Gustav Bregenzer

Gustav Bregenzer, photo taken around 1900

Gustav Bregenzer (born December 16, 1850 in Sigmaringen , died January 4, 1919 there ) was a German painter , draftsman and poet .

life and work

As the son of Benedikt Bregenzer, white cleaner and plasterer, and Agatha, b. Gustav Bregenzer grew up in a family of craftsmen in Sigmaringen. After attending primary school in Sigmaringen (1856–1864), Gustav completed an apprenticeship in his father's plastering company. Apparently the father died in 1867, so that at the age of 17, the talented boy was faced with an uncertain future as an orphan. It is unknown who took care of him in this situation; in any case, with a scholarship from Prince Karl Anton von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen , Bregenzer was able to begin studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy , which he completed from 1867 to 1870 with Andreas Müller , Carl Müller , and Wilhelm Sohn .

Bregenzer spent a decade in Düsseldorf as a portrait painter. As a desk in the Ruhr area , Düsseldorf benefited from the immense upswing in the iron and steel industry during the early days, which gave the former Prussian provincial town a new financial aristocracy with pronounced needs for representation. The Düsseldorf art scene used these claims to its own advantage. Socially, Bregenzer was mostly among his colleagues who came together in the Malkasten artists' association . Andreas Achenbach , who was admired by Bregenzer, was among them, the battle painter Wilhelm Camphausen , Eugen Dücker , Oswald Achenbach's successor as teacher of landscape painting at the Düsseldorf Academy, the Estonian Eduard von Gebhardt , also an academy professor, and the Swiss Benjamin Vautier . The artist festivals, concerts and theater performances in the paint box were famous. Bregenz's sponsor, Prince Karl Anton von Hohenzollern, who had been division commander in Düsseldorf from 1852 and was Prime Minister of Prussia from 1858 to 1862, was an honorary member of the artists' association.

Emil Belzer , portrait painting of Bregenz from 1912

The year 1881 brought a profound turning point in Bregenz's life - he had to return to Sigmaringen. The condition was attached to the granting of his scholarship that he would later be able to serve the princely art interests if necessary. The son of Karl Anton von Hohenzollern was proclaimed King of Romania as Carol I on March 26, 1881 , and Bregenzer was commissioned to copy the most important paintings in the princely gallery in Sigmaringen for the art collection of King Carol in Bucharest. For the next ten years this task was the main business for Bregenzer, who was awarded the title of Royal Romanian Court Painter in 1885 for his work. Repeated trips to Bucharest during this time earned him additional portraits.

From Sigmaringen, Bregenzer stayed in contact with gallery owners and art associations in Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Cologne and Wroclaw and sent his works to external exhibitions wherever possible, but his artistic career was limited in the Prussian provincial town on the Danube . Even after the turn of the century, Sigmaringen citizens' commissioned portraits attached great importance to the brown-colored studio tone of the Wilhelminian era, so that Bregenzer had little room to escape the artistically conventional - after all, he had a large family to support.

Bregenzer took note of the development of contemporary art, not least on his trips to Italy in 1895, to Paris and the Netherlands in 1902. His own work alone could only benefit from this in individual cases, for example in the astonishing portrait of the medical doctor Dr. Johannes Longard. With increasing age, however, a melancholy-resigned trait in Bregenz’s character has evidently gained the upper hand, and the artist withdrew more and more into a reclusive existence. Perhaps bitterness was also involved, which the painter with the remote and lost Sigmaringen, as Prince Karl Anton von Hohenzollern once called his small residence, far from the big art centers such as Düsseldorf, Berlin, Vienna or Munich more and more over the years let quarrel. Health problems arose. In 1916 bone tuberculosis led to the amputation of the left arm. At the end of his life, Gustav Bregenzer was a forgotten artist. The first solo exhibition of his works was held in his hometown on the occasion of his 150th birthday.

Bregenzer had Maria, born in Düsseldorf in 1876. Back (1849–1923), married from Hochasten near Imst / Tyrol. Ten children were born to the couple, including the missionary Karl Bregenzer (1894–1931). The painter Albert Birkle was a grandson of Bregenz.

Portrayed people

• Emil Belzer
• Fridolin Eisele

swell

• State Archive Sigmaringen, Keller estate, Dep. 1, Vol. 6, Nos. 56a, 56b, 66-69.

Fonts

• Picturesque fantasies. Poems . Sigmaringen 1885
• Andreas Achenbach on his 90th birthday . In: Hohenzollerische Volkszeitung from September 29, 1905
• Something about drawing . In: Hohenzollerische Volkszeitung from July 18, 1912

literature

• August Stehle: Gustav Bregenzer. A Hohenzollern painter . In: Hohenzollerische Jahreshefte 3 (1936), pp. 225–239.
• Bregenzer, Gustav . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 5 : V-Z. Supplements: A-G . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1961, p. 337 .
• Josef Mühlebach: Important personalities from the city of Sigmaringen . In: 900 years Sigmaringen 1077–1977 , Sigmaringen 1977, p. 105.
• Manfred Hermann: The district of Sigmaringen in its buildings and works of art . In: The district of Sigmaringen , Sigmaringen 1981, p. 185.
• Monika Spiller: Bregenzer, Gustav . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 14, Saur, Munich a. a. 1996, ISBN 3-598-22754-X , p. 69.
• Monika Spiller: Gustav Bregenzer 1850–1919 . In: Zeitschrift für Hohenzollerische Geschichte 36 (2000), pp. 107-133 (with ill.).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Spiller 2000, Fig. 13. Dr. med. Johannes Longard (1863–1914) had been medical director of the Fürst-Carl-Landeskrankenhaus Sigmaringen since 1908.
2. ↑ Karl Bregenzer was murdered in Nicaragua in 1931 ( digitized )