Friedrich Bernhard Westphal

Friedrich Bernhard Westphal (born October 5, 1803 in Schleswig ; † December 24, 1844 ) was a German-Danish genre painter and illustrator .

Life

Friedrich Bernhard ("Fritz") Westphal attended the Art Academy in Copenhagen from 1821 to 1826 . His classmates included Carl Andreas August Goos , Hermann Wilhelm Bissen, Harro Harring and the Norwegian landscape painter Thomas Fearnley , with whom he went on a hike through Schleswig-Holstein in 1823. Westphal returned to his hometown Schleswig around 1827 and lithographed an allegorical series of the four seasons for JF Fritz in Flensburg .

In 1828 he visited Munich, and from May 1829 he stayed with Thomas Fearnley in Dresden, where both made friends with the Munich genre painter Joseph Petzl . Westphal and Petzl were kindred spirits who had independently started to document their everyday artistic life, their social life and their amorous adventures in diary-like drawings that reflect the world of Biedermeier . Driven out of Saxony by the turmoil of the July Revolution in 1830, Westphal and Petzl continued their activities in Schleswig. In the summer of 1832 Westphal went on a hike through Norway.

The dream of a trip to Italy led Westphal back to Copenhagen, where he competed in vain for the great gold medal of the art academy in 1837, 39 and 41, which was linked to a multi-year Rome scholarship. Thereupon Westphal gave up all high-flying artist plans and in 1841 took a position as "costume designer" at the Royal Theater in Copenhagen. After his untimely death, his sister Sophie tried to cherish the memory by self-published a booklet entitled Genre-Bilder in Bilder und Tönen by Fritz Westphal in 1852 , which, in addition to ten pen lithographs based on diary drawings, contains 32 poems by her brother.

Services

After his training as a history painter at the Copenhagen Art Academy, Westphal came under the influence of the Munich genre painter Joseph Petzl around 1830 and painted small-format genre motifs with anecdotal content in the taste of Biedermeier, which sometimes reflected events of the recent past, such as the freedom struggle of the Tyroleans and Greeks or the effects of the cholera epidemics. With increasing demands, the number of people portrayed increased. Since 1837 he has also created illustrations for the works of the Danish writers Christian Winther , Heinrich Hertz and Carsten Hauch . With depictions of Thorvaldsen's return to Copenhagen (1838), the funeral procession of King Frederick VI. (1840) and the anointing of King Christian VIII (1840), he also became a chronicler of contemporary Danish history.

Works

• Portrait of the master baker Westphal, around 1825. 22 × 18 cm. Schleswig-Holstein State Museums Foundation, Gottorf Castle, Schleswig.
• Sappho , around 1828. Schleswig-Holstein State Museums Foundation, Gottorf Castle , Schleswig.
• Self-portrait, around 1828. Städt. Schleswig Museum.
• The Seagull Price , 1836. 82 × 101.5 cm. City Schleswig Museum.
• David plays the harp before Saul , 1837. Copenhagen Academy of Fine Arts.
• King Waldemar and Klein Else , 1838. 82 × 97.5 cm. Statens Museum Copenhagen.
• Thorvaldsen's reception in Copenhagen in 1838 , around 1840. 71.5 × 100 cm. Thorvaldsen Museum Copenhagen.

literature

• Ernst Schlee: Life and goings-on in old Schleswig. Flensburg 1972.
• Ulrich Schulte-Wülwer : The painter Friedrich Bernhard Westphal. In: Nordelbingen - Contributions to the history of art and culture in Schleswig-Holstein, Vol. 61, 1992, pp. 65–110.
• Ulrich Schulte-Wülwer: Drawn diaries at the time of the Biedermeier period - Fritz Westphal and Joseph Petzl. Heide 1993, ISBN 3-8042-0607-7