Johann Eleazar Schenau
Johann Eleazar Schenau , actually Johann Eleazar Zeissig , (born November 7, 1737 in Großschönau , † August 23, 1806 in Dresden ) was a German painter and director of the Art Academy in Dresden .
Life
Schenau was born as the son of the destitute damask weaver Elias Zeissig and Anna Elisabeth, nee. Paul, born in Großschönau in the Electorate of Saxony . He and his five sisters were raised by their father and taught arithmetic, writing, reading and damask weaving. His talent for painting and drawing became apparent at an early age, so that at the age of twelve he was sent to Dresden, where he first earned money as a lawyer writer and also drew. Through the mediation of a student of Anton Raphael Mengs , he was accepted at the Dresden drawing school.
Here he received his training from Charles-François de Silvestre , the son of the director of the Dresden drawing school Louis de Silvestre . He was allowed to accompany Charles-François de Silvestre as a partner of Louis de Silvestre after the outbreak of the Seven Years' War in Paris , where he worked with Johann Georg Wille until 1770 and studied at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture . Here he made the acquaintance of leading French artists of his time, such as François Boucher , Gabriel François Doyen , Maurice Quentin de La Tour and Edmé Bouchardon ; he was particularly influenced by the works of Jean-Baptiste Greuzes . Schenau began to make copies of well-known works, among others by Antonio da Correggio , Guido Reni and Tizian , for his maintenance and to look for further fields of activity on the advice of the Saxon ambassador and patron General Fontenay. In the years that followed, he worked intensively on porcelain painting , which he got to know better in the porcelain factory in Sèvres , and drew for gold workers, copper engravers and carvers. At this time he gave up his family name Zeissig and renamed himself Schenau after his place of birth Schönau.
Through the influence of his mentor Charles-François de Silvestre, or his wife, who was the reader and confidante of the Dauphine Maria Josepha , Schenau was introduced to the French court, where he received numerous commissions from the Crown Princess of France and soon became one of the most respected genre painters in Paris belonged. Among other things, he made portraits of Maria Josepha and Madame de Pompadour .
After the end of the Seven Years' War, Schenau returned to Dresden in 1770. Through the intercession of Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn , he became a member of the Dresden Art Academy in the same year and three years later got the position of director of the drawing school of the porcelain factory in Meissen . In Meißen, he not only taught porcelain drawing students, but also designed new models himself.
In 1774 he became a professor of genre and portrait painting at the Dresden Art Academy. After Charles François Hutin's death in 1776 he became alternate director of the academy with Giovanni Battista Casanova and, after Casanova's death in 1795, sole director. His students included Christian Heinrich Becke , Friedrich Rehberg and Christian Leberecht Vogel , and his admirers included the writer August Gottlieb Meißner , who dedicated his work Alkibiades to him in 1781 . In 1796 Schenau resigned as director of the drawing school of the Porcelain Manufactory Meißen and devoted himself to teaching at the art academy in the following years.
When Schenau died in Dresden in 1806, he was given a stately grave in the local Johanniskirchhof . The 2.7 meter high grave monument created by Franz Pettrich comprises a triple stylobate encased Doric sandstone column , the upper third of which is surrounded by two medallions with relief figures and a palette with brushes. As a conclusion, Pettrich chose a wreathed urn on a stair-like capital extension. After the decision to secularise the cemetery, Schenau's bones and the tomb were transferred to the old cemetery in Großschönau at the instigation of his niece Marie Elisabeth Müller in September 1854.
Artistic creation
Schenau began his artistic career as a copyist for the old masters. In Paris he became acquainted with the French art theory of the time through personal acquaintances with painters of his time, but also through his studies at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. His work also reveals the influence of the Dutch minor masters and is reminiscent of works by Gerard Dous or Caspar Netscher , which were translated into the formal language of the 18th century. With Dutch painting, Schenau became known, among other things, during art studies in the Louvre in Paris .
Under the influence of his French friends Jean Siméon Chardin and especially Jean-Baptiste Greuze, he painted rococo- typical genre pictures and portrayed members of the electoral family in Dresden. Many of his drawings and paintings came on the market as copperplate reproductions even after his time in Paris. Schenau also published etchings of views from the area around Paris under the name of Daniel Heimlich.
During his time at the Dresden Art Academy, Schenau also turned to history painting and aroused people's hearts with his altarpiece for the Großschönau Church of the Resurrection of Christ in 1786, which subsequently even "produced a special little polemical literature". The main reason was differences of opinion between Schenau and Casanova about the artistic ideal of the time.
Although Schenau was one of the "influential mediators ... of French art of the second half of the 18th century in Saxony" and thus significantly shaped the Saxon art landscape in the 18th century, Schenau's works are largely unknown today and were already viewed as outdated in the 19th century . “He could never have served his students as a role model. Schenau had imagination and skill in composing, but his drawings are not infrequently incorrect, his figures lack true life and expression, and the coloring is bright, even in the shadows it is still glowing, ”criticized Georg Kaspar Nagler in the New General Artist Lexicon 1845, but credit the artist with the fact that even at the time of his death in 1806 “art was still caught up in the old fashion . He did not see the dawn of a better time breaking. In Schenau you only see the painter of French gallantry and conversation pieces. "
Many of his works are now considered lost or destroyed, such as Schenau's altarpiece in the Dresden Kreuzkirche Crucifixion of Christ , which he made from 1788 to 1792 and which contemporaries praised as “his most excellent painting in the historical field”. It was destroyed in the fire of the nave in 1897 and replaced by today's altarpiece by Anton Dietrich .
