Gustav Spangenberg (painter)

Gustav Spangenberg

Gustav Adolph Spangenberg (born February 1, 1828 in Hamburg , † November 19, 1891 in Berlin ) was a German painter .

Life

Gustav was a son of the Hamburg doctor Georg August Spangenberg and the younger brother of the painter Louis Spangenberg . He had his first drawing lessons with Hermann Kauffmann in Hamburg in 1844 , attended the trade and drawing school in Hanau under Theodor Pelissier from 1845–48 and lived in Antwerp from 1849 to 1851 , where he attended the academy only for a short time. In 1851 he went to Paris , where he worked for Thomas Couture and the sculptor Baron Henri de Triqueti , but was mainly educated by studying the masters of the German Renaissance ( Dürer and Holbein ).

After spending another year in Italy (1857-1858), he settled in Berlin, where he taught as a professor at the Academy of Arts from 1869 .

Gustav Spangenberg died in Berlin in 1891 at the age of 63 and was buried in Cemetery I of the Jerusalem and New Churches , where two years later his brother Louis would also find his final resting place. Both graves have not been preserved.

plant

Some of his early paintings are:

The kidnapped child
The rat catcher from Hameln
St. John's Eve in Cologne
Walpurgis Night

Luther playing music with his family

The train of death , illustration in Die Gartenlaube 1879

Gustav Spangenberg only established his reputation with his history pictures, which, following the old German masters, are characterized by clear composition, correctness of the drawing and diligent execution of the individual. The main images in this series are:

Luther's house music (see right)
Luther as Junker Georg
Luther translating the Bible (1870, Berlin National Gallery)
Luther and Melanchthon
Luther playing music with his family (1866)
Luther's entry into Worms

He reached the climax of his work in the deeply moving one

Train of death

(1876, in the Berlin National Gallery), with figures in the costumes of the Renaissance, which earned him the large, gold medal.

His later creations remained behind this major work

At the crossroads
The will-o'-the-wisp
The women at the tomb of Christ

back to depth of sensation and thought content. For the stairwell of the University of Halle he executed a cycle of wall paintings symbolizing the four faculties, for which he received an honorary doctorate in philosophy in 1888 .

literature

R. Bruck .: Spangenberg, Gustav Adolf . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 55, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1910, pp. 621-624.
Thieme-Becker : General Lexicon of Fine Artists , Volume 31, Leipzig 1937, p. 328

Web links

Commons : Gustav Spangenberg - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

^ Hans-Jürgen Mende: Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 217.

personal data
SURNAME	Spangenberg, Gustav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Spangenberg, Gustav Adolph (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German painter
DATE OF BIRTH	February 1, 1828
PLACE OF BIRTH	Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH	November 19, 1891
Place of death	Berlin

[1] Hans-Jürgen Mende: Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 217.