Franz Albert Venus

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Franz Albert Venus (born May 9, 1842 in Dresden , Kingdom of Saxony ; † June 27, 1871 there ) was a German painter , draftsman and etcher . He is one of the representatives of Dresden's late romanticism.

Life

Venus' parents died very early. The father was the court shop of Amalia Marie Friederika Augusta , Princess of Saxony. The orphan, baptized as a Protestant, was placed in a Catholic orphanage and later attended the Catholic free school in his hometown. After graduating from school at Easter 1856, he attended the Dresden Royal Academy of Fine Arts . From 1860 to 1866 he belonged to the studio of the painter Ludwig Richter , whose favorite student he is considered to be. In 1861 he made a study trip through northern Bohemia with his painter friends Viktor Paul Mohn (1842–1911), Carl Wilhelm Müller (1839–1904) and Adolf Thomas (1834–1887), which was followed by more in the next few years. In these years his style was clearly based on that of Richter.

The two trips to Italy in the second half of the 1860s are central to the artistic development of Venus. From the summer of 1866, Venus was able to spend some time in Rome and the surrounding area with the support of the Saxon princess . Among other things, there were some drawings that the artist inked or watercolored and in which his stylistic peculiarities were expressed for the first time. At the same time, Venus continues to move geographically and stylistically in the wake of his teacher Richter. His oil painting Thunderstorm in the Roman Campagna (Acqua acetosa) , created during this stay, was awarded a one-year academic scholarship in 1868. This enabled him, together with his friend Viktor Paul Mohn, to return to Rome . They traveled again to the places that their teacher Ludwig Richter painted in the 1820s. The drawings and oil paintings created there show motifs from the area around Rome and from the valleys of the Anio and the Tiber . The years after 1866 show an influence of the atmospheric oil study painting by Oswald Achenbach . While the small-scale watercolors and drawings still speak the language of early Romanticism, Venus develops an independent visual language in his oil studies from Italy, which subtly uses impressionistic effects in its use of light.

In 1870, after his return from Italy, Venus married Cäcilie Plaul and became the brother-in-law of the illustrator Wilhelm Claudius and his painter friend Carl Wilhelm Müller. With the latter and their mutual teacher Ludwig Richter, Venus made one last study trip through northern Bohemia. The following year Venus died of pulmonary consumption . The Albert-Venus-Weg as a branch of the Ludwig-Richter-Straße in the Dresden district of Loschwitz is named after him.

reception

In their “abundance of light and wide, painterly layout, they are reminiscent of Carl Blechen's Italian works from four decades earlier. In these pictures, Venus has left the legacy of Richter's conception of landscape completely behind. "

His Landscape in the Campagna on Via Flaminia (1869; watercolor over pencil on paper) is in the possession of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans-Joachim Neidhardt: The Painting of Romanticism in Dresden, Leipzig 1976, p. 319.
personal data
SURNAME Venus, Franz Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, draftsman and etcher
DATE OF BIRTH May 9, 1842
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden , Kingdom of Saxony
DATE OF DEATH June 27, 1871
Place of death Dresden