Goethe portrait by Heinrich Christoph Kolbe
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| Goethe portrait |
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| Heinrich Christoph Kolbe , 1822 |
| Oil on canvas |
| Goethe National Museum (Weimar) |
The Goethe portrait by Heinrich Christoph Kolbe from 1822 is the first of several portraits that the Düsseldorf painter Heinrich Christoph Kolbe painted of the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . It is considered to be the only portrait of Goethe in old age that depicts him almost realistically. The picture is owned by the Klassik Stiftung Weimar and is exhibited by the Goethe National Museum in Weimar .
history
Goethe first came into contact with the painter Kolbe, who had studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy under Johann Peter Langer and at the École des Beaux-Arts under François-André Vincent , in 1799 when he - at that time still a student at the Düsseldorf Academy - in a competition organized by the “Weimar Art Friends”, which Goethe had suggested to win the prize for his drawing Aphrodite leads Helena to Paris . Goethe encouraged the painter to take part in the competitions in 1800, 1801 and 1803 as well. In 1822 Kolbe - at the time already established portrait painter of the Rhenish bourgeoisie - traveled to Goethe on the mediation of Bonn university professor Joseph Eduard d'Alton to Weimar, where he painted the Goethe portrait between May 2nd and mid-June. For this purpose, Goethe, then Minister of State of the Grand Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach , sat as a model for a total of eight meetings. The Weimar Grand Duke Karl August and his lover, Baroness von Heygendorff , had Kolbe paint them during this time, the one as Sappho .
In 1823 the Goethe picture was exhibited in the Gemäldegalerie Düsseldorf . The musician Carl Friedrich Zelter , who viewed the portrait on his visit to Düsseldorf in November 1823, wrote to his friend Goethe: “It is conceived with strength and confidence. [...] Whenever I saw another picture, I always went back to yours. ”Goethe also liked the picture; on May 22, 1822, he had State Chancellor Friedrich von Müller negotiate the purchase of the painting. However, some friends and admirers of Goethe were indignant because of the realistic representation of Goethe in the painting.
By 1826, Kolbe created another portrait of Goethe - with the production of several half-length portrait studies - showing the elderly poet standing in front of the Gulf of Naples and Vesuvius . He copied Goethe's head from a Goethe bust created in 1820 by Christian Daniel Rauch . Since Goethe was less happy about Kolbe's second picture, because he had visited Naples and Vesuvius as a young man and therefore felt the picture to be anachronism , he gave it to the Jena University Library , where it is still located.
description
The portrait shows Goethe as a half-length figure at the age of 72, dressed in a black frock coat over a white shirt that is closed with a collar . On his right chest he wears the Russian Order of St. Anne , which Tsar Alexander I awarded him on October 15, 1808. On the left breast the portrait shows the Order of the White Falcon , which Goethe received as a Real Privy Councilor on January 30, 1816 for his political services from Grand Duke Karl August von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach . The red ribbon and the Commander's Cross of the Austrian Leopold Order stand out above the white shirt as a neck medal . The Emperor of Austria , Franz I , awarded him this medal in the summer of 1815. The officer's cross of the Legion of Honor , which Goethe was given by Louis XVIII in September 1818, is attached to the lapel . received in the mail after it had already been decorated with the Knight's Cross by Emperor Napoleon I on October 14, 1808 at the Erfurt Princely Congress .
Individual evidence
- ^ Horst Heidermann : Heinrich Christoph Kolbe and the portrait painters of the Wuppertal bourgeoisie . In: Geschichte im Wuppertal , Volume 18 (2009), p. 90 ( PDF ( Memento of the original from March 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. )
- ^ Walther Scheidig: Goethe's award tasks for visual artists 1799–1805 . Writings of the Goethe Society, Volume 57, Weimar 1958, pp. 44 f., 79 f.
- ^ Grand Duke Carl August 1822
- ↑ Jagemann, Karoline , website in the portal de.alamy.com , accessed on October 1, 2016
- ↑ Max Hecker (Ed.): Correspondence between Goethe and Zelter . Leipzig 1915, 2 volumes, p. 242
- ↑ Jörn Göres: Goethe's relationship to Düsseldorf artists . In: Gerhard Kurz (Hrsg.): Düsseldorf in the German intellectual history . Schwann, Düsseldorf 1984, ISBN 3-590-30244-5 , p. 291
- ↑ Horst Heidermann (2009), p. 90
- ↑ Goethe as a poet and artist in front of Vesuvius , data sheet in the archiv.thulb.uni-jena.de portal , accessed on October 1, 2016
- ↑ Jörn Göres, p. 291
