Johann Heinrich Menken

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Johann Heinrich Menken (born July 19, 1766 in Bremen , † January 1, 1838 in Bremen) was a German painter .

Life

Menken was the son of the Bremen merchant Gootje (also Goetje, Gätje) Menken and born from Marie Sophie Eleonore. Tiling (daughter of Pastor Tiling), grandson of businessman J. H. Menken, brother of Pastor Gottfried Menken and father of painter and graphic artist Gottfried Menken . The father experienced a decline in business and had to make ends meet as a milk dealer and captain of the vigilante group in the suburbs. Menken was married to a daughter of Senator Dreyer. He attended the pedagogical museum in Bremen. Then he completed a commercial apprenticeship. Even as a child he was a talented draftsman. The businessman Peter Wilckens promoted him on his way to becoming a painter and owned over 30 oil paintings and many drawings from his earliest days.

In 1792 Menken attended the General Art Academy of Painting, Sculpture, Engraving and Architecture in Dresden and received technical and artistic instructions from Johann Christian Klengel (1751-1824). The Dutch painter Salomon van Ruysdael (around 1600–1670) was one of his models. Like the Dutch, he broke with the still idealizing and heroic landscape painting of the Baroque . In 1797 he married Ida Adriane Dreyer, the daughter of councilor Dr. Dreyer, who supported the artist in many ways. In 1795 he started working as a painter in Bremen. Menken preferred and increasingly in later life landscapes and animals. Many Bremen motifs show his connection to his hometown. Thumsener, lawyer and historian, wrote: “A second phase of his private life and his artistic career begins, on which, however, less pleasing and encounters, on the other hand, some dark sides come to light.” Through his undifferentiated and frequent and rapid painting (fa presto) he was able fail to achieve the successes expected of him. The smooth previous career path led to arrogance. Thumsener judges: "The overestimation of one's own artistic talent ... increases his claims to compensation for the value ... while at the same time disregarding all other simultaneous artistic value and art judgment." Also the criticism of his former teacher Klengel of his best pupil with the comment "There is a raging stream came out of his bed ”, changed nothing. The patrons withdrew.

Painting by Menkens from 1800 by Gut Landruhe , which was built in 1795 for Carl Philipp Cassel in Horn.

From 1799 to 1801 he lived with his brother Gottfried Menken. He travels around Germany. From 1801 he made copperplate engravings in Bremen . Here, too, he had only moderate success. He was allowed to live and paint in Wilkens' house from 1801 to 1806. In 1807 the address book said that his accommodation was in the suburbs. He was now a drawing teacher at the Paedagogeum . In addition, he was from around 1806 to 1811 captain of the Neustadt citizen company , after this post was vacated by the death of his father. As the police chief of a section, he drilled with five suburban citizen companies. He also worked as an art dealer and restorer . In 1814 the suburban captain became a police commissioner for the suburb, who received 450 thalers a year; Money that made his artistic work possible again.

Contacts with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe existed through the doctor Nikolaus Meyer ("Goethe's Bremen friend") . Goethe appreciated his animal pictures positively, for example in 1806 on the occasion of an art exhibition in Weimar. He provided his animal pictures for the work Reineke Fuchs von Goethe . In 1810 his drawings for Betty Gleim's short story book were a complete failure. In 1813 he provided the illustrations for the work Henning der Han , a Low German poem by Caspar Friedrich Renner .

Carl Jacob Ludwig Iken, a member of the Bremen police department, deepened the connections in his letters to Goethe and repeatedly sent drawings by the painter, which were well received in Weimar. In September 1817 he suggested to Goethe that Menken be honored with a "PhD to the degree of philos. Doctorate and as a Master of Fine Arts". In December 1817 Menken received an honorary doctorate from the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Jena . In 1818 he was also appointed Professor of Fine Arts by the Bremen Senate . He was a member of the Kunstverein Bremen, founded in 1823, and an honorary member in 1824. In 1827 he lost a large part of his works of art in a fire. However, numerous animal pictures and landscapes have been preserved.

literature

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Werner Vogt: The painters Johann Heinrich Menken (1766-1839) and Gottfried Menken (1799-1838). In: Bremisches Jahrbuch . Vol. 53, State Archives Bremen, 1975, p. 143.
  2. ↑ Justus Gotfried Thumsener: In: Bremer Conversationsblatt . 1839, p. 24 ff.
  3. ↑ Justus Gotfried Thumsener: In: Bremer Conversationsblatt . 1839, p. 36.
  4. ^ Werner Vogt: The painters Johann Heinrich Menken (1766-1839) and Gottfried Menken (1799-1838). In: Bremisches Jahrbuch. Vol. 53, State Archive Bremen, 1975, p. 158.
  5. ↑ Thumsener, p. 40.
  6. ^ Vogt, p. 171 f.
personal data
SURNAME Menken, Johann Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH July 19, 1766
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 1838
Place of death Bremen