Emil Rittmeyer

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Commerce and Industry in St. Gallen, oil on canvas, 1881. The picture shows the world of embroidery at the end of the 19th century. On the left of the column are the designers of the embroidery designs, next to them are factory chimneys and a locomotive. The telegraph maker in the middle refers to the oldest Swiss telegraph line from St. Gallen to Zurich (1852). On the right-hand side, the exporter is presenting the embroidery to representatives from all over the world.
Stubete on Alp Sol, 1865

Gottlieb Emil Rittmeyer (born May 18, 1820 in Lindau ; † April 21, 1904 in Freudenstadt , reformed , resident in St. Gallen since 1829 ) was a Swiss painter .

Life

Emil Rittmeyer was the son of the wealthy embroidery entrepreneur Jacob Bartholome Rittmeyer . In 1829 his family moved to St. Gallen and acquired citizenship there in 1831. From 1837 Rittmeyer studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in Munich with Wilhelm von Kaulbach and Peter von Cornelius , where he made the acquaintance of Gottfried Keller .

After his return to St. Gallen in 1843, Rittmeyer worked as a draftsman and later an illustrator in his father's silk embroidery. Since a stay in Antwerp in 1850, where he visited the then famous history painter and academy professor Gustaaf Wappers , he maintained contacts with Ernst Stückelberg , Theodor and Melchior Paul von Deschwanden as well as with Frank Buchser and Anselm Feuerbach . In 1851 he went to Paris for four years , where he studied the technique of Thomas Couture and, in addition to coloring studies, practiced on copies by painters such as Rembrandt , Titian and Rubens , and later Courbet . After returning to St. Gallen in 1855, he only traveled to Munich for the rest of his creative period in 1869, otherwise he often visited the Appenzell Oberland to portray the country and its people.

Emil Rittmeyer, who remained unmarried, moved to Liedolsheim in 1898 at the instigation of a relative . He died in Freudenstadt a month before he was 84 years old. He was an uncle of the architect Robert Rittmeyer and the great- uncle of Dora Fanny Rittmeyer .

Act

Rittmeyer preferred to portray the Appenzell folk life in his pictures . He carried out wall painting orders, drew for magazines and created illustrations, for example for Friedrich von Tschudi : Das Tierleben der Alpenwelt , Hermann Alexander von Berlepsch: Die Alpen in Natur- und Lebensbilder and participated at the Säntis Panorama , for which geologist Albert Heim was responsible. His pronounced sense for the atmospheric was particularly evident in his late work from 1870, in genre and history painting .

literature

  • Biographical Lexicon of Swiss Art, 2 vols., 1998, p. 873 f.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Rittmeyer, Emil
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rittmeyer, Gottlieb Emil (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss painter
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1820
PLACE OF BIRTH Lindau
DATE OF DEATH April 21, 1904
Place of death Freudenstadt