Heinrich Jenny

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Heinrich Jenny (born July 2, 1824 in Langenbruck , † August 13, 1891 in Solothurn ) was a Swiss draftsman , history painter , illustrator and drawing teacher.

Life

Heinrich Jenny was born in Langenbruck BL and spent his first years there. The family decided to move to America around 1832/1833, apparently because of the separation of the Basel cantons . The mother died shortly before the planned departure; the father emigrated without his seven children. Heinrich first came to his grandfather in Langenbruck and attended elementary school there for four years, but was handed over to an uncle and aunt in Basel in 1836 . He worked as a “spooler in a trimmings shop”, drawing and painting with passion. Soon he was able to take up a design apprenticeship and attend drawing school. In 1842 he left Basel prematurely because he "led a miserable life with his relatives" and went to a brother who got him a job as an apprentice mechanic in Horgen . He also broke off this teaching. This began an unsteady hiking life as a hiking portraitist. In 1844 he came to Solothurn for the first time and, at the suggestion of Franz Josef Schild, portrayed spa guests in the Grenchner Bachtelenbad .

From 1851 Jenny lived mostly in Solothurn. In 1854 his brother Arnold Jenny (1831–1881), a self-taught painter, is said to have moved in with him. According to the HLS, the brothers also worked together. However, Heinrich continued to frequently go hiking. After many stops in German-speaking Switzerland and a detour to Munich, he went to Basel, where he married Marie Schneider in 1858. He now wanted to settle down and in 1859 took over a roller blind business in Aarburg AG, an experiment that did not end well; In 1862 he had to give up the business. He moved back to Solothurn. Here he felt at home, and in circles of liberal citizens, "his cozy nature and witty manner [...] quickly made friends". An example of such a group is the “Weltverbesserungsstübli”, a group of men who were close to the Solothurn Pottery Society and the Solothurn Art Society; the group included u. a. the lawyer and playwright Franz Krutter . Two parent book albums of this group with drawings by Heinrich Jenny from the previous possession of the Solothurn City Library have been preserved in the Solothurn Central Library .

Jenny had been known as an illustrator by calendar makers and editors of satirical magazines since the late 1940s. He worked for the Charivari , for 14 years for the Postheiri , but also for the gazebo - extensively about the accident during the construction of the Hauenstein tunnel in 1857 - and for Über Land und Meer . Orders from magazines in Paris and Leipzig were received. B. on the occasion of the Neuchâtel trade in 1857. However, some of our own projects failed, e. B. a splendid edition of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell . Another, Scheffel's Ekkehard in twelve original compositions , a new edition published in Hamburg in 1885, was little known in Switzerland. Working with authors was not always smooth either. The writer Alfred Hartmann writes in his autobiography Rückblicke : «[1863] Despite all the efforts I made, I could not find a publisher for the collection of novellas and village stories, which I wanted to publish under the title: Tales from Switzerland. So I decided to publish it myself. At that time I was still mistakenly of the opinion that a number of illustrations would give the book a special RELIEF, and I ordered such, no fewer than 20, from the artist of the Postheiri, Heinrich Jenny. They were reproduced using zincography , cost me a huge amount of money, but did not come out as I wanted. "

In 1865 Jenny moved to Berlin with his wife and four children Heinrich Arnold, Ernst Ferdinand, Anna Maria and Emma. The family lived in Germany until 1878. Jenny has worked as a draftsman in 1866 at the Battle of Hradec Kralove after being in Görlitz was advised on 26 June as an alleged spy in Austrian captivity. His portraits of the German politicians and officers involved in the German war were very popular because of their closeness to reality. Apparently he could not build a secure existence for himself. In the 1970s he tried his hand at church painting in Burg (Dithmarschen) and in Jevenstedt .

