Hieronymus Hess

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hieronymus Hess (born April 15, 1799 in Basel ; † June 8, 1850 there ) was a Swiss draftsman and painter during the first half of the 19th century. He is particularly known for his time-critical caricatures and templates for Zizenhausen terracottas .

life and work

Hieronymus Hess came from a petty bourgeois family in Basel with no artistic background. After training as a flat painter, he went to the public drawing school and, until 1817, also apprenticed to the painter Maximilian Neustück . The artist and publisher Peter Birmann commissioned him in 1817 to make copies of the frescoes by Hans Holbein the Younger, which had been rediscovered in Basel's town hall , admired the Hess. Thanks to relationships with his employer and a scholarship, he was able to work and study in Naples and Rome from 1819 to 1823, where he came into contact with Joseph Anton Koch and Bertel Thorvaldsen and the Nazarenes , who had a lasting influence on his style. 1825–1826 followed an engagement in Nuremberg, where Hess met Ludwig Richter , then he settled permanently in Basel and married in 1828. Hess taught as a drawing teacher from 1831–1835. His students included the later sculptor Ferdinand Schlöth , who modeled him full-length in plaster in 1843. As an artist, he produced lithographs based on Hans Holbein's passion tablets, glass paintings, illustrations for the Basler Neujahrsblätter and Martin Disteli's Swiss picture calendar . The important templates for the Zizenhausen terracottas produced by Anton Sohn and sold through the art dealer JR Brenner in Basel were supplied by Hess from 1828–1834. In 1839 he painted the Basler Totentanz in 40 individual pictures on behalf of the publisher Hasler , to which he added 4 new motifs. Among them is the picture The Death to the Painter , in which Hess portrayed himself.

His high-quality, romantically inspired drawings, watercolors, prints and paintings show genre scenes, histories, allegories, portraits and caricatures of political, anti-clerical and social content. In the latter, Hess' disenchantment with the artistically not very open-minded Basel society was reflected. As pictorial documents for the restoration and regeneration period in Basel, his works are of historical significance.

gallery

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stefan Hess , Tomas Lochman (ed.): Classical beauty and patriotic heroism. The Basel sculptor Ferdinand Schlöth (1818–1891). Basel 2004, p. 132f.
  2. ^ Heinrich Sarasin-Koechlin: Hieronymus Hess unknown marginal drawings. In: Bulletin of the Swiss Bibliophile Society, B. 1, Issue 3, 1944, p. 107

literature

Web links

Commons : Hieronymus Hess  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Hess, Hieronymus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss painter, draftsman and caricaturist
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1799
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel
DATE OF DEATH June 8, 1850
Place of death Basel