Friedrich Rottmann

Friedrich Rottmann (baptized December 19, 1768 in Handschuhsheim (now in Heidelberg ); † December 29, 1816 in Heidelberg) was a draftsman (university master of drawing in Heidelberg), engraver and etcher.

Life

Friedrich Rottmann was born in 1768 as the first child of the adjunct and later Handschuhsheimer orphanage conductor Franz JK Rottmann. Originally, Rottmann was to succeed his father as head of the state orphanage and manager of the property. When, with the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, the areas of the Palatinate on the right bank of the Rhine fell to Baden, the 35-year-old Rottmann had to find another way of earning a living due to the reorganization of church property. According to his inclinations, he tried to establish himself as an artist. In 1803 he went to Munich for training, although he cannot be proven at the academy. It is believed, however, that he visited Wilhelm von Kobell's studio , whom he already knew from his time in Mannheim. Presumably Rottmann, who up to now can be described as a pure self-taught person, received at least impulses and a certain technical instruction. It is also possible that the Karlsruhe court painter Carl Kuntz had a certain influence on Rottmann's artistic career. Back in 1805 Rottmann got a job as a drawing teacher at the Catholic grammar school in Heidelberg and in 1807 he was appointed university drawing master. In 1806 he joined the Heidelberg Freemason Lodge "Carl zur Gute Hope". His own son Carl as well as Carl Philipp Fohr and Ernst Fries were among his most important students, who received their first drawing lessons from him and whose talent and drawing technique he trained with work based on templates (especially by Carl Kuntz) and based on nature. Rottmann's artistic work in Heidelberg coincides more or less with the Napoleonic era. His first surviving works were made in the 1790s and his last large-format sheet dates from 1815. His depiction of Heidelberg from Neuenheimer Ufer from around 1800 is known, on which the old bridge in the foreground in front of the city backdrop with a bright rising sun you can see.

plant

The blood court staged by Ludwig Pfister about the wooden lip gang

Rottmann was not only active as a draftsman, but also as an engraver and eraser. He mastered the various printing techniques, whether it was an outline copper engraving intended for the coloring or an aquatint etching with a painterly effect. His oeuvre is committed to three subjects - the landscape, the historical event, the caricature. Rottmann's talent clearly lies in depicting landscapes. In the figurative area, his works sometimes seem a bit flat and awkward or overdrawn - a characteristic that is reminiscent of his caricatures and develops its special effect there or when he personalizes one or the other protagonist of the plot in his illustrations of contemporary events. In his mostly large-format views with their wide-ranging landscape spaces, he uses the figural staffage mostly cautiously and subordinate to their function according to the space. It can be assumed that he probably trained and optimized his drawing technique and compositional knowledge in the field of landscape drawing during his time in Munich in Kobell's studio. In addition, he probably orientated himself on the work of the Karlsruhe court painter Carl Kuntz, based on whose models he also preferred to teach his students. The ideal landscape compositions by Claude Lorrain and later in Heidelberg probably also the atmospheric, painterly views of George Augustus Wallis , whose works particularly influenced the young generation of Heidelberg painters, had a further role model effect for him, as for so many other artists of that time . In contrast to his models, however, Rottmann did not deal with oil painting and its coloristic possibilities, but perfected his technique as a watercolorist.

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• Artwork of the month July 2003