Heinrich Olivier

Three women in medieval costume in a Gothic chapel (1817), burned in 1931 in the Munich Glass Palace

Heinrich Olivier (born July 2, 1783 in Dessau , † March 3, 1848 in Berlin ) was a German painter of Classicism and Romanticism .

Life

Olivier was the son of the pedagogue Ferdinand Olivier the Elder. Ä. and his wife, the opera singer Louise Neidhart . The brothers Ferdinand Olivier and Friedrich Olivier also became known as painters.

Like his brothers, Olivier enjoyed his first artistic lessons with Karl Wilhelm Kolbe and Johann Christian Haldenwang between 1801 and 1802 . From 1801 Olivier also studied philology at the University of Leipzig . It is likely that he also took classes at the Academy of Arts there. On the occasion of the Academy exhibition of 1803, a work signed Olivie was shown among the students' works .

As early as 1804 he joined his brother Ferdinand, who went to Dresden . Three years later he followed his brother to Paris . There he copied u. a. in the Musée Napoleon works by Raffael .

In 1810 he returned from Paris and worked in Dessau until 1813. In that year he joined the German Legion as an officer . When the wars of liberation were over, Olivier went to Vienna to see his brother Ferdinand. During this time he earned his living with illustrations for some romantic magazines, mostly for the peace papers . Contemporaries rumored that Olivier was close to Dorothea Schlegel . The only thing that is certain is that they knew each other.

Back from Vienna, Olivier lived and worked in Dessau again. Since he was less and less able to make a living from his artistic work, the appointment to the economic council was a ray of hope. When he lost this position after a while, Olivier settled in Berlin. There he found a job as a drawing and language teacher.

Heinrich Olivier died on March 3, 1848 in Berlin at the age of 65.

Heinrich Olivier's artistic work is characterized by his tightrope walk between storm and stress on the one hand and romanticism on the other. Thematically, the work can be assigned to Romanticism; the style is clearly classical.

literature

• Constantin von Wurzbach : O'Livier, artist family . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 21st part. Imperial-Royal Court and State Printing Office, Vienna 1870, p. 57 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Franz Schnorr von Carolsfeld :  Olivier, Ferdinand von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1887, pp. 308-311. (Family item)
• Lisa Hackmann, Sylva van der Heyden: Olivier, Heinrich , in: Bénédicte Savoy, France Nerlich (ed.): Paris apprenticeship years. A lexicon for training German painters in the French capital. Volume 1: 1793-1843 , de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-029057-8 , pp. 217-218.

Web links

• Literature by and about Heinrich Olivier in the catalog of the German National Library