Frédérique Émilie Auguste O'Connell

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Frédérique Émilie Auguste O'Connell , photo around 1855

Frédérique Émilie Auguste O'Connell (born March 28, 1822 in Potsdam as Emilie Friederike Auguste Miethe , † October 21, 1885 in Paris ) was a German painter and etcher who lived and worked in Paris. She taught art and ran a literary and musical salon .

Life

Friederike Miethe was the oldest of nine children of the master peppercup maker and chocolate manufacturer Johann Friedrich Miethe (1791–1832) and his wife Emilie Miethe, b. Blumenthal. In 1840 the family settled in Berlin. When she was 15 years old (1838), her talent became known with the painting Raffael and La Fornarina . At the age of 18 (1840) Friederike took painting lessons from Wilhelm Herbig , August Remy and Carl Joseph Begas in Berlin , and so very early on, other successful figure compositions and oil paintings were created for her age. Already in the autumn of 1842 she was represented at the art exhibition in Berlin with a painting depicting a scene with King Ludwig XIII. , shows his mother Maria de 'Medici and Cardinal Richelieu in a state room. In 1844 she moved to Brussels to meet the Flemish masters and to study with the painter and draftsman Louis Gallait . She was able to quickly achieve initial successes with her history pictures. In 1848 and 1851 she was able to exhibit some of her works in the Brussels Salon and she was also represented in the Paris Salon in 1846 and 1852. In the exhibition of the Berlin Academy in 1850, she showed four oil paintings as well as etchings based on her own compositions and received positive reviews. The artist used her etching skills to spread her painting and, for example, rendered both the half-length of Maria Magdalena and her head in etchings. In the Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin both etchings, which had been celebrated by contemporary French critics as representations on a par with the Flemish, were on view in a special exhibition in 1881.

In 1844 she married the Irish nobleman Adolphe O'Connell and henceforth called herself Frédérique Émilie Auguste O'Connell . In 1853 she moved to Paris, where she took lessons from Édouard Bertin . The artist was widely praised after her successful presentation at the Paris World Exhibition in 1855 , especially for her portrayal of a female Faun ( A Faunesse ). 1856–1857 she made a trip to Rome. From 1859 she ran a literary and musical salon in her apartment near Montmartre , whose visitors included well-known personalities such as Alexandre Dumas the Younger and the actress Rachel . Starting in 1859, she offered art classes for girls in the same premises. She also dealt with the post-processing (coloring, retouching) of photos taken by the photographer Félix Nadar . Between 1862 and 1865 she was a member of the newly founded artists' association Société des Aquafortistes ' Society of Erasers' . Also during this period, the separation from her husband took place without the marriage being divorced.

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 led to isolation and declining interest in this artist, who had never acquired French citizenship - although she has passed herself off as French since she moved to Paris and presented her works in the French departments of international exhibitions.

She spent the last years of her life (from 1881) in a psychiatric nursing home in Neuilly-sur-Marne , where she died impoverished.

Create

Friederike Miethe enjoyed a very good school education, she was interested in many things, both musically and scientifically. She showed a special talent when drawing human figures, which she put together in various historicizing scenes. As a result, she achieved her first international success with history paintings.

Her talent was evident at a time when German women had access to training as artists only through private tuition. In her case, she also dealt with history and portrait painting as well as etchings, which at the time were traditionally the domain of male artists. She was very interested in social relations and in this way also got to know her clients, including Emma Siegmund and her future husband Georg Herwegh , the actress Rachel , the writers Théophile Gautier and Alexandre Dumas the Younger , the literary critic Arsène Houssaye and other relatives of the wealthy and educated middle class.

Your representations are described as powerful and expressive. Because she presents her human figures quite rounded, they are compared with Flemish masters such as Rubens , van Dyck and Rembrandt . Above all from her time in Paris, she received positive reviews that characterize her works as “male”. Among the paintings in the style of Van Dyck, a portrait of a young blonde woman in a black satin dress was particularly controversial, as it was initially mistakenly considered a self-portrait due to the attributed expressiveness. However, a black and white portrait photograph from 1855 revealed that the artist was not blonde and it is likely not a self-portrait.

The drawing of Rachel on the death bed from 1858 led to a legal dispute with the dead family because they believed that the dead woman was depicted too realistically.

