Hubert Maurer

Portrait of Hubert Maurer

Hubert Maurer: Johann Nepomuk; before April 1812 (with a note: On April 11, 1812 Professor Maurer venerated / made this painting by him / in memory of / a friend and student of Russ ).

Hubert Maurer (born June 10, 1738 in Röttgen (today part of Bonn), † December 10, 1818 in Vienna ) was a German painter , draftsman and drawing teacher at the Vienna Academy .

life and work

Initially, Maurer was a student of the Bavarian court painter Johann Georg Winter (* 1707; † 1770).

In 1762 Maurer continued his education at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He was there u. a. Student of the mentally ill sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt from around 1769/70 , who even wanted to murder him once in a fit of paranoia.

From 1772 to around 1776 he belonged to the first group of - provided with a pension - painters in Rome (see also Deutschrömer ), where he was also in contact with Anton Raphael Mengs .

From 1785 Maurer was a member, councilor and professor at the elementary drawing school of the Vienna Academy for 32 years.

At that time the Vienna Academy was the largest and most respected art school in Europe. The lessons mainly consisted of drawing lessons. Traditionally, the training was divided into three stages. One began with the drawing of template sheets, then followed the drawing from antiquities and finally drawing from the model. The professors and the directors of the individual schools had to prepare new template sheets every month.

Maurer produced at the academy a. a. systematic studies after masters of the Italian High Renaissance for the teaching material collection.

With their “soft style”, without sharp contours, Maurer's early antiquities still correspond entirely to the taste of the late baroque, but mark the beginning of early classicism at the Vienna Academy.

His numerous students include a. Karl Agricola , Johann Evangelist Scheffer von Leonhardshoff , Moritz Michael Daffinger (from 1801 to 1805), Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller , Anton Spreng , Laurenz Herr (* 1787; † around 1850) from 1799 (at the age of 12!), Georg Tömiger , Karl Ruß , Wilhelm August Rieder , Kilian Ponheimer , Joseph Stöber (* 1768; † 1852), Peter Fendi , Eustatie Altini (1772-1815), Johann Baptist Lampi II (* 1775; † 1837), Friedrich von Amerling and Johann Michael Sattler ( from 1813 to 1815; Sattler was a friend and biographer of Maurer and in 1816 married Anna Maria Kittenberger, Maurer's foster daughter).

In 1972, Hubert-Maurer-Strasse was named after him in the Lengsdorf district of Bonn .

Works

(no claim to completeness)

• The altarpiece “God the Father in the Clouds” in the Viennese collegiate church “To the Holy Cross” is by Hubert Maurer.
• Side altar paintings in the parish church Maria Schnee, Wiener Neudorf . Left: Representations of the Doctors of the Church Ambrose, Augustine, Hieronymus and Pope Gregory the Great, above the Lamb of God on a book closed with seven seals; right: The dying Saint Theresa with the apostles Peter and Paul. The facial features of Saint Theresa represent Maria Theresa , the cardinal's patroness.
• Castle chapel of the Vienna Hofburg : “Marriage of Saint Catherine with the Child Jesus” (picture on the right side altar).
• Parish church Kalksburg : High altar painting "Saint Peter".
• possibly also the side altar paintings “Maria with Saints” and “Saints Athanasius and Christophorus” in the parish church Atzgersdorf .
• Altarpiece in the parish church for the "Visitation of Mary", Zwittau in Moravia, 1785. (The two side altars were painted in 1797 by Maurer's pupil Georg Tömiger under Maurer's supervision).
• Altarpiece "Stoning of Saint Stephen" in the Church of Saint Stephen the Martyr ("Szent István első vértanú", not King Stefan!) In Pápa ( Veszprém County ), Hungary, created in 1785.
• Altarpiece "Ascension of Christ" in the Catholic town church of Balmazújváros , Hungary.
• Altarpiece "Virgin Mary" in the Catholic Church of Gyula , Hungary.
• “Circe and Odysseus”, around 1785, unsigned, not dated, oil on canvas, frame: 144 × 111 cm. (Wien Museum, inv.no.73.001)
• “Mary and the baby Jesus, surrounded by angels”, pen and brush in gray, heightened with white; before 1798. (First draft for the altarpiece for the church "zu den Neun Chören der Engel" [former Jesuit church] in Vienna, which was executed in 1798 by Johann Georg Däringer (1759–1809) under the supervision of Maurer. Old reverse with pen and pencil ( by hand?) inscribed: "Hubert Maurer").
• In the Piermarini Hall of the Palazzo Accademico in Mantua there are three portrait paintings by Maurer from 1770: of Empress Maria Theresa , her husband Franz I Stephan of Lorraine and her son, Emperor Joseph II.

Note: A research project at the Vienna Academy "Hand Drawings of German and Austrian Romanticism" under the direction of Dr. Robert Wagner came a. a. to the realization that some of the traces of late Renaissance Italian masters by Leopold Kupelwieser in the Kupferstichkabinett show strong similarities with Maurer's works and that some previous attributions of both are therefore in question.

• 

  Nude from the back, 1790. Chalk on paper

• 

  Portrait of an elegant lady; Oil on canvas

• 

  Emperor Joseph II

• 

  Circe and Odysseus

• 

  The mystical marriage of Saint Catherine. Oil on canvas.

literature

• Hans Rudolf Füßli , author of the “History of Fine Arts in Vienna” and other art history reference works, wrote a biography about bricklayers.
• Educational history: Hubert Maurer Historienmahler and Prof. der Angewandte in W. In: Vaterländische Blätter für den Österreichische Kaiserstaat, 1810, Vol. 2, No. 37/38, p. 311 ff., Continuation and resolution p. 323 ff.
• Johann Michael Sattler: Life story of Hubert Maurer once Kaiserl. Royal academic councilor, professor and member of the united fine arts in Vienna based on oral narratives, original essays and notes, together with the list of his pictures, his portrait and the view of his birthplace , Vienna: Schrämbl, 1819.
• Constantin von Wurzbach : Maurer, Hubert . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 17th part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1867, pp. 140–149 ( digitized version ).
• Bettina Hagen: Antiquity in Vienna. The Academy and Classicism around 1800. An exhibition by the Gemäldegalerie of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from November 27, 2002 to March 9, 2003 and the Winckelmann Society in the Winckelmann Museum Stendal from May 11 to July 27, 2003 , Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2002, ISBN 3-8053-3056-1 .
• Michael Krapf, in: History of Fine Arts in Austria; Volume 5: 19th century , Ed .: G. Frodl, 2002, p. 335 f.
• Herbert Weffer: From the life of the painter Hubert Maurer from Röttgen , in: Die Laterne, 30. Jg., H. 1, 2003, publisher: West German Society for Family Studies eV, district group Bonn.

Web links

Commons : Hubert Maurer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files