Fritz Werner (artist)

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Fritz Werner (born December 3, 1827 in Berlin ; † April 16, 1908 there ) was a German genre, landscape and architectural painter as well as engraver and etcher.

Life

Werner's father was a civil servant at the Berlin building academy, his mother died of cholera in 1849, he had sixteen siblings. He attended the Werdersche Gymnasium, but left school in secondary school, and at the age of 19 went to the academy in his hometown in 1846 . Werner studied from 1846 to 1849 at the Royal Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. There he was a student of Eduard Daege and in Adolph Menzel's studio . He then settled in Berlin as a freelance artist. He was successful as a drawing teacher and taught in the family of Prince Radziwill and the Counts of Brandenburg. One of his best-known works from this period - along with many portraits - was the copperplate round table of King Friedrich II in Sanssouci after the oil painting by Adolph Menzel, with whom he had been friends since his youth.

From 1853 to 1855 Werner went to Paris for the first time to copy the old masters in the museums there. But Werner was soon influenced by painters such as François Boucher , Jean-Honoré Fragonard , Jean Etienne Liotard and Antoine Watteau more than by antiquity . In Paris, Werner became a student in Léon Bonnat's studio , who later recommended him to Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier . In Werner's own judgment, the latter had the decisive artistic influence on him. Since then he has been creating genre pictures from the Rococo period and modern life with the same loving implementation of animate and inanimate nature.

In 1855 Werner returned to Germany and settled in Düsseldorf as a copper engraver . His first works in Düsseldorf were drawings for a (not executed) engraving of the painting The Flute Concerto of Frederick the Great in Sanssouci by Adolph von Menzel .

In 1861 Werner went to Königsberg with Menzel to help him with studies for the large "coronation picture". In 1863 Werner gave up engraving and devoted himself only to oil painting ; in his pictures he thematized almost exclusively the epoch of Frederick the Great . Werner's first pictures were a girl at a desk and the hunter repairing his shotgun , which were quickly sold. Another picture, The Grenadier in the antechamber of Rheinsberg , was made in 1864 and was paid extremely generously by the King. This gave Werner the means for a study trip to Amsterdam and Paris in 1867 . Werner stayed in Paris permanently between 1867 and 1869. During this time he also completed his studies in Léon Bonnat's studio . In 1870 he had to leave France temporarily because of the Franco-Prussian War . Werner moved to Berlin, where he became a member of the Berlin Art Academy in 1880.

Other paintings that attracted greater attention were the return of Prince Wilhelm from the parade and the unveiling of the monument to Queen Luise in Berlin , on which Werner portrayed many well-known contemporaries. The picture is now in the Berlin National Gallery .

The painter Fritz Werner died on April 16, 1908 in Berlin at the age of 80.

Works (selection)

  • The flag boy from the Schwerin regiment
  • Grenadier Friedrichs the Elder Size in Sanssouci joking with nanny
  • Friedrich II in his library in Sanssouci
  • The taxidermist
  • The naturalist
  • The conchylia collector in the natural history cabinet
  • Lessing's house in Wolfenbüttel
  • City gate in Tangermünde
  • Street in Amsterdam
  • From the Dresden gallery
  • Prince Wilhelm returns from the parade
  • Unveiling of the monument to Queen Luise in Berlin (National Gallery)
  • Bismarck leaves the Reichstag on February 6, 1888 (1892)

literature

  • Johannes Trojan : Fritz Werner . (On his 70th birthday) In: National-Zeitung , December 3, 1897, morning edition, pp. 1–3
  • Exhibition of works by the full members of the Academy Prof. Fritz Werner, Prof. Louis Jacoby , to celebrate the completion of their 80th year of life, 1908 . Royal Academy d. Arts in Berlin March 8 - April 5, 1908. Union, Berlin. Stuttgart, Leipzig 1908
  • Annabelle Hosie: Werner, Fritz (Friedrich Alexander) , in: Savoy, Bénédicte and Nerlich, France (ed.): Pariser apprenticeship years. A lexicon for training German painters in the French capital. Volume 2: 1844-1870 , Berlin / Boston 2015. ISBN 978-3-11-035006-7

proof

  1. Berlin, PrAdK , Pers. BK 454. Fritz Werner, self-written curriculum vitae, Berlin, April 7, 1886
  2. ^ Johannes Trojan : Fritz Werner . (On his 70th birthday) In: National-Zeitung , December 3, 1897, morning edition, pp. 1–3
Commons : Fritz Werner  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files