The majority of his surviving works are now in museums in Saxony. The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden own his works The Electoral Saxon Family (1772) and The Art Talk (1777) , among others . Many of Schenau's works are shown in the German Damask and Terrycloth Museum in his hometown Großschönau, which is located on Schenaustraße named after Schenau.
Works
Example: the art talk
The oil painting The Art Conversation from 1777 is an important work in Schenau's oeuvre . In the foreground on the right, the Saxon conference minister, art lover, patron and collector Thomas von Fritsch together with Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn, who since 1764 Saxon “General Director of the Arts, Art Academies and associated galleries and cabinets ”and Schenau had been appointed to the art academy. Both are engrossed in an art talk about a medal that Fritsch is holding in his hand. On the table between them, the allegorical figures of painting, sculpture, and poetry can be seen. In the background on the left, the painters Adrian Zingg (left), Schenau himself and Anton Graff are listening.
In his painting, Schenau exemplifies the understanding of the meaning and tasks of art in the Age of Enlightenment : the values of the works of art were to be recorded in a conversation with friends, the aim of the exchange was instruction and quiet pleasure.
Other works
- The double loss (1770)
- The Electoral Saxon Family (1772)
- Priam asks Achilles for Hector's body (1775)
- The Art Talk (1777)
- Married couple in the arbor (1785)
- Self-portrait (1785)
- Resurrection of Christ (1786)
- Crucifixion of Christ (1788–1792)
- Christ on the Mount of Olives (1795)
- Family Scene (1800)
- Signing the marriage contract (1802)
literature
- Schenau . In: Heinrich Keller (Ed.): Messages from all artists living in Dresden . Dyk, Leipzig 1789, pp. 143-155.
- Gottlieb Friedrich Otto: Lexicon of Upper Lusatian writers and artists . Volume 3, Dept. 1. Görlitz 1803, pp. 192-197.
- Georg Kaspar Nagler (ed.): New general artist lexicon . Volume 15. Fleischmann, Munich 1845, pp. 181-184.
- Moritz Wießner: The Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden . Dresden 1864, p. 56f.
- David Goldberg: Catalog to illustrate the public lectures on Johann Eleazar Schenau (Zeißig) . Richard Menzel, Zittau 1878.
- August Czischkowsky (Ed.): Contemporary and local history of Großschönau . Großschönau 1887, p. 643ff.
- Hyacinth Holland : Schenau . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 31, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1890, p. 36 f.
- Werner Schmidt: Johann Eleazar Zeissig, called Schenau. A contribution to the Saxon art history of the 18th century . Dissertation Heidelberg 1926
- Werner Schmidt: Schenau (aka Zeissig), Johann Eleazar . 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. 24-25 .
- H. Marx: "... to introduce good taste." For the 250th birthday of Johann Eleazar Zeissig, known as Schenau . In: Dresdner Kunstblätter 32, 1988, pp. 10-18.
- Brockhaus art . 2nd Edition. Brockhaus, Leipzig 2001, p. 1034.
- Anke Fröhlich: "Grace and sublime". The works of the Oberlausitz painter Johann Eleazar Zeissig, called Schenau (1737–1806) in the cultural history museum in Görlitz . In: Görlitzer Magazin 19, 2006, pp. 12–31.
- Anke Fröhlich: "... with his beautiful ideas and gentle brushes". The Dresden genre painter and academy director Johann Eleazar Zeissig, called Schenau . In: Dresdner Kunstblätter 51, 2007, pp. 180–196.
Web links
- Altarpiece Resurrection of Christ in Großschönau
- Kai Wenzel: Zeissig, Johann Eleazar . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .
Individual evidence
- ↑ According to the Großschönau baptismal register, however, he was baptized on August 23, 1734. See ADB, 36.
- ↑ The history of Großschönau incorrectly mentions 1768 as the beginning of membership and 1769 as the year of arrival in Dresden.
- ^ Hans Geller: Franz and Ferdinand Pettrich: Two Saxon sculptors from the classicism period . Ed .: Eberhard Hempel (= research on Saxon art history . Volume 8 ). Wolfgang Jess Verlag, Dresden 1955, p. 64, 92 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ ADB, p. 36.
- ↑ Saxon biography
- ^ New General Artist Lexicon , p. 183.
- ↑ Samuel Baur: General historical-biographical-literary concise dictionary of all strange people who died in the first decade of the nineteenth century . 2nd volume. Stettinsche Buchhandlung, Ulm 1816, p. 392.
- ↑ 1772 is sometimes given as the date of origin. See for example Hellmut Thomke, Martin Bircher, Wolfgang Proß : Helvetien und Deutschland . Rodophi, Amsterdam 1994, p. 270.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Schenau, Johann Eleazar |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Zeissig, Johann Eleazar |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter and draftsman |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 7, 1737 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Großschönau (Saxony) |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 23, 1806 |
| Place of death | Dresden |