Gustav Friedrich scales

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Gustav Friedrich Waagen, portrait by Ludwig Knaus , 1855

Gustav Friedrich Waagen (born February 11, 1794 in Hamburg , † July 15, 1868 in Copenhagen ) was a German art historian .

Life

Waagen was born in Hamburg in 1794 as the son of the painter Christian Friedrich Heinrich Waagen (1750-1825) and his wife Johanna Louise Alberti († 1807). GF Waagen's mother was a daughter of the Hamburg pastor Alberti , her sister Amalie (1769-1837) in 1798 was the wife of Ludwig Tieck. His younger brother Carl (1800–1873) and his son Adalbert (1833–1898) were also painters.

GF Waagen began studying at the University of Wroclaw in 1812 , joined the Prussian army as a volunteer in 1813, continued his studies in Wroclaw after the end of the campaigns in Wroclaw , Dresden , Heidelberg and Munich and devoted himself primarily to philosophical and historical studies. He discovered his passion for art history early on . He went on a long trip to the Netherlands and first drew attention to himself with his book About Hubert and Johann van Eyck (Breslau 1822). In 1821 he was accepted as a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . In 1823 he was called to Berlin to help set up the museum there. In 1824 he toured Italy with Carl Friedrich Schinkel . In 1828 he joined the Berlin Museum Commission and wrote the official catalog of the Gemäldegalerie , of which he was director from 1830 to 1864. After lengthy study trips through France and England , he published three volumes on works of art and artists in England and Paris (Berlin 1837–1839), which were also published in an expanded (and better known) English edition under the title The Treasures of Art in Great Britain (3rd ed Volumes, London 1854). To this end, the supplementary volume Galeries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain was published in 1857 .

Following a trip to southern Germany and through Alsace , the works of art and artists were published in Germany (2 volumes, Leipzig 1843–45). In the years 1841–42, Waagen in Italy was busy making purchases for the Berlin Museum. In the following years he traveled to London (1851), Paris (1855), Manchester (1857) to attend the exhibitions there, about which he reported, and to many smaller publications. The Handbook of the German and Dutch Schools of Painting was published in Stuttgart in 1862 and , after several trips to Russia, the collection of paintings in the Imperial Hermitage in St. Petersburg (Munich 1864) and the most distinguished art monuments in Vienna (2 volumes, Vienna 1866–67). His scattered essays were collected in the Kleinen Schriften (edited by Alfred Woltmann , Stuttgart 1875).

From 1844, Waagen, as an associate professor, was the first professor of art history to teach unpaid at Berlin University .

Waagen possessed a very extensive knowledge of monuments and combined it with a great critical insight for the time. His books are primarily useful today as a source of information on private art collections of the 19th century. Even in old age he traveled a lot and examined collections, such as the picture gallery in Oldenburg in autumn 1867. He died on July 15, 1868 on a trip to Copenhagen.

The geologist Wilhelm Heinrich Waagen (1841–1900) and the Bavarian Major General Gustav Waagen (1832–1906) were his nephews.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Halm: Gustav Friedrich Waagen (obituary) . In: Meeting reports of the royal. bayer. Academy of Sciences in Munich . tape 1 , 1870, p. 366–369 ( online [PDF; accessed May 10, 2017]).
  2. ↑ Sebastian Dohe: The Grand Ducal Picture Gallery 1804-1918 . In: Sebastian Dohe / Malve Anna Falk / Rainer Stamm (eds.): Die Gemäldegalerie Oldenburg. A European collection of old masters . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2017, ISBN 978-3-7319-0447-2 , p. 21 .
personal data
SURNAME Scales, Gustav Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 11, 1794
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH July 15, 1868
Place of death Copenhagen