Frederick August Wenderoth
Frederick August Wenderoth (* 1819 in Kassel ; † 1884 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania, USA) was a German-born photographer , painter , lithographer , engraver who emigrated to America via Paris with Charles Christian Nahl and his younger half-brother Hugo Wilhelm Arthur Nahl became known in the art fields of portrait , animal , landscape and genre painting .
Life
August Wenderoth's first art teacher was his father, the painter Carl Wenderoth. August then studied at the art academy in Kassel , where he met Carl Christian Nahl , with whom he remained friends throughout his life. At the age of 18 he was already giving art lessons to the ladies-in-waiting (including the mother of Wenderoth) at the court of the Landgrave of Hessen-Kassel. In 1845 he left Germany because of the revolutionary unrest and settled in Paris. In 1846 he traveled to Algeria, probably together with the well-known French painter Horace Vernet . Back in Paris he met Nahl, who had also moved from Kassel to Paris with his family. Despite the uncertain political situation, the young artists visited the many art museums and in particular the Louvre and studied the works of the great masters. The political struggles that broke out in his new home also caused Wenderoth to leave Paris with the Nahls in May / June 1849 and emigrate to the United States . They initially stayed in Brooklyn, New York, where Wenderoth lived with the artist Louis Nagel. After successful exhibitions at the American Art Union , he was able to sell several paintings in 1849 and 1850 and thus finance further trips.
In 1851, Wenderoth and the Nahls were infected by the Californian gold fever. In March they traveled by ship via Havana (Cuba) to Chagres (Panama), crossed the fever-infested Isthmus of Panama on foot and by boat via the Rio Chagres and finally reached San Francisco in another ship voyage in May of that year . They turned directly to the gold fields on the Yuba River , bought a claim from a German and tried their luck. Although this did not occur to the extent expected, it brought the group into close contact with the milieu of the gold rush, which was to be significant for the later successful artistic path. So Wenderoth soon began to draw the miners and record them using the Daguerre technique.
Towards the end of the year he moved to Sacramento with Nahl to open a joint studio there. They produced paintings, woodcuts, and lithographs of mining scenes and portraits. When the great fire destroyed Sacramento in 1852, the Nahls moved their company to San Francisco.
Wenderoth made 1852-1853 a trip to the South Seas and Australia. In 1856 he married Laura Nahl, the half-sister of his friend and companion Charles Christian Nahl, and moved with her to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. However, his young wife died the following year with their first child at birth. Wenderoth is known to have had an activity in St. Louis that is not exactly dated at this time; In 1857 he was in Charleston, South Carolina and stayed in Philadelphia from 1858. Despite the blows of fate, he established himself as a successful daguerreotypist , painter and illustrator for the newspaper Harper's Weekly . He died of tuberculosis in Philadelphia in 1884.
Works
The large-format oil painting “Miners in the Sierras” from 1851 is perhaps the most beautiful example of the joint work with Charles Christian Nahl. Two lithographs by Nahl and Wenderoth from the gold prospecting milieu were “A Miner prospecting” and “Miner's cabin. Result of the Day ”, both from 1852.
literature
- Peter E. Palmquist, Thomas R. Kailbourn: Pioneer Photographers of the Far West . Excerpt from Google Books with a short biography on p. 590 (English).
- Janice Tolhurst Driesbach u. a .: Art of the Gold Rush , Oakland Museum, Crocker Art Museum, National Museum of American Art, University of California Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0-5202-1431-6 , excerpt from Google Books with short biography on p. 129 (English).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Short biography in Tolhurst, p. 129
- ↑ a b c Short biography in Palmquist, p. 590
- ↑ Short biography on askART
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wenderoth, Frederick August |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wenderoth, August; Wenderoth, Frederick Augustus; Wenderoth, Augustus; Wenderoth, F. August; Wenderoth, FA |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-American painter, photographer and lithographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1819 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | kassel |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1884 |
| Place of death | Philadelphia , Pennsylvania |