A 17-year-old student, the Irish, who grew up in Paris and later became a portrait painter, Henriette Corkran (1841 / 42–1911), described Madame O'Connell in her book Celebrities and I : "The wonderfully dark eyes [were] full of fire and intelligence." Her being was surrounded by "an aura of energy and strength", "she had vitality and genius". “She concentrated her energy not only on painting, but also on solving difficult mathematical subjects, or reading from her beloved Balzac . She was also interested in human rights and women's freedom. "

In her later life "she immersed herself in religious-philosophical studies and based on the writings of Jakob Böhme ’s worked on her own philosophical work."

Works (selection)

Many of the works listed above and others are listed and described in the biography of Frédérique O'Connell by Philippe Burty .

literature

  • Tome Douzième: Revue des Deux Mondes . XXIe Année - Nouvelle Période . Paris October 1, 1851, Les Arts en Belgique, p. 363 (French, google.de [accessed January 6, 2020]).
  • Philippe Burty : Gazette des Beaux-Arts . Courrier Européen de L'ART et de la CURIOSITÉ . No. 6 . Paris March 15, 1860, L'Atelier de Madame O'Connell , p. 365–371 (French, uni-heidelberg.de [accessed January 8, 2020]).
  • Dr. Max Jordan: Catalog of the Royal National Gallery in Berlin . Second part: Biographical directory of the artists. 7th edition. Ernst Siegfried Mittler & Son, 1885.
  • Henriette Corkran: Celebrities and I . Hutchinson & Co., London 1902, p. 114–127 ( archive.org [accessed January 12, 2020]).
  • Clara Erskine Clement: Women in the Fine Arts . From the Seventh Century BC to the Twentieth Century AD Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston and New York 1905, p. 114 (English, wikisource.org ).
  • Hans Wolfgang Singer (Ed.): General Artist Lexicon . Life and works of the most famous visual artists. tape 3 . Literary establishment Rütten & Loening, Frankfurt am Main 1898, p. 327 ( digital-sammlungen.de [accessed January 6, 2020]).
  • O'Connell, Friederike Emilie Auguste . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 25 : Moehring – Olivié . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1931, p. 557 .
  • Dorothea Suffrian: family table of the Miethe family . for Inge Meisner. February 1937. , Excerpt from Helmut Seibt: Adolf Miethe (1862–1927): Memoirs (=  Acta historica astronomiae . No. 46 ). Harri Deutsch, Frankfurt am Main 2012.
  • Éliane Gubin, Marie – Sylvie Dupont – Bouchat: Dictionnaire des femmes belges . XIXe et XXe siècles . Éditiones Racine , Brussels 2006, ISBN 2-87386-434-6 , pp. 401 (French).
  • Gitta Ho: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples. Ed .: Andreas Beyer , Bénédicte Savoy, Wolf Tegethoff. tape 93 . De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-023259-2 , pp. 170-171 .
  • Birgit Verwiebe: Friederike Emilie Auguste O'Connell . In: Yvette Deseyve, Ralph Gleis (Ed.): Struggle for visibility. Artists of the Nationalgalerie before 1919 . Dietrich Reimer, 2019, ISBN 978-3-496-01634-2 , pp. 28-29,151-152 .

