Heinrich Theodor Wehle

Heinrich Theodor Wehle (in Upper Sorbian Hendrich Božidar Wjela , known in Russia as Генрих Теодор Веле , scientific transliteration Genrich Teodor Vele ; born March 7, 1778 in Förstgen , Oberlausitz ; † January 1, 1805 in Bautzen ) was a German-Sorbian landscape painter , draftsman and erasers . Despite his short creative period, he is considered one of the most important landscape painters of his time.

Life

Sieglitzer Berg on the banks of the Elbe , colored aquatint, 1800.

Wehle was born on March 7, 1778 in Förstgen as the youngest son of the Sorbian pastor Johann Wehle there. His mother Rahel Dorothea Wehle was the daughter of the Görlitz lawyer and treasurer Heinrich Gottlob Rieschke. In 1782 the family moved to Kreba , five kilometers away , after Johann Wehle took over the parish there. Since his childhood Heinrich Theodor Wehle was shaped by the Upper Lusatian heath and pond landscape, which he depicted in some of his early works.

Wehle received his first training around 1790 at the Görlitz drawing school and in high school with the landscape painter Christoph Nathe (1753-1806). Then he visited in 1793, the Academy of Fine Arts Dresden , where he at Giovanni Battista Casanova , the historical subjects and Johann Christian Klengel studied landscape painting. Even there he became known as a good landscape painter and was therefore appointed as a draftsman at the Chalkographic Society in Dessau in 1799 . Here it was believed that the ingenious Wehle had “a Claude Lorrain of landscape art” .

Wehle's grave at the church in Kreba ; in the background on the right his father's tombstone

Since Wehle was an enthusiastic rider, he sold his drawings in Dessau for only a few thalers in order to have money for the horse rental company. In 1801, at the invitation of the new Tsar Alexander I, he came to Russia to Marie-Gabriel-Florent-Auguste de Choiseul-Gouffier at the Russian Art Academy . He was soon commissioned to travel to the Russian regions of Asia with the natural scientist Count Apollos Mussin-Pushkin (1760–1805) and to document the exotic landscapes with drawings. They arrived in Georgia and the Caucasus in February 1802 . They traveled on to Persia .

However, Wehle was physically unable to cope with the exertions of the trip, which is why he had to decide to break off the trip and return to Germany. On the way back he died in Bautzen on New Year's Day 1805 at the age of only 26. He was buried in the cemetery of his hometown Kreba next to his father's grave. On March 7, 1978, on the occasion of his 200th birthday, a plaque was unveiled at the rectory.

Even during his lifetime, some people described Wehle as a genius, to whose fame Johann Wolfgang von Goethe also contributed. Today some people like to compare him to Caspar David Friedrich .

Works (selection)

• Ideas drawn by Wehle, worked in aquatint by Christian Haldenwang , Tauchnitz publishing house, Leipzig 1800
• Ideas from the field of fine arts for friends and confidants of nature , Tauchnitz publishing house, Leipzig 1804

Honors

• In Bautzen there is Heinrich-Theodor-Wehle-Straße .

literature

• Georg Kaspar Nagler : New general artist lexicon , 1851 ( digitized version with catalog of works)
• Hermann Arthur Lier:  Wehle, Heinrich Theodor . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 55, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1910, p. 358 f.
• Editha Holm: Heinrich Theodor Wehle, a "real, excellent genius", drawings from an art trip to the Caucasian governorship . In: Yearbook of the Hamburger Kunstsammlungen , Volume VI, Pages 85-108, Hamburg 1961
• Eberhard Kahle: Heinrich Theodor Wehle , Städtische Kunstsammlungen Görlitz with the Ministry of Culture of the GDR, Bautzen 1978
• Alfred Krautz: The adventurous journey of the painter Heinrich Theodor Wehle from the Spree to the Caucasus , Domowina-Verlag, Bautzen 1992, ISBN 3742005146 and ISBN 9783742005144
• Christina Bogusz, Marius Winzeler: In the realm of beautiful, wild nature. The landscape draftsman Heinrich Theodor Wehle 1778–1805 . On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Heinrich Theodor Wehle's death on the exhibitions in the Sorbian Museum Bautzen (2005), in the Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie Dessau (2005/06) and in the Kulturhistorisches Museum Görlitz (2006), Domowina-Verlag, Bautzen 2005, ISBN 3742020269 resp. ISBN 9783742020260
• Sophie Natuschke , Florian Bielefeldt: In the Caucasus. In the footsteps of Heinrich Theodor Wehle . Results of the "Heinrich-Theodor-Wehle Stipendium" of the Art Foundation of Saxony-Anhalt, 2007

Web links

Commons : Heinrich Theodor Wehle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Heinrich Theodor Wehle in the catalog of the German National Library
• Examples of works on artnet