Gustav Heinrich Lorenz Schön

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Gustav Heinrich Lorenz Schön (born March 23, 1832 in Lübeck ; † spring 1873 there ) was a German painter and draftsman .

Life

Gustav Schön was born the son of the wine merchant David Schön. Since he has been deaf from early childhood (family tradition has two contradicting versions of this; one according to which Schön was born deaf, the other sees the cause in an infection from a scrofulous wet nurse ), he could not enter his father's business . Instead, he learned the profession of photographer and then also completed an apprenticeship as a lithographer .

However, an eye disease prevented Schön from being able to work as a lithographer for a long time; no significant lithograph by his hand is known. Around 1860 he turned instead to painting and graphics, which he practiced as a completely self-taught . His preferred subjects were landscape and nature studies as well as architectural images with motifs from his hometown Lübeck.

Schön showed oil paintings in several Lübeck art exhibitions , but these were heavily criticized. Nevertheless, many of his works ended up in private ownership in this way, while the municipal painting collection of the Museum am Dom never acquired any of his pictures.

In the spring of 1873, Schön made the decision to begin studying art at the Dresden Art Academy in order to leave the status of self-taught behind him through academic training. However, while preparing for the trip, he fell ill with pneumonia , which caused his death.

Artistic classification

Gustav Schön is best known for his aesthetically pleasing depictions of Lübeck's old town , some of which are still used today in books to illustrate Lübeck's Buddenbrook era . At the same time, however, it is precisely these paintings that are the reason why he was not taken seriously as an artist during his lifetime and is often classified as a dilettante of questionable talent to this day: Schön used to redesign and embellish the scenarios that he depicted, in some cases considerably, to accommodate theirs increase romantic effect. To do this, for example, he relocated buildings to streets where they were not located, changed geographical references and made numerous imaginative changes to the appearance of individual houses so that the overall impression was more picturesque. In his often reproduced picture of Markttwiete, for example, the houses on the left are without exception fantasy products, the house with the stepped gable and the striking Renaissance portal on the corner of Braunstraße was in a completely different place in the bowl booth and the staffage with the church cellar and column in the background right foreground was fictitious.

Because of such freedom in the reproduction of reality, Schön is generally regarded by cityscape historians as extremely imprecise and not reliable in order to reconstruct the appearance of Lübeck in the 19th century. However, this judgment is too generalized. In his drawings, which served as the basis for the pictures, Schön reproduced reality exactly and meticulously in detail. He only made the romanticizing changes when the motifs were translated into paintings. An example of this is his depiction of the small building yard , seen from the Teufelstreppe . The pencil drawing is a precise and sober representation of reality; With the resulting watercolor , however, Schön made countless large and small changes to make the scenery more romantic: houses were given cantilevered upper floors and exposed half-timbering , a simple lintel became a round arch, a simple gable became a stepped gable, trees enriched the scenario. A particularly generous interpretation of the model can be seen in the placement of the spiers of St. Mary's Church in the background, which was moved by at least one kilometer and should be located well outside the old town.

literature

  • Wilhelm Stier : Gustav Heinrich Lorenz Schön - an unknown Lübeck painter and draftsman ; in: Paul Brockhaus (ed.): Der Wagen 1941 . Publishing house HG Rahtgens, Lübeck 1941
  • Gustav Lindtke: Old Lübeck city views. Catalog. Lübeck Museumshefte, Heft 7, Lübeck 1968, p. 106
  • Gustav Lindtke: Foreword in the catalog to the exhibition Das Alte Lübeck Cityscape , Museums for Art and Cultural History of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck, 1963, and painting Israelsdorf around 1870 with the Israelsdorfer oak on Gothmunder Weg
  • Gustav Schön's old Lübeck street pictures ; in: Vaterstädtische Blätter - Illustrated entertainment supplement of the Lübeck advertisements. 1919, nos. 11 and 12, 6 illustrations. (Text NN, possibly Conrad Neckels?)

Web links

Commons : Gustav Heinrich Lorenz Schön  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

photos

personal data
SURNAME Fine, Gustav Heinrich Lorenz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and draftsman
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1832
PLACE OF BIRTH Lübeck
DATE OF DEATH 1873
Place of death Lübeck