Georg Ludwig von Kreß

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Gutenberg Monument Frankfurt

Georg Ludwig von Kreß (also: Georg Ludwig Freiherr Kreß von Kressenstein ; * 1797 in Wetzlar , † December 26, 1877 in Mögeldorf ) was a German painter, engraver and electroforming artist .

Life

Georg Ludwig Kress von Kressenstein spent the first years of his life in Wetzlar, where his father was procurator at the Imperial Court of Justice . In 1807 the family moved to Darmstadt . At the age of 17 he took part in the wars of liberation as a volunteer and in 1817 became a lieutenant in the grand-ducal Hessian body regiment. In the garrison of Giessen he had the opportunity to continue his scientific education. In 1820 he was transferred to Offenbach am Main and learned to draw under the direction of the landscape painters Anton Radl and Friedrich Christian Reinermann . For health reasons, he retired from the military in 1828 and then worked as a painter and engraver.

For various art dealers, such as Jakob Hölscher in Koblenz , Jügel in Frankfurt am Main and Korn in Breslau , he made printing plates of landscapes in aquatint . In 1840 von Kreß traveled to Saint Petersburg and got to know the technique of electroplating and its inventor, Moritz Hermann von Jacobi . With the help of this new technique, the etched and engraved copper plates could be reproduced and the number of prints increased considerably. Since this technique could also be used to reproduce plastic objects, he learned how to make molds with plaster and, together with his friend Carl Jochim, founded an electroplating company in St. Petersburg. For Tsar Nicholas I , he made around 300 replicas of gold and silver bowls from the Moscow Crown Treasure, which were then exhibited in the Winter Palace of Saint Petersburg .

In 1845 he moved from Kreß to Frankfurt and built a workshop for electroplating there. His first major work was the reproduction of the head of a Gutenberg monument by the artist Eduard Schmidt von der Launitz . Due to the high quality of this work, the Monument Comité negotiated with him about the production of three large figures by Johannes Gutenberg , Peter Schöffer and Johannes Fust . He finished these figures in his studio in Oberrad by 1853. From 1867 to 1873 von Kreß worked in Darmstadt, where he created several large monuments. From 1873 he was in charge of a studio at the trade museum in Nuremberg for a short time . Until his death on December 26th, 1877, he only devoted himself to landscape painting.

Selection of his works

  • 1845 to 1853 Gutenberg memorial with Gutenberg, Schöffer and Fust
  • Lessing statue
  • Relief Cupid on the panther after Ernst Rietschel
  • Hercules shield after Schwanthaler
  • Haarmann monument in Holzminden after G. Heyberger
  • Fontainen group from Drake for America
  • Big sea crab
  • Landscape reliefs after Jakob Gauermann

Fonts

literature

personal data
SURNAME Kreß, Georg Ludwig von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kress von Kressenstein, Georg Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Engraver, painter and electroplater
DATE OF BIRTH 1797
PLACE OF BIRTH Wetzlar
DATE OF DEATH December 26, 1877
Place of death Mögeldorf