Hans Hinrich Rundt
Hans Hinrich Rundt (* around 1660; † around 1750 (?)), Also known as Johann Rundt in older works , was a painter of the North German Baroque who became known primarily for his work for the House of Lippe and the North German nobility.
Life and artistic style
The precise dates of life and the origin of Rundt are unknown. Hans Hinrich Rundt mentions in one of his numerous surviving letters that he was in Amsterdam in 1684. The traditional assumption that he was a student of the painter Gerard de Lairesse there could not be verified even by the most recent research, but his mature late style shows characteristics of the classicist art of De Laraisse. The oldest records of him are entries in the baptismal register in Hamburg's main churches: on May 18, 1687, in the Hamburg church St. Nikolai; his daughter Susanne Catharina Rundt was baptized, on December 19, 1688 in St. Jacobi his son Gottfried Nicolaus Rundt. These entries both contain his full name Hans Hinrich Rundt, so the first name 'Johann', which was later added to him, is not found in these documents that are directly related to him at the time. On November 11, 1692, Rundt applied for admission to the citizenship of Hamburg, and he paid the admission fee in installments until August 18, 1700.
Rundt's contacts with the Lippe family can be dated from 1698 to 1720. 112 letters, most of which he wrote to Christoph Leineweber, Count Friedrich Adolf's land receptionist, have survived for many years . These letters are almost the only, albeit extensive, source of details of his vita and oeuvre. In 1698 his work also began as a painter at the court in Detmold, but it should be noted that Rundt in the narrower sense was not a court painter with compulsory attendance, etc., but continued to live in Hamburg and did numerous freelance jobs there. In the following years, Rundt commuted between Hamburg and Detmold, not only working as a painter for the Lippe house, but also running errands in Hamburg.
As can be seen from the works that have been preserved, working for the court in Detmold led to a change in his artistic style from 1700 onwards. While his portrait of Rudolf August von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel still exemplarily documents his rather Dutch-realistic style with dry paint application, which was cultivated in the 1690s, the works in the new century show a more lucid, shinier paint application with a lighter and also more colorful color in a translucent manner. The overall stylistic impression is now more of an aristocratically idealizing one and not, as before, a bourgeois, objective one. Typical of his mature style is the representative knee piece by Friedrich Adolf zur Lippe-Detmold.
Even after Leineweber's death in July 1713, it became clear again and again in the correspondence, now between Rundt and the Count of Lippe, that the payment practices of the count's house left a lot to be desired: Rundt repeatedly asked for funds that had been outstanding for years. Nevertheless, even after the death of Friedrich Adolf, he remained connected to the Land of Lippe, and in 1720 was even appointed a master builder. Apparently, however, he did not begin this task, and soon afterwards the contacts were lost. There is no more secured data about the time after 1724. The traditional and often repeated assumption that he died impoverished in the hospital in Hamburg in 1750 is sometimes declared in research as an "estimate", but even today there is no evidence for this allegation, or the improbability is not discussed that Rundt would then have reached a very unusual age of about 90 years in that century. One must therefore still consider this claim to be unverified.
Works
The earliest works ascribed to Rundt are an engraving for the Thesauros Exoticorum by Everhardus Guernerus Happelius from 1688, as well as engravings for the appendix of Much Increased Moscowitische and Persianische Reiseverschriften by Adam Olearius from the same year. The most recent research brought to light works of Rundt that were still preserved but had not yet been received by research. The earliest photographically documented work with an unknown whereabouts is now a portrait of Charles Broughton, a merchant adventurer in Hamburg from 1689, the earliest locally tangible a resurrection of Jesus Christ from 1690 in the National Museum in Stockholm. The early representative portrait of the English resident in Hamburg, Paul Rycaut from 1691 in the collection of the Royal Society, London, represents a chef d'oeuvre in terms of quality and claim in relation to Rundt's oeuvre as well. A male portrait from 1697 is most likely one Self-portrait.
