Georg Philipp Schmitt
Georg Philipp Schmitt (born October 28, 1808 in Spesbach , today a district of Hütschenhausen , West Palatinate; † January 19, 1873 in Heidelberg ) was a German painter who belonged to the Heidelberg Romantic Circle and the Nazarenes . He comes from the Heidelberg painter dynasty Schmitt - his sons Guido Philipp Schmitt and Nathanael Schmitt as well as his brother Franz Schmitt were well-known painters. Georg Philipp Schmitt was their teacher and is the most important of them.
Life
Georg Philipp Schmitt was one of 14 children of the tax officer Simon Joseph Schmitt from Miltenberg , a Franciscan priest who left the monastery during the French Revolution and was married to Caroline Krieger from Wolfstein . The boy was born in Spesbach, but grew up on the family farm in Wolfstein. In 1822 the family moved to Heidelberg . Georg Philipp attended grammar school there for 1½ years and then trained in painting from Christian Xeller , a friend of the family.
In February 1825, Xeller's childhood friend, the painter Peter von Cornelius , came to Heidelberg from Munich to visit. Xeller put the further training of his favorite student Georg Philipp Schmitt into his hands and in the same month the budding painter was working at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich . Cornelius soon got him a scholarship of 150 guilders per year and Schmitt learned portrait and history painting from Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld and landscape art from Ferdinand von Olivier , in addition to his sponsor . During that time the young man had a fatherly friend in the philologist Friedrich Wilhelm von Thiersch , to whom he later dedicated a large picture of the Heidelberg Borussia. The painters Johann Schraudolph , Ferdinand Fellner and Philipp Foltz learned together with Schmitt in Munich .
In 1830 Georg Philipp Schmitt left Munich because he had fallen out with his sponsor Peter von Cornelius. He stayed temporarily in his old home in Wolfstein and then finally moved to Heidelberg. There he settled down as a “history and portrait painter” and soon acquired a good clientele. In December 1833 he married Eva Kayser (1808–1888), daughter of a respected Heidelberg master baker. He had six children with her, four of whom were daughters. According to the Heidelberg art historian Karl Lohmeyer, his most fruitful creative phase lay between 1831 and 1840 . During this time, Georg Philipp Schmitt undertook many art trips to the neighboring Palatinate, where he often stayed in his former home Wolfstein and created numerous watercolors there, primarily views of the place and motifs from the Lautertal. In addition to romanticizing landscapes and still lifes, more and more historical-religious works were created towards the end of the 1830s. There are clear echoes of the strict school of the Nazarenes , but softened by warmer color tones. One of the typical main works of this creative period is the large depiction of the crucifixion in the Catholic parish church of Hohensachsen near Heidelberg.
Portrait painting remained the main source of income for Georg Philipp Schmitt. In particular, the rich families of the western Palatinate - such as Lilier, Wies, von Hohenfels, von Korbach in Zweibrücken, Benzino in Landstuhl, Zott in Homburg, Weber in Kaiserslautern - were portrayed in rows by Schmitt. A number of family pictures from his hand also exist in the von Wrede princely family. Numerous Russians and Englishmen who were in Heidelberg at the time had Schmitt paint them and spread his fame in their home countries. This was later very useful to his son Guido Schmitt , who temporarily lived in London as a portrait painter. Series of portraits by Heidelberg university professors have also been preserved by Georg Philipp Schmitt. It is noteworthy that the Speyer bishop Johannes von Geissel and the Speyer cathedral provost and cathedral capitular Joseph Sales Miltenberger had themselves painted by the Protestant artist. Miltenberger - himself a former Franciscan - knew the painter's father from the time when he was a Franciscan . Nevertheless, the relationship seems to have been untroubled. Georg Philipp Schmitt's brother Franz Schmitt is known to have been friends with Geissel's successor, Bishop Nikolaus von Weis , and to accompany him to Rome in 1862.
Georg Philipp Schmitt got involved together with Charles de Graimberg in building up the Heidelberg art and antiquity collection, which later became part of the Kurpfälzisches Museum. His circle of friends in Heidelberg included the painters Christian Philipp Koester , Friedrich Veith, Eduard von Steinle and the poet Justinus Kerner . Of his students, the brother Franz , the sons Guido Philipp and Nathanael and the painters Felix Faller (1835–1887), Heinrich Wilhelmi (1816–1902) and Werner Hunzinger (1816–1861) deserve special mention.
Georg Philipp Schmitt made frequent and long art trips down the Rhine as well as through Belgium, Luxembourg and France. Apparently he was never in Italy. When his son Guido Philipp achieved fame and prestige as a portrait painter in England, he visited him there more often. Georg Philipp Schmitt lived his old age in Heidelberg, where he died on January 19, 1873 after long and severe suffering. The funeral oration calls the painter a “lovable and humble man who had a warm heart for all people, an open and free mind for everything good, beautiful and noble, who loved art more than himself and what he saw in the invisible realm of eternally beautiful, proclaimed with the language of his brush ... "
Carl Leonhard (1848–1930), long-time director of the Heidelberg Portland cement factory , was the son of his sister Margaretha Leonhard nee. Schmitt (1811-1895).
literature
- Robert Schmitt: Simon Joseph Gabriel Schmitt - life story, ancestors and descendants . Self-published by the author, Koblenz 1966
- Andreas Franzke, Guido Florentin Honold: Georg Philipp Schmitt (1808–1873). A Heidelberg painter of the 19th century . Karlsruhe 1977
- Viktor Carl: "Lexicon of Palatinate Personalities" . Hennig Verlag, Edenkoben. 1998, p. 622
Web links
- Website about Georg Philipp Schmitt
- ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: website for the painter's 200th birthday, 2008 )
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Schmitt, Georg Philipp |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Schmitt, Philipp |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 28, 1808 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Spesbach Hütschenhausen |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 19, 1873 |
| Place of death | Heidelberg |