In 1878, Jenny was appointed to the Solothurn Cantonal School as the successor to the late painter and drawing teacher Gaudenz Taverna . He settled in the Lindenhof district. His students valued him, among them the young Cuno Amiet , and he became a valued restorer. His album with 28 “drawings of old buildings”, which the state secretary Josef Ignaz Amiet commissioned, is known and important for the preservation of monuments . Until recently, Jenny worked as a political and cartoonist illustrator for magazines, including regularly for the Nebelspalter .

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Jenny's early works were portraits in watercolor or oil . Technically and in terms of drawing, he was constantly learning as a traveling painter. The claims were easy to satisfy: "The peasant girls didn't take the resemblance very seriously if only their cheeks were red and their faces painted white."

He owed orders for drawings and prints with historical motifs to his increasing experience and routine , as evidenced by his pictures of pageants in the cities of Bern, 1853, and Winterthur, 1864. Substances from Swiss and German history were his real calling; he understood and described himself as a "history painter". The estate inventory included genre-like or patriotic-historical oil, ink and watercolor paintings.

Jenny had a broad impact with his articles in magazines, especially in the Postheiri . His illustrations are finely drawn, carefully composed, and easy to read if his drawing has been edited by a careful engraver; his humor is friendly, self-deprecating, not hurtful. He was the "most important caricaturist [...] in the magazine".

Hans Sigrist rightly assesses Jenny's work as "largely time-bound", but attests to him being an "inventive and expressive, highly talented draftsman and illustrator". In particular, the drawings in which he processed his time as a “battle painter” in 1866 are impressive little works of art in the tradition of Martin Disteli.

The Solothurn Central Library owns the above-mentioned library albums as well as graphic sheets; the art museum Solothurn owns works by Jenny; a larger collection of works can also be found in the Olten Art Museum .

Unprinted sources

  • State Archives of the Canton of Solothurn, inventories and divisions 1891, vol. 131.
  • City archive Solothurn, residents' registration files A.104.
  • Protocols of the do-gooders. Central Library Solothurn, call number ZBS SI 89 (1–2).

literature

  • Hildegard Gantner-Schlee: Heinrich Jenny (1824-1891): a former battle painter as a drawing teacher in Solothurn. In: Baselbieter Heimatblätter vol. 39, 2018, No. 2
  • Ferdinand von Arx: History of the higher educational institution in Solothurn. Vogt & Schild, Solothurn 1911, p. 123.
  • Franz August Stocker : The painter Heinrich Jenny. In: Vom Jura zum Schwarzwald Vol. 9, 1892, pp. 81–92.
  • Central Library Solothurn. [Altermatt, Leo]: Report on the year 1941. Gassmann, Solothurn 1941, pp. 8-10.
  • Hans Sigrist: The painter and draftsman Heinrich Jenny, July 2, 1824-13. August 1891. In: Jurablätter Vol. 27, No. 1, 1965, pp. 1-5.
  • Gottlieb Loertscher: Heinrich Jenny's "Drawings of Old Buildings". In: Jurablätter, 27 (1965), 1, pp. 5-9.
  • Art Association (Solothurn). Claudio Affolter; Christoph Lichtin; Roswitha Schild (ed.): Contemporary art in Solothurn. Exhibitions - Projects - Protagonists 1850–2000. Ed. Fink, Zurich 2000.
  • Paul Jenni: Langenbruck local history. Verlag des Kantons Basel-Landschaft, Liestal 1992, p. 131.
  • Hildegard Gantner-Schlee: Art and Artists in the Young Canton of Basel-Country. In: Baselbieter Heimatblätter, 65, 2000, pp. 85–99.
  • Heinrich Jenny. In: Personal dictionary of the Canton of Basel-Landschaft. Based on the printed edition by Kaspar Birkhäuser , 1997, p. 90.
  • Jenny, Heinrich. In: Sikart
  • Thomas Gürber: Expansion of popular rights and understanding of democracy as reflected in the caricatures of the satirical Solothurn magazine Postheiri (1844–1875). 2 vols. Arlesheim 1994. Lic. Phil.-hist. Basel 1994, p. 4.
  • Thomas Gürber: Jenny, Heinrich. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  • Franz Zelger: heroic controversy and heroic death. Swiss history painting in the 19th century. Atlantis, Zurich 1973.
  • Alfred Hartmann: Review. "I was and remained a pagan". Monika Hartmann and Verena Bider (eds.); Patrick Borer and Hans-Rudolf Binz (arr.). Central Library Solothurn, Solothurn 2011. (= Publications of the Central Library Solothurn, 32nd)

