Jacob Wilhelm Mechau
Jacob Wilhelm Mechau , (born January 16, 1745 in Leipzig , † March 14, 1808 in Dresden ), was a German painter , draftsman and etcher . Like few contemporaries, he stands for the transition from classicism to early romanticism .
life and work
Mechau was born in Leipzig as the son of the council accountant Daniel Simon Mechau and Johanna Justina Mechau. The painter Benjamin Calau , from whom he received his first ideas, also lived in his parents' house . First he went to Berlin, where he by Bernhard Rode was trained for three years in the private drawing room, but above all by the Director of the Academy of Arts, Blaise Nicolas Le Sueur his pupil (1716-1783), and Paul Joseph Bardou received instruction .
Afterwards (1770) Mechau turned to Dresden to study at the Dresden Art Academy , v. a. with its first director Giovanni Battista Casanova to perfect his skills. In this context Mechau got to know the somewhat younger Heinrich Friedrich Füger . He was to stay there for almost four years before returning to Leipzig.
In this city with its numerous publishing houses, he received many orders for drawings (some of which were engraved by Christian Gottlieb Geyser ) and book illustrations and, like Fügner, took drawing lessons from Oeser . In 1775, thanks to the intercession of Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn , Mechau became a member of the Leipzig Academy for Painting .
In September 1776, almost exactly between Winckelmann's death and Goethe's Grand Tour , he traveled to Italy (Rome) with his friend Füger. Here he decided on landscape painting, in which he should bring it to a great mastery. His role models were Claude Lorrain and Jakob Philipp Hackert . During this time he created z. B. the watercolor drawing Resting Country People at the Colosseum in Rome (around 1777) and the oil painting Campagne landscape with waterfall (1778). This stay also lasted about four years, and Mechau returned to Leipzig and Dresden. Mechau stayed there for around 10 years and then went back to Italy in 1790, as he was denied a permanent position at the Dresden Academy.
In addition to other works, the well-known series of etchings from 72 plates was created in the following time (1792–1798), painterly etched prospectuses from Italy, drawn from nature and etched in Rome together with Johann Christian Reinhart , whom he had met in Dresden, and Albert Christoph Dies . It was published by Johann Friedrich Frauenholz in Nuremberg in 1799 and showed not only views of Rome and Tivoli but also lesser-known views of Subiaco and Lake Albano .
The exile of Pope Pius VI. Due to the French occupation in 1798, Mechau had the opportunity to return to Germany for the last time, this time to Dresden, where he stayed until the end of his life and mainly created motifs with Saxon landscapes. His series of seven landscapes, exhibited in 1807, represents the transition to Romanticism.
Appreciation
In 1801 Philipp Otto Runge described the artist as the most important landscape painter of his time.
literature
- Anke Fröhlich: "... he followed his own genius ...": the landscape painter Jakob Wilhelm Mechau ( 1745-1808 ) on his 200th birthday , in: Dresdener Kunstblätter Bd. 52, Munich 2008, ISSN 0418-0615
- Christina Schwichtenberg-Winkler: The "Collection ou suite pittoresque de l'Italie dessinées d'après nature et gravées à l'eau forte a Rome par trois peintres allemands AC Dies, Charles Reinhart, Jacques Mechau", 1792 -98, 1799: that Picturesque and the Roman vedute around 1800 , Diss., Aachen 1992
- - d .: Mechau, Jacob Wilhelm . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1885, p. 152 f.
- Wolfgang Holler: Mechau, Jakob Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , p. 578 f. ( Digitized version ).
Web links
- Literature by and about Jacob Wilhelm Mechau in the catalog of the German National Library
- On the way to romance: discovering the landscape. Hamburger Abendblatt for the exhibition in the Hamburger Kunsthalle 2006
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mechau, Jacob Wilhelm |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Mechau, Jakob Wilhelm |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter, draftsman and etcher |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 16, 1745 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Leipzig |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 14, 1808 |
| Place of death | Dresden |