Henry Knight

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Henry Ritter in the friendship gallery of individual portraits of the Düsseldorf painting students and their friends by Friedrich Boser

Henry Ritter (born May 24, 1816 in Montreal , † December 21, 1853 in Düsseldorf ) was a German - Canadian painter and illustrator at the Düsseldorf School of Painting .

Artistic career

News of the Battle of Leipzig , pencil drawing, 1839
The downsides of the Düsseldorf painters, along with shortened views of their last achievements , title page, 1845

Ritter was born in Montreal to a Hanoverian officer and an Englishwoman in British service . Orphaned at an early age, he came to live with his uncle in Hamburg . After a short commercial apprenticeship (1832), Ritter received his first painting lessons from the Hamburg portrait painters Heinrich Jacob Aldenrath and Friedrich Carl Gröger . In 1833 he attended the Sunday school of the art academy professor Ernst Carl Thelott in Düsseldorf . From 1836 to 1847 he was a student at the Düsseldorf Art Academy , in the classes of Karl Ferdinand Sohn (1836/37, 2nd class) and Wilhelm von Schadow (1838/39, 1st class). From 1840 to 1847 he belonged to the master class and had his own studio in the academy building . From 1837 to 1838 he had taken private lessons from Rudolf Jordan , who became his close friend and shared with the knight the preference for the environment of seamen and fishermen, which they recorded in study sheets and genre pictures while traveling to the North Sea coast . A study trip took him to England and Scotland in 1839. In 1842 he married Ermina Anna Windgassen from Düsseldorf, daughter of the Vilich surveyor Johann Wilhelm Windgassen, who gave birth to two daughters, Alice and Betsy. In 1848, the poet Ferdinand Freiligrath lived in his house at Windschlag 275 (today Oststrasse) in Düsseldorf , who wrote the poem Die Todten to the living during this time . Because of an illness ("nerve fever") Ritter moved to Seligenthal in the Bergisches Land in 1848 , but returned to Düsseldorf in 1852, where he died on December 21, 1853 at the age of 37. Knight's artistic legacy went to Ferdinand Fagerlin , who also became a genre painter for coastal motifs. Fagerlin married Ritter's sister-in-law Alice Windgassen in the late 1850s and took over Ritter’s studio and his estate.

From 1849 until his death, Ritter was an active member of the artists' association Malkasten . From 1844 he had also belonged to the circle of the Malkasten predecessor Crignic , a democratically -minded artists' association that wanted independence from the academy and whose strange name contained the first letters of the family names of its founding members: Gustav Jacob Canton , Henry Ritter, Rudolf Jordan, Hans Fredrik Gude , Rudolf von Normann , Frederik Nicolai Jensen and Wilhelm Camphausen .

In 1845, together with Camphausen, Ritter illustrated the publication Schattenseiten der Düsseldorfer Maler, along with shortened views of their last achievements , in which 19 individual portraits of Düsseldorf painters are shown in their studios . The illustrations were engraved in the Wilhelm Severin lithography facility, Steinweg 217 in Düsseldorf. The work was brought out by three publishers, Hering & Remington in England, Goupil & Vibert in France and the Düsseldorf book and art dealer Julius Buddeus .

From 1847 on, Ritter supplied illustrations for the satirical magazine Düsseldorfer Mondhefte , which the painter Lorenz Clasen published until the end of 1849. In 1849 Ritter published - also with Buddeus - the work The Political Struwwelpeter. An attempt at Germany's unification; Dedicated to the German Michel , a collection of twelve colored plates. This work of pictures and verses to stories about various art figures that Ritter created based on the model of the book Der Struwwelpeter , published in 1845 , deals with the political situation during the German Revolution of 1848/49 . From 1851 to 1853, Ritter was regularly represented with his illustrations in the Düsseldorf artist albums published by Wolfgang Müller von Königswinter .

In the tradition of Jordan, Ritter developed a great interest in ethnography . This was not only expressed in relation to his numerous depictions of the life of seafarers and fishermen, for example in the painting Der drowned Fisherman's Son (pilot's son) , created in 1844 , the elements of which were thoroughly prepared through detailed studies aimed at authenticity. It is also revealed with regard to the Indian motif , which was particularly fascinating for Europeans in the 19th century, for example in the picture The Prairie Fire from 1851 . One of his drawings shows how he took part in the birthday party of the Belgian painter Auguste Chauvin in a disguise in 1838 , alluding to his Canadian origins with Indian costume and headdress, similar to a character from the novel The Last of the Mohicans . Adelbert von Chamisso's poem Speech of the old warrior Bunte-Schlange in the Council of the Creek Indians illustrated knights with a drawing that shows a group of Indians advising and smoking in detailed clothing and headdresses. Images showing Ritter himself can also be found on a sheet in the publication Schattenseiten der Düsseldorfer Maler (1844/45, here together with his two daughters in the Düsseldorf studio) and in Friedrich Boser's friendship gallery of 26 individual portraits from the Düsseldorf School of Painting and their friends Picture show by the Düsseldorf artists in the gallery of the academy (1840–1853).

