Johann Baptist Isenring

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Johann Baptist Isenring: The Königssee in Berchtesgaden , oil on wood. 1823
Peter Wilhelm Friedrich von Voigtländer (1812–1878), Austrian optician and photography pioneer. Daguerreotype by Johann Baptist Isenring around 1843 in the format 24.2 × 18.7 cm

Johann Baptist Isenring (born May 12, 1796 in Lütisburg ; † April 9, 1860 in St. Gallen ) was a Swiss landscape painter, printer and the first daguerreotypist in Switzerland.

Live and act

Johann Baptist Isenring completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter in Zurich . During his wanderings to Vienna and Munich (1816-17) he worked as a flat painter and gilder. Thanks to a scholarship from the Canton of St. Gallen, he was able to study landscape painting and aquatint at the Munich Art Academy in 1820 . In 1823 he returned to St. Gallen and self-published the 20- sheet aquatint series Thurgegenden from 1825-27 . He opened an art shop in St. Gallen in 1828 and began publishing his largest lithographic work in 1831, the collection of picturesque views of the strangest towns and places in Switzerland .

When he heard about the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839, he ordered a camera in Paris and thus became the first Swiss daguerreotype. In August 1840 he presented the world's first photographic exhibition in his studio with city views, reproductions of paintings and 38 portraits, for which he also had a four-page catalog printed. The exhibition was then shown in Zurich, Munich, Augsburg, Vienna and Stuttgart. In 1841 he opened a studio for heliography in Munich .

In 1841 he made the first colored daguerreotypes, for which he used a mixture of gum arabic and pigments . The colored powder was fixed with fine brushes on the sensitive surface of the daguerreotype by means of a heat treatment. The result was the first hand-colored photographs. He had this coloring technique for daguerreotypes, which he had invented, patented in the USA. He invested the proceeds from the eight-month assignment of the rights to this process in the Sonnenwagen , a photo studio on wheels with a built-in darkroom, which is considered the world's first such facility.

Use of six cameras in the studio of the traveling daguerreotypist JB Isenring in Stuttgart, advert in the Swabian Chronicle, May 1841

He was aware of the shortcoming of being able to produce only one-off pieces and began to try to reproduce as early as 1841. One possibility was the installation of several cameras in front of the object, whereby the exposure process was triggered in quick succession if only one photographer operated the equipment. This method was not only relatively expensive, but due to the position of the devices next to and on top of each other, the results do not completely agree.

From 1842–49 he was traveling as a traveling photographer in Switzerland and southern Germany. After that he mainly worked as a landscape painter and engraver. With a few exceptions, his photographic work is considered lost.

Web links

Commons : Johann Baptist Isenring  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Walter Binder: Isenring, Johann Baptist. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  2. ^ News from July . In: Ludwig von Schorn (Ed.): Kunstblatt . Cotta, Stuttgart 1841, p. 312 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ↑ Critique of Photography.
personal data
SURNAME Isenring, Johann Baptist
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Isenring, Johann Baptiste
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss landscape painter and Daguerre typist
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1796
PLACE OF BIRTH Luetisburg
DATE OF DEATH April 9, 1860
Place of death St. Gallen