Johann Heinrich Lips

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Johann Heinrich Lips, self-portrait

Johann Heinrich Lips (born April 29, 1758 in Kloten ; † May 5, 1817 in Zurich ) was a Swiss engraver.

Life

Johann Heinrich Lips was the son of Hans Ulrich Lips, a barber and surgeon and Elisabetha Kaufmann. He was supposed to learn his father's trade, but he was reluctant to do so. He was discovered and promoted as an artist through his private tutor, Leonhard Brennwald. Since he belonged to the rural population, he had to continue his education largely self-taught. Brennwald was also the one who put him in touch with the Zurich pastor and writer Johann Caspar Lavater . For his own collection of Physiognomic Fragments for the Promotion of Human Knowledge and Philanthropy , the latter relied on lifelike portraits, which required an attentive observer and a detailed drawing style. This teaching of physiognomics, which has been cultivated since ancient times, is about the attempt to infer a person's character from the appearance of a person. For this he could not fall back on the well-known draftsmen, as they often produced representational portraits. Lavater "did not even consider devoting the boys to art and educating himself". The parents are also convinced thanks to the apprenticeship wages of 100 florins. Lavater specifically instructs him to draw from both antiquity and nature at the same time. At the beginning of 1774 Lips was allowed to do a short internship in Winterthur zu Schellenberg. In 5 weeks he will be introduced to etching and etching, after which he will return to Kloten with the tools to educate himself from now on. Lips paints from ancient pictures, from known templates and from nature. And like all of Lavater's pupils, he went to Basel to see the copperplate engraver Christian von Mechel to view his famous private collection and to partially copy it.

Lips is a hard worker and makes many copper plates for the first volume of the Physiognomic Fragments. Through its publication, Lips gains fame: "Especially the young artists [Friedrich Schmoll, Heinrich Pfenninger, Matthias Pfenninger, Matthias Stumpf, Matthias Weber] of the time were looking for his acquaintance and friendship more and more; - [...] so you came [ ...] all agree that this young person belongs to the best of their class - if not preferred to all of them ”. Among other things, he gets to know Goethe. The slightly older and more established artists develop their judgment of Lips largely on the basis of their relationship with Lavater. In the second volume of the Physiognomic Fragments, a full-page self-portrait by Lips appears, which helps him to gain international fame. Lavater says: "Lips will be a second Chodowiecki in a few years".

In 1780 Lips went on his first study trip. He continues his education at the drawing academy in Mannheim . He liked it there very much: "Well, from Mannheim - about art and its inhabitants. Art is a lot and the most important thing is the Electoral Gallery, and I have only seen the Antique Hall once, the gallery has think, but what At this sight I felt the multitude of works of art, I cannot describe to you. There would be too much for the eye, too much for the spirit - I should have sunk down and thought myself as a little worm that creeps up on a stalk, the honey To suck out flowers, and to hit the earth again by a droplet of dew that folds down. One was very small and humiliated by these human works, how much more can the creation of nature affect us if we look at it with the right eye! " In 1781 he went to Dusseldorf , where he in the gallery , the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian by van Dyck stabbed. In 1783 he traveled to Rome, where, among other things, he executed an engraving after a Bacchanal by Poussin . During a second stay in Rome (1785) he also dealt with watercolor painting and copied paintings by old masters. The frescoes by the painters Giulio Romano and Raffael made a tremendous impression on him.

Thanks to his acquaintance with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , he was called to Weimar in 1798 as a professor at the Free Drawing Academy. During this time he worked on illustrations for the works of Goethe and Schiller . However, he resigned in 1794 and returned to Zurich. The return of Lips from Weimar is welcomed by the people of Zurich. The famous engraver was also immediately integrated into the scholarly network of the Zurich art scene. Lips describes his definition of art and his task as an artist as follows: "What is art, or what should it be, other than a sign language of what is hidden in the soul of nature, and with the strength of the master through simple features made more eloquent. and is represented. Whoever does not understand this language and has not been touched by the flame of Prometheus also looks for free at an executed work of art. The larger elaboration or completion is only a dress, which makes the thing appear more pleasing ". After the death of Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki in 1801 at the latest, Lips was considered to be the best engraver in Europe. Together with his predecessors Salomon Gessner and Johann Rudolf Schellenberg, Lips was one of the most important book illustrators in Zurich at the time of the Enlightenment. Due to his widespread fame, he received countless orders from Switzerland and abroad. He died on May 5, 1817. He left 1447 copperplate engravings, including numerous portraits of famous contemporaries, a. a. by the philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher and the theologian Friedrich Samuel Gottfried Sack . Johann Jakob Lips, who is not related to him, is one of his students .

Works (selection)

Johann Wolfgang Goethe (copper engraving and etching by Johann Heinrich Lips, 1791)

literature

  • Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker: General Lexicon of Fine Artists from Antiquity to the Present. Volume XXIII, Leipzig, 1929, page 279.
  • E. Benezit: Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs. Librairie Gründ, Paris 1976, Volume VI, Page 690.
  • Joachim Kruse: Johann Heinrich Lips 1758–1817 - A Zurich copper engraver between Lavater and Goethe. Coburg 1989. ISBN 3-87472-065-9
  • Georg von Wyß:  Lips, Johann Heinrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1883, p. 738 f.
  • Christina Florack-Kröll:  Lips, Johann Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 672 ( digitized version ).
  • Carsten Jönk: A bundle from the Physiognomisches Kabinett Johann Kaspar Lavaters owned by the Museum for Art and Tissue Hamburg , in: Yearbook of the Museum 1996–1997 , page 101, 99 ff.

Web links

Commons : Johann Heinrich Lips  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Online at e-rara.ch
  2. ^ Johann Caspar Füeßlin: History of the best artists in Switzerland. Along with their portraits . Zurich, Orell, Geßner, Füeßlin and Comp., 1799, p. 208 .
  3. ↑ Leonhard Brennwald: Complete biography and characteristics of my friend Johann Heinrich Lips, copper engraver. (continued until A. 1779.) . S. 20 .
  4. ↑ Johann Caspar Lavater: Physiognomic Fragments . tape 2 , 1776, p. 233 .
  5. ^ A b Johann Heinrich Lips: Letter edition Johann Heinrich Lips to Wilhelm Veith . Ed .: Pia Weidmann. Zurich 2019, p. 349 .
  6. ^ Peter Motzfeld (arr.): The portrait collection of the Herzog August Library Wolfenbüttel. Biographical and bibliographical descriptions with artist register IA – Bra. KG Saur, Munich 1996, p. 46/47, Inv.nr. A361.
personal data
SURNAME Lips, Johann Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss engraver
DATE OF BIRTH April 29, 1758
PLACE OF BIRTH Balls
DATE OF DEATH May 5, 1817
Place of death Zurich