Works (selection)

The political troubled Peter , 1849
Middy's Sermon , 1853
  • News of the battle near Leipzig , 1839
  • The braggart in the sailors' bar , 1841
  • Shipwreck (storm on the coast) , 1841, art collection of the University of Göttingen
  • Marriage proposal in Normandy , 1842
  • Marriage proposal (Ax Foundation)
  • On the coast
  • Prayer on the emigrant ship
  • The news of death
  • summer
  • spring
  • Fight against smugglers on the English coast
  • The English prisoners
  • Angler and other illustrations in the book Washington Irving . Selection from his writings , published by Brockhaus, Leipzig 1856
  • The drowned fisherman's son (pilot's son) , 1844
  • The Poacher , 1845–1847
  • The Political Struwwelpeter , twelve colored panels, 1849
  • The prairie fire , 1851
  • October , 1851
  • Englishman , 1852
  • The letter to the family , 1852
  • Middy's Sermon , 1853
  • Farewell , 1853

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wend von Kalnein : The Düsseldorf School of Painting . Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1979, ISBN 3-8053-0409-9 , p. 432
  2. ↑ Horst Heidermann : Unter Linden on the Rhine - the resting places of the Wuppertal in Bonn and Bad Godesberg . In: History in Wuppertal . 17th year (2008), p. 68 f. ( PDF ( Memento of the original from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. ) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bgv-wuppertal.de
  3. ↑ Irene Markowitz: Poor painter - painter prince. Artist and society. Düsseldorf 1819–1918 . Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf, 1980, p. 72
  4. ^ Wilhelm Buchner: Ferdinand Freiligrath. A poet's life in letters . Volume II, Verlag Moritz Schauenburg, Lahr 1881, p. 211 ( digitized version )
  5. ↑ See also: Title page of the book of caricatures and minutes of the Compositionsverein Crignic , washed pencil drawing by Wilhelm Camphausen, 1844. In: Michael Puls: “… and a modeled” - sculpture in the circle of the Düsseldorf painting school . In: Bettina Baumgärtel (Hrsg.): The Düsseldorf School of Painting and its international impact 1819–1918 . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86568-702-9 , p. 335, Fig. 8
  6. ↑ cover of dark side of the Düsseldorf, along with shortened views of their recent achievements , lithography in the portal harvardartmuseums.org , accessed on August 22, 2013
  7. ↑ Severin, Wilh., Owner of a lithographic establishment, Steinweg 217 , in address calendar and housing advertisements for the city of Düsseldorf and the suburbs, 1847, p. 141
  8. ^ Camilla G. Kaul: Friedrich Barbarossa in Kyffhäuser. Images of a national myth in the 19th century . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-16906-0 , p. 242 ( online )
  9. ↑ For example, illustration on p. 13 of the first edition of the Düsseldorfer Monatshefte : A wife armed with a frying pan bites her husband on the arm ( digitized version ).
  10. ^ Digital collections of the Düsseldorf School of Painting (DFG) in the portal of the University and State Library Düsseldorf : Henry Ritter: Derpolit Struwwelpeter. An attempt at Germany's unification; dedicated to the German Michel . Düsseldorf: Buddeus; Düsseldorf: Voss; 1849
  11. ^ First sheet from The Political Struwwelpeter , drawn in 1848 , accessed on the portal digital.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de on August 22, 2013
  12. ↑ Interpretation of the first sheet of The Political Struwwelpeter in the dhm.de portal of the German Historical Museum , accessed on August 22, 2013
  13. ↑ Wend von Kalnein, p. 432
  14. ↑ Bettina Baumgärtel, Vol. 1, Fig. 10, p. 33
  15. ↑ Jutta Assel, Georg Jäger: Poems of Romanticism in marginal drawings with representations from the book German Seals and Marginal Drawings of German Artists , 2 volumes, Julius Buddeus publishing house, Düsseldorf 1849/50 , contribution from June 2010 in the goethezeitportal.de portal , accessed on 22. August 2013
  16. ↑ Bettina Baumgärtel, vol. 2, fig. 10 (p. 30) and catalog no. 38–15 (p. 67)
  17. ↑ Ritter, Henry - Der Aufschneider in der Sailor Bar , 1841 , page in the portal stiftung-volmer.de , accessed on August 22, 2013
  18. ↑ Provenance research Ritter, Henry on the picture Schiffbruch (Sturm an der Künste)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the portal badv.bund.de (Federal Office for Central Services and Property Issues ), last changed on January 30, 2013, accessed on August 22, 2013@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.badv.bund.de  
  19. ↑ Christian Scholl: Henry Ritter's Göttingen painting “Shipwreck” . In: Christian Scholl, Anne-Katrin Sors (Hrsg.): Academic rigor and artistic freedom. The paintings of the 19th century in the art collection of the University of Göttingen . Universitätsverlag Göttingen, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-86395-102-3 , p. 155 ff.
  20. ^ Henry Ritter: On the coast (26 x 31.5 cm) , accessed on the portal kunsthaus-kaarst.de on August 22, 2013
  21. ↑ Digital version of the University and State Library Düsseldorf
  22. ↑ October , in Düsseldorf artist album, 1st year, 1851
  23. ↑ Engländer , in Düsseldorf artist album, 2nd year, 1852
  24. ^ Henry Ritter , page in the van-ham.com portal , accessed on August 22, 2013
  25. ^ Lebe Wohl , in Düsseldorf artist album, 3rd year, 1853

Web links

Commons : Henry Ritter  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Knight, henry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Canadian painter
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1816
PLACE OF BIRTH Montreal
DATE OF DEATH December 21, 1853
Place of death Dusseldorf