Jakob Lehnen

Jacob Lehnen in his studio, painting "Still Life with a Dead Fox" , illustration by Wilhelm Camphausen in the artist album Schattenseiten der Düsseldorfer Maler , 1845

Jakob Lehnen , also Jacob Lehnen (born January 17, 1803 in Hinterweiler in the Eifel , † September 25, 1847 in Koblenz ), was a German still life painter from the Düsseldorf School .

Life

Jakob Lehnen was born in Hinterweiler in 1803 as one of ten children. His parents, Johann Lehnen and Anna Margaretha Bäcker (Becker), were wealthy farmers. After attending the Royal High School in Koblenz and receiving early support from the painter and drawing teacher Konrad Zick , he went to the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1823 , where he became a student of Peter von Cornelius and Wilhelm von Schadow . In Düsseldorf he was one of the friends of the family of Johann Georg Müller and Wolfgang Müller von Königswinter . In 1826, the painter Wilhelm Kaulbach was dismissed from the Düsseldorf Academy for physical abuse that he had committed against Lehnen. In 1829 he made his debut at an exhibition in Düsseldorf with the picture Der Heringfresser , a copy after Eduard Pistorius , later he mainly presented still lifes. In 1838 Lehnen moved to Koblenz, where he was Carnival Prince in the same year and died of a stroke in 1847. Posthumously, the artists' association Malkasten, founded in 1848, accepted him as an honorary member.

Like his brothers Johann (* 1806) and Johann Nicolas (* 1816), Lehnen was short of stature . A medical study published in 1830 found a "poor genital development" and a lack of sexual tendencies. His height of 32 Rhenish inches (about 85 cm), which has not increased since the age of four, earned him the nickname "painter dwarf". Around 1840 he was one of the most famous Rhenish still life painters. The painters Adolph Schroedter and Jakob Becker created portraits of Lehnen. Friedrich Boser painted it in 1842/1844 in the group picture The Bird Shooting by the Düsseldorf artists in the Grafenberg Forest , Wilhelm Camphausen drew it in the studio on the Staffel. The writer Otto Brües portrayed Lehnen as a “poison dwarf” in one of his novels.

plant

Jakob Lehnen belongs to the Düsseldorf School of Painting , from which Anton Greven and Johann Wilhelm Preyer gained notoriety as other small painters. Lehnen specialized in fruit, breakfast and hunting still lifes. He was represented in the Düsseldorf Gallery , which the Düsseldorf School of Painting presented in New York City in the middle of the 19th century . Works by him are in the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf and the Düsseldorf City Museum . Thieme-Becker also names the National Gallery Berlin with three works, the Königsberg City Museum and the Liège Museum; Bénézit names the work The Earthly Paradise in the Volmer Collection of the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal.

literature

• Johann Peter Heyman (n): Observation of a strange inhibition in physical development in the course of childhood, in several members of a family. In: Ludwig Friedrich von Froriep (ed.): Notes from the field of natural science and medicine. No. 617 (November 1830), pp. 1 ff. ( Biodiversitylibrary.org ).
• Lean, Jacob. In: Friedrich von Boetticher: painter works of the 19th century. Contribution to art history. Volume 1/2, sheets 31–61: Heideck – Mayer, Louis. Ms. v. Boetticher's Verlag, Dresden 1895, p. 827 ( archive.org ).
• Leaning, Jakob . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 22 : Krügner – Leitch . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1928, p. 584-585 .
• Heinrich Appel: Jakob Lehnen (1803–1847) - The dwarf painter from Hinterweiler. In: Eifeljahrbuch , 1965, pp. 44–46.
• Emmanuel Bénézit : Dictionary of Artists. Gründ, Paris 2006, ISBN 2-7000-3078-8 , Volume 8, p. 762 (English).
• Gerd Bayer: Jakob Lehnen, the “painter dwarf”. Rhein-Mosel-Verlag, Zell / Mosel 2015, ISBN 978-3-89801-077-1 ( table of contents ).
• Petra Willems: The fate of a painter dwarf. In: Trierischer Volksfreund . November 11, 2015 (article about the monograph by Gerd Bayer, volksfreund.de ).

Web links

• Jakob Lehnen , data sheet in portal rkd.nl ( Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie )
• Jakob Lehnen , Auction Results on the Portal artnet .de
• Jacob Lehnen , engraving after a drawing by Wilhelm Camphausen

Individual evidence

1. ^ Bettina Baumgärtel : Chronicle of the Düsseldorf School of Painting 1815–2011. In: Bettina Baumgärtel (Hrsg.): The Düsseldorf School of Painting and its international impact 1819–1918. Volume 1, Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86568-702-9 , p. 355.
2. ^ Johann Josef Scotti : The Düsseldorf painter school, or art academy in the years 1834, 1835 and 1836, and also before and after . Schreiner, Düsseldorf 183, p. 132, No. 100 ( digitized version )
3. ↑ Bettina Baumgärtel : The artists' association Malkasten. In: Bettina Baumgärtel (Ed.): Volume 2, p. 73 (Cat. No. 48-2)
4. ↑ Bettina Baumgärtel: The Düsseldorf artists' bird shooting in the Grafenberg Forest, 1844. In: Bettina Baumgärtel (Ed.): Volume 2, p. 42
5. ↑ Bettina Baumgärtel: Studio scenes: Wilhelm Camphausen: The shady sides of the Düsseldorf painters, along with shortened views of their last achievements, 1845/46. In: Bettina Baumgärtel (Ed.): Volume 2, p. 66 (cat. No. 38-11)
6. ^ Gregor Brand: Jakob Lehnen - painter from Hinterweiler. In: Eifelzeitung. March 21, 2017 ( eifelzeitung.de , accessed April 8, 2017).