Web links

Commons : Frédérique O'Connell  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ In the baptismal register and on the family tree of the Miethe family, her name is noted as Emilie Friederike Auguste Miethe, the first name Friederike is highlighted in the family tree. Her first works are also signed Friederike Miethe. It is to be assumed that she later mentioned her first name in the first place. Since she only used the French form of her first name after her marriage, she became known as Frédérique Émilie Auguste O'Connell.
  2. ↑ other sources: 1842
  3. ↑ In some sources, Alfred or Auguste is also mentioned as the husband's first name.
  4. ↑ Your apartment / studio was on the third floor of a house on Place Vintimille, today's Place Adolphe-Max in the Saint-Georges quarter in the 9th arrondissement .
  5. ↑ The statements about the causes of their mental disorders in the sources are not uniform, some speak of dementia, but it could also have been depression. The designation maison de santé 'sanatorium' in the French sources is reproduced in the German sources with, for example, old people's home , insane asylum or closed asylum .
  6. ↑ According to information from the Poet and City Museum Liestal, the year 1838 is engraved in the frame of the painting: What relationship the then 16-year-old Frederike Miethe (probably still living in Potsdam) had with Emma Siegmund, who was about five years older (living in Berlin), could still be explored by studying the diaries and letters of Emma Siegmund.
  7. ^ Awarded a silver medal at the General Art Exhibition in Brussels in 1845; Also awarded a gold medal for history painting by Leopold I as part of her participation in the Brussels salon exhibitions.
  8. ↑ The portrait probably shows her husband A. O'Connell in the costume of a chevalier from the time of Louis XIII.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ According to the entry in the baptismal register of the Protestant parish of St. Nikolai Potsdam, year 1822, No. 65, page 477/478; Domstiftsarchiv Brandenburg Microfiche signature: MF 24648 (6-)
  2. ↑ Lt. JW Boike (Ed.): General apartment indicator . for Berlin, Charlottenburg and surroundings. tape 19 . Veit & Comp, Berlin 1840 ( zlb.de [accessed January 10, 2020]). in Albrechtstr. 20 in today's Mitte district.
  3. ^ Report on the art exhibition in Berlin in autumn 1842 . In: Morgenblatt for educated stands / art paper . No. 4 , January 12, 1843, p. 14 ( uni-heidelberg.de [accessed on January 8, 2020]).
  4. ↑ a b Saint Magdalena. In: SMB-digital - online database of collections. National Museums in Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage, accessed on January 13, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Corkran, Henriette L. In: Oxford Art Online - Bénézit Dictionary of Artists. Retrieved January 14, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Celebrities and I . In: The Spectator . January 31, 1903, p. 7 (English, spectator.co.uk [accessed January 12, 2020]).
  7. ↑ From her biography, in Max Jordan : Catalog of the Royal National Gallery in Berlin. Second part: Biographical directory of the artists . 7th edition. Ernst Siegfried Mittler & Son, 1885.
  8. ↑ a b Georg Herwegh - Poet's life. In: Georg Herwegh Edition. Retrieved January 8, 2020 .
  9. ^ Education and mediation - working material literature and history - Herwegh information sheets. In: Poet and City Museum Liestal . Retrieved January 8, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Georg Herwegh - Herwegh in Pictures. In: Georg Herwegh Edition. Retrieved January 7, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Pasimony . Collection des Lois, Décrets, Arrètés et Règlements Généraux. S. 724 (French, google.de [accessed on January 13, 2020]).
  12. ↑ Portrait of Two Sisters, Half-length, In White Dresses With Redribbons, Holding Flowers. In: niceartgallery.com. Retrieved January 12, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Portrait of Rachel. In: niceartgallery.com. Retrieved January 12, 2020 .
  14. ^ Portrait of Ernst Adolf Neo. In: Image index of art & architecture. Retrieved January 5, 2020 .
  15. ^ Portrait of Adolf (Aron) Neo. In: SMB-digital - online database of collections. National Museums in Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage, accessed on January 13, 2020 .
  16. ↑ Portrait de Rachel . In: mahJ - musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme. Retrieved January 6, 2020 (French).
  17. ↑ Portrait of a Young Girl with Red Ribbons. In: niceartgallery.com. Retrieved January 13, 2020 .
  18. ↑ Portrait of a Young Girl with Red Ribbons. In: www.invaluable.com. Retrieved January 13, 2020 .
  19. ↑ Portrait of a Young Girl Holding Roses. In: www.invaluable.com. Retrieved January 13, 2020 .
  20. ↑ Head of Maria Magdalena. In: SMB-digital - online database of collections. National Museums in Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage, accessed on January 13, 2020 .
  21. ^ Neil Philip: A female etcher of the Second Empire: Frederique Emilie O'Connell. In: Adventures in the Print Trade. September 1, 2011, accessed January 13, 2020 .
  22. ^ Un Chevalier Louis XIII, from Eaux-Fortes Modernes. Collections Database - Five Colleges and Historic Deerfield Museum Consortium, accessed January 13, 2020 .
  23. ^ Gazette des Beaux-Arts . Courrier Européen de L'ART et de la CURIOSITÉ . No. 6 . Paris July 1, 1866 (French, uni-heidelberg.de [accessed January 8, 2020]).
  24. ↑ Portrait of a woman. In: SMB-digital - online database of collections. National Museums in Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage, accessed on January 13, 2020 .
  25. ↑ Portrait de la Comtesse de Talleyrand – Perigord. In: niceartgallery.com. Retrieved January 13, 2020 .
  26. ↑ Portrait de la Comtesse de Talleyrand – Périgord, née Véra de Benardaky. In: artnet.com. Retrieved January 13, 2020 .
  27. ↑ Portrait d'Armand Turlot. In: Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique . Retrieved January 9, 2020 (French).
personal data
SURNAME O'Connell, Frédérique Émilie Auguste
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Miethe, Emilie Frederike Auguste (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and etcher
DATE OF BIRTH March 28, 1822
PLACE OF BIRTH Potsdam
DATE OF DEATH October 21, 1885
Place of death Paris