For the house of Lippe he portrayed Friedrich Adolf Graf zur Lippe and Amalie Gräfin zur Lippe (1698) and their children, among others . Simon Heinrich Adolf, Friedrich Adolf's son from his first marriage and heir to the throne, was also later painted by Rundt. From 1703 Rundt was involved in the urban development project Friedrichstaler Kanal and in 1705 in the design of the Favorite House , whereby painting was always more important to him than architecture. In addition to the many portraits or interior furnishings (oil on canvas) in Detmold, he was also often active in Hamburg: for example, he made the still preserved epitaph The Resurrection of Christ in the main church of St. Jacobi in 1713. From his letters it can also be reconstructed that he made numerous portraits of noble people in his Hamburg studio or received them as visitors. These were either based in Hamburg or visited the Hanseatic city, but what almost all of the portrayed have in common is that they were among the group of visitors to the Opera at Gänsemarkt or in the personal environment of the director of this institution, Gerhard Schott : the highly prominent Aurora von Königsmarck and her sister Amalie Wilhelmine von Königsmarck , for example, were among them and made up a large part of the opera audience. This makes it clear that in Hamburg not only the culturally and historically significant first German bourgeois opera house with permanent performances by Gerhard Schott needed a noble audience who lived in Hamburg and had traveled to Hamburg in order to be able to work artistically successfully; Even visual artists such as Hans Hinrich Rundt could not fully rely on middle-class clients and worked abroad for a noble customer base: the younger Hamburg artists Balthasar Denner and Franz Werner Tamm made careers primarily outside of Hamburg and also had an extensive noble customer base. But Rundt also succeeded in portraying numerous nobles within Hamburg. The acquaintance with his “old friend” Gerhard Schott may have helped him: they traveled to an opera event, for example, and went to his studio in order to commission a portrait there.
One of the last surviving paintings, probably from 1724, by Hans Hinrich Rundt is in the St. Petri Church in Hamburg , it shows a portrait of Johann Hanker. The latest work, which is only documented by a photograph due to its unknown whereabouts, is a 'Garden of Gethsemane' from 1729.
However, many of his works have been lost or destroyed.
literature
- Barbara Hammann: Hans Hinrich Rundt, a German painter at the turn of the 17th to the 18th century . Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich 1974.
- Hans Kiewning: The Hamburg painter Hans Hinrich Rundt . In: Messages from Lippe history and regional studies . tape XIII . Meyerschen Hofbuchhandlung publishing house, Detmold 1927.
- Martin Salesch, Rainer Springhorn (eds.): Their nobility was brilliant - the Hamburg baroque painter Hans Hinrich Rundt at the court of the Counts zur Lippe . Imhof, Petersberg 2003, ISBN 3-935590-85-7 .
- Ingrid Oberwinter: The secrets of an allegorical history picture by the Hamburg painter Hans Hinrich Rundt from 1708 . Self-published, Staufen 2006.
- De Gruyter - General Artist Lexicon (AKL), Volume 100, entry on "Rundt, Hans Hinrich (Johann)" . De Gruyter, Berlin, Boston 2018.
Web links
Notes and individual references
- ^ Georg Biermann: German Baroque and Rococo . Leipzig 1914.
- ↑ Numerous letters Rundts to the court in Detmold are archived in the State Archives NRW, Department of East Westphalia-Lippe in Detmold. In Martin Salesch's monograph (see literature) all letters are printed in their entirety
- ↑ The entry on Hans Hinrich Rundt in the recently published (October 2018) volume 100 of the 'De Gruyter Artists' Lexicon' (see literature) indicates this
- ↑ Baptismal register of the Hamburg main church St. Nikolai, Hamburg State Archives, Sign. 512-3 VIII 4 E
- ^ Hamburgisches Künstlerlexikon . Hamburg 1854.
- ↑ Barbara Hammann: Hans Hinrich Rundt, a German painter at the turn of the 17th to the 18th century .
- ^ 'De Gruyter Artist Lexicon', Volume 100, entry on "Rundt, Hans Hinrich (Johann)"
- ↑ Illustration in the Witt Library, London, handed down
- ↑ https://prints.royalsociety.org/products/portrait-of-paul-rycault-1629-1700-rs-9280
- ↑ In a rediscovered allegorical prince portrait of his Detmold patron Friedrich Adolf, a very similar physiognomy can be discovered in a figure whose positioning and pose are typical of an artist self-portrait in a painting: Fig. And discussion in Ingrid Oberwinter, 'The secrets of an allegorical history picture of the Hamburg painter Hans Hinrich Rundt from 1708 ', Staufen 2006
- ↑ Rundt's numerous surviving letters, all of which are printed by Salesch (see literature), document this fact
- ↑ In detail in: Dorothea Schröder, 'Contemporary history on the opera stage: baroque music theater in Hamburg in the service of politics and diplomacy (1690 - 1745)', Göttingen 1998
- ↑ Appuhn, Horst, "Denner, Balthasar" in: Neue Deutsche Biographie 3 (1957), p. 601 f. [Online version]; URL: https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd119355396.html#ndbcontent
- ^ Lier, Hermann Arthur, "Tamm, Franz Werner" in: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 37 (1894), pp. 363–364 [online version]; URL: https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd11935540X.html#adbcontent
- ↑ Quoted from one of Rundt's letters (in Salesch, Letter 31)
- ↑ Quoted from one of Rundt's letters (in Salesch, Letter 71)
- ^ Illustration in the auction catalog Sotheby's New York, 1991, Sale 6217
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rundt, Hans Hinrich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Rundt, Johann |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1660 |
| DATE OF DEATH | around 1750 |