Franz Heinrich Commans

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Franz Heinrich Commans even Heinrich Commans (* 2. July 1837 in Cologne , † 18 December 1919 in Dusseldorf ), was a German historical painter , illustrator , draftsman and graphic artist and designer of stained glass windows , belonging to the group Spätnazarener the Düsseldorf school is counted .

life and work

Commans, son of the Cologne “art and trade gardener” Peter Joseph Commans (1782–1842) and his wife Anna Margaretha, moved to Düsseldorf in 1853 after training in a Cologne lithographic workshop. In 1856 he began studying painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy , during which he specialized in religious subjects. There he first attended the elementary class of Josef Wintergerst and Andreas Müller . From the third quarter of 1856 he went to Christian Köhler in the antique hall and in the subsequent painting class. In 1857/1858 he stayed in Karl Müller's painting class , and spent the school years 1858/1859 and 1859/1860 in Karl Ferdinand Sohn's painting class . He received art history lessons from Andreas Müller in the school years 1855/1856 and 1860/1861. Rudolf Wiegmann instructed him in his construction class from 1856 to 1858, Heinrich Mücke instructed him in anatomy and proportion theory. In 1860/1861 he was a master student of Eduard Bendemann . Commans became a member of the Düsseldorf Artists Association for mutual support and assistance as well as the Malkasten Artists Association . In 1864 he married Mathilde Sophia Hardung (* around 1845). The couple had seven children.

Commans carried out his first artistic work under Franz Ittenbach and Ernst Deger . Deger involved him as an assistant in the painting in the chapel of Stolzenfels Castle until 1860 . Comman's first independent work was cardboard boxes for glass windows for Count Stolberg-Wernigerode's castle chapel at Tervuren Castle near Brussels. On the recommendation of Peter Cornelius , he was commissioned in 1865 to design a stained glass window depicting Christ Carrying the Cross for St. Nikolai in Hamburg, which was carried out by the Clayton & Bell glass painting company from London. He created further designs for the stained glass windows of the Gertrudiskirche in Essen and the portal window of the cathedral of Xanten . From 1869 to 1873 he painted the living rooms and the chapel of Falkenberg Castle in Silesia. In the fire of the Düsseldorf castle in 1872, Commans lost his studio and all of the studies it housed. Together with Joseph Kehren , Commans received an order from the Prussian Ministry of Culture in 1874 to create a monumental mural frieze in the auditorium of the teachers' college in Moers. Under the title Main Moments of World History , Commans took over the depiction of the life of Jesus up to the crucifixion as well as ornamental parts from the perspective of a devout Catholic . The Protestant Peter Janssen the Elder presented the period from the Reformation to the German imperial proclamation in Versailles in 1878. For the Carthusian monastery in Unterrath near Düsseldorf, he created a mural of a Madonna with angels playing music as a grisaille in the vestiarium of the church . Due to his thorough academic training, Comanns composed his pictures on axis, circle and triangle systems, created them with precise drawings and executed them with fine painting and pronounced detail realism.

His oil paintings include the following works:

He also created a large number of small-format devotional pictures, also for the Association for the Dissemination of Religious Images , around 1887 the motif Tondo Maria with the Child Jesus and the Boy John . Due to the Kulturkampf of the 1870s and 1880s, the demand for Catholic easel and wall paintings in the German Empire decreased. This prompted him to switch to the art of illustration, in which he quickly achieved success and received commissions from Switzerland and the United States, among others. Commans contributed to the following publications through his templates:

  • Thomas von Kempen : Four books about the imitation of Christ , woodcuts and book decorations after drawings by Commans, R. Brend'amour & Co., Düsseldorf 1887
  • Seraphic honor wreath. Saints and Blessed from the three orders of St. Francis of Assisi , twelve phototypes after pen drawings by Commans, Mönchengladbach 1899
  • Gloria Franciscana: 10 pictures with representations of saints from the three orders of St. Francis of Assisi , ten phototypes after pen drawings by Commans, Mönchengladbach, no year
  • Düsseldorfer Bilderbibel , illustrations and single pictures, Düsseldorf 1907–1911
  • Picture Bible for the Archdiocese of Cologne , from 1914
  • Various biblical representations in larger format for religious object lessons in the Archdiocese of Cologne, from 1914

Commans received high recognition for his work early on. Queen Elisabeth of Prussia awarded him the Great Golden Medal and handwriting. Art historians perceived him as "the last Nazarene". His pictures were among others by Ludwig Heitland , Joseph Kohlschein the Elder. Ä. and Heinrich Nüsser and gained great popularity as a result.

literature

  • Commans, Franz Heinrich . In: Friedrich von Boetticher : painter works of the nineteenth century. Contribution to art history . Volume 1, Dresden 1898, p. 175
  • General Artist Lexicon , Volume XX (1998), p. 454
  • Christoph Fiebiger: The studies of the Nazarene Franz Heinrich Commans (1837-1919). Research on the artist and research on painting technique taking into account the PIXE / PIGE / RBS analysis method . Diploma thesis, Cologne University of Applied Sciences, Cologne 2000

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heinz-Peter Mielke: God for honor. To the picture program of the art publisher B. Kühlen in Mönchengladbach . In: Dieter Harmening, Erich Wimmer (ed.): Folk culture - history - religion . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1992, ISBN 3-88479-709-3 , p. 475 ff., P. 492 ( Google Books )
personal data
SURNAME Commans, Franz Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Commans, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German history painter, illustrator, draftsman and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH July 2, 1837
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH December 18, 1919
Place of death Dusseldorf