Volume 5, p. 97.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Gottfried Kinkel: artist album. Basel 1872.
3. ↑ Johannes Huber: Community of Tübach. Goldach 2000, ISBN 3-9520872-2 , pp. 137 and 268-273.
4. ↑ Portrait of Laure Monnet.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ Life picture of Mrs. Marie Billwiller-Kelly from St. Gallen, 1823-1902. Without further information, approx. 1902, p. 16 u. 23f.
6. ^ August Eugster: The municipality of Herisau in the canton of Appenzell A.Rh. Herisau 1870, p. 395.
7. ↑ Life picture of Mrs. Marie Billwiller-Kelly from St. Gallen, 1823-1902. Without further information, approx. 1902, p. 34f.
8. ^ Carl Brun : Swiss artist lexicon . Frauenfeld 1905, Volume 2, p. 258.
9. ↑ B. von Tscharner: The fine arts in Switzerland in 1883. Bern 1884, p. 55.
10. ^ Dora Fanny Rittmeyer: Landscape painter Anna Elisabeth Kelly. In: St. Galler Jahrbuch 1942. Biography with catalog raisonné , H. Tschudy & Co., St. Gallen 1942 and addendum 1947. (These studies form the basis of many later publications. This biography is often copied or summarized.)