Web links

Commons : Heinrich Jenny  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stocker p. 81.
  2. ^ Ferdinand von Arx: History of the higher educational institution in Solothurn. Solothurn 1911, p. 123.
  3. ↑ Stocker, p. 82.
  4. ↑ Solothurn City Archives, residents' control files, A.104, No. 208: "Jenny, Heinrich, Langenbruck, painter, lodged at Stöckli (entered September 27, 1844)".
  5. ↑ Solothurn City Archives, residents' control files, A.104, No. 437: "Jenny, Heinrich, Langenbruck, painter, lodged at Stöckli (entered August 21, 1851)"; A.104, no. 550: "Jenni, Heinrich, Langenbruck, painter (settlement permit November 8, 1852)"
  6. ^ Birkhäuser, Kaspar. The personal dictionary of the canton of Basel-Landschaft. Liestal, 1997; electronic version, accessed on 2017-05-10. Heinrich's place of residence was not Laufen, but Solothurn
  7. ↑ Solothurn Central Library. [Altermatt, Leo]. Report on the year 1941. Solothurn: Gassmann, 1941, pp. 8-10-
  8. ↑ Protocols of the do-gooders. Central Library Solothurn, Signature ZBS: SI 89 / 1-2; a later company: «Bier-Gesellschaft zum Goldbach», album with portraits: Signature ZBS: SI 475, acquired in 1941.
  9. ^ Franz August Stocker: The painter Heinrich Jenny. In: Vom Jura zum Schwarzwald, 9, 1892, p. 89.
  10. ^ Alfred Hartmann: Retrospectives. "I was and remained a pagan". Monika Hartmann and Verena Bider, eds .; Patrick Borer and Hans-Rudolf Binz, Editing of the Solothurn Central Library, Solothurn 2011. (= Publications of the Solothurn Central Library ; 32.)
  11. ↑ recorded in the first of the surviving album albums, signature ZBS: SI 89/1.
  12. ↑ recorded in the first of the surviving album albums, signature ZBS: SI 89/1.
  13. ↑ No. 229. Address book for the city of Solothurn and the surrounding area, 1882.
  14. ↑ Solothurn Central Library, call number ZBS: S 765.
  15. ^ Franz August Stocker: The painter Heinrich Jenny. In: Vom Jura zum Schwarzwald, 9, 1892, p. 84. Quoted from Jenny's apparently lost diary
  16. ↑ Festival album of the celebration of the entry of Bern into the Swiss Confederation, March 6, 1353, with the depiction of the historical train, Bern and Zurich, 1855; [1]
  17. ↑ State Archives of the Canton of Solothurn, Inventories and Partitions 1891, Vol. 131.
  18. ↑ Thomas Gürber: Expansion of people's rights and understanding of democracy as reflected in the caricatures of the satirical Solothurn magazine Postheiri (1844–1875). Arlesheim, 1994. 2 vols. Lic. Phil.-hist. Basel 1994, p. 4.
  19. ^ Hans Sigrist: The painter and draftsman Heinrich Jenny, July 2, 1824-13. August 1891. In: Jurablätter, 27 (1965), 1, p. 5.
  20. ↑ Protocols of the do-gooders. Central Library Solothurn, signature SI 89_1.
personal data
SURNAME Jenny, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss draftsman and portrait painter
DATE OF BIRTH July 2, 1824
PLACE OF BIRTH Langenbruck
DATE OF DEATH August 13, 1891
Place of death Solothurn