Jakob Schlesinger

Self-Portrait (1810)

The Heidelberg chemist Leopold Gmelin and his wife (around 1820)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1831)

Jakob Schlesinger also Johann Jakob Schlesinger (born January 13, 1792 in Worms , † May 12, 1855 in Berlin ) was a German painter and restorer .

Live and act

Johann Jakob Schlesinger was born as the son of the painter Johann Adam Schlesinger (1759–1829) and his wife Catharina Barbara b. Becker born. The father, also a renowned painter, came from Ebertsheim , the mother from Grünstadt . The couple lived for some time in Worms, where their son Johann Jakob was born. The family soon moved to Grünstadt. The boy grew up there and received his first artistic training from his father, who was very well known in the region, probably also from his uncle (father's brother) Johann Schlesinger (1768–1840), who was also living here .

From 1809 to 1816 Johann Jakob Schlesinger attended the University of Heidelberg and then continued his education in Mannheim and Munich . According to his matriculation entry, he studied "history painting" at the Academy of Fine Arts in the Bavarian capital from May 12, 1819 . However, because of an eye disease , he had to interrupt his studies for three years.

Schlesinger developed a particular talent for restoring paintings. In this field he acquired an important reputation; in particular he devoted himself to the old German school. At first he worked mainly for the brothers Sulpiz and Melchior Boisserée in Heidelberg; In 1822 he got a job as professor and general restorer at the royal museums in Berlin.

Jakob Schlesinger was not only a good painter, but also an excellent copyist with a penchant for works from the 16th century. So he traveled to Dresden in 1821 and reproduced Raphael's Sistine Madonna for the Speyer Cathedral there . In 1834 he lithographed the heads of St. Barbara and the Pope shown in this picture separately for the Kunstverein in Karlsruhe. Landscape portraits as well as pieces of fruit and flowers are known of him, albeit in an academically cool manner, but extremely carefully worked out. In addition to painting, Schlesinger was also active in the art of lithography , which was currently flourishing strongly, in other words, lithography , for which the motifs had to be reversed into a stone slab which then served as a printing block.

The best-known painting by Jakob Schlesinger at present is his Hegel portrait shown here, which has been reproduced many times and is also available as a print. The art historian Annik Pietsch assesses it as follows:

“The painter and restorer Jakob Schlesinger portrayed the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in 1831 shortly before his death. In this surprisingly close-up, undisguised, vivid portrait, Schlesinger concisely describes the physiognomy and character of Hegel. The portrait, which Maria Hegel described as “excellently successful”, shows, in addition to a type of composition that was unusual for the time, above all an unusual technical realization of the incarnate . In comparison to the works of his Berlin contemporaries, the separation of light and dark and color in the composition, the lively play of colors, the three-dimensional modeling of the paint and the visualization of the manufacturing process are particularly striking ... "

- Annik Pietsch on Schlesiger's portrait of Hegel

Jakob Schlesinger was married to Charlotte Köster, the sister of the painter Christian Philipp Koester .

literature

• Franz Vallentin:  Schlesinger, Jacob . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 54, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1908, p. 41.
• Schlesinger, Jakob . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 30 : Scheffel – Siemerding . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1936, p. 105 .
• Irmgard Wirth: Berlin painting in the 19th century . Siedler, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-572-10011-9 , p. 154.
• Viktor Carl: Lexicon of Palatinate personalities . 3. Edition. Hennig, Edenkoben 2004, ISBN 3-9804668-5-X .
• Walter Lampert: 1100 years of Grünstadt. A home book . City administration Grünstadt, Grünstadt 1975, p. 383/384.
• Annik Pietsch: The "lackluster soul scent" of meat color. Schlesinger's portrait of Hegel . In: Daniela Bohde , Mechthild Fend (ed.): Neither skin nor flesh. The incarnate in art history (= New Frankfurt Research on Art 3). Verlag Gebr. Mann, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-7861-2545-7 , pp. 133-158.
• Susanna Partsch: Schlesinger, Jakob . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 102, de Gruyter, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-11-023268-4 , p. 9.

Web links

Commons : Jakob Schlesinger  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Description of the "Sistine Madonna" by Jakob Schlesinger, from "Morgenblatt für educated estates" , seventeenth year, 1823, in 2 parts, page 633 u. 644 (just click on the text in each case).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jakob Schlesinger's matriculation entry at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.
2. ↑ Annik Pietsch: The "lackluster soul fragrance" of flesh color - Schlesinger's Hegel portrait , on uni-frankfurt.de. ( Memento from June 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
3. ^ Portrait of Koester, painted by his brother-in-law Jakob Schlesinger, on uni-heidelberg.de. ( Memento from January 3, 2005 in the Internet Archive )