Johann Jakob Wolfensberger

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Johann Jakob Wolfensberger (born February 20, 1797 in Rumlikon near Russikon , † May 15, 1850 in Zurich ) was a Swiss painter .

Life

family

Johann Jakob Wolfensberger was the child of a wealthy farmer .

In August 1841 he married Hanna Dorothea (* July 15, 1800; † January 4, 1877), daughter of William Burdon (1764-1818), academic, mine owner and writer , who was also artistically inclined.

education

Through the mediation of a friend of his father's, with whom he also initially lived in Kleine Brunngasse (today: Froschaugasse) in Zurich, he got a job as a colorist in the art shop of Johann Heinrich Füssli in Zurich, who taught him free of charge for a year. This enabled him to acquire the technical means in free study that would later enable him to make a living as an artist.

In August 1817 he started a trip to Italy , financed by the Zurich landscape painter Wilhelm Huber (1787–1871). Huber wanted to bring Wolfensberger to Naples as an assistant . The journey took place on foot via Milan to Genoa and from there by ship to Naples. After arriving, Wolfensberger learned a lot and quickly, but had personal differences with Huber. After they went on a six-week study trip to Amalfi , Huber sent him back to Naples to complete some of the work that had been started. On the return trip, Wolfensberger made the decision to start his own business, and when Huber returned, despite a three-year contract, he had already disappeared after seven months.

Stay in Italy

In an inn he met the Oertli brothers from Glarus , who took him in for a while and supported him financially. For a living he colored copperplate engravings and did all kinds of painting; In his spare time he went on excursions in the vicinity of Naples and drew landscapes there.

Shortly thereafter, his new sponsors included Prince Karl Joseph Clary and Aldringen (1777–1831) from Vienna , who introduced him to Countess Julie von Woyna (1811–1895), who recommended him to her circle of friends; so he met the Duke of Berwick .

He was commissioned by the Duke of Berwick and his friend, Count Boublon, to go on an art trip to Sicily to draw the remains of the antiquities there. He also climbed Mount Etna and visited Agrigento , Syracuse , Messina and Palermo .

After his return to Naples, the sketches he brought with him led to further commissions. Through the mediation of a Neapolitan nobleman, he was introduced to King Francis of Naples . At the reception he was pleased when he noticed that Wolfensberger spoke the language of the Lazzaroni . He then got orders for some transparent paintings, which were intended for the palace of Caserta ; however, the outbreak of the revolution in Naples in 1820 prevented it from being carried out. Despite the revolution, he stayed in Naples and spent two years in the house of Prince Philip of Hesse-Homburg , who kept him busy with commissions.

From 1825 to 1829 he stayed in Rome and met the future president of the French Academy in Rome , Horace Vernet , know. He frequented his house and took part in his weekly soirees , which were attended by artists, musicians, statesmen and other famous men. During his stay in Rome he was also King Ludwig I of Bavaria , King Friedrich VI. of Denmark and Norway and King Friedrich Wilhelm III. von Prussia as well as the Grand Duke Michael Pawlowitsch Romanow and his wife Helena . He spent many an evening in the palace of the Hortense de Beauharnais , the former Queen of Holland. For several summers he lived in Tivoli in the house of the Marquis Spencer-Joshua-Alwyne Northampton, later Lord Compton, president of the Royal Society for Science and Art. During the stay he taught the Marquis's wife, Margaret Douglas-Maclean-Clephane, and her sister in drawing. After the marquise's death, he temporarily moved back to Rumlikon in Switzerland in 1830 and then stayed with his friend, painter Johann Konrad Zeller, in Balgrist near Zurich. In early 1831 he returned to Rome.

The Acropolis in Athens (between 1832 and 1835)

Stay in Greece and Asia Minor

In 1832 he traveled from Ancona to Greece and stayed in Athens until 1835 . On the basis of a recommendation he met the French envoy Baron de Ronen and the Austrian envoy, Baron Anton Prokesch von Osten .

He was visited three times in the workshop by King Otto of Greece .

In Greece he made trips to the Acropolis , Olympia , Delphi , Mycenae , Cape Sounion , Acrocorinth and Ithaca . He always had a pen and paint with him and developed into a watercolor painter .

Wolfensberger stayed in Athens for three years and then went to Asia Minor , visiting Constantinople , Smyrna and Troy . He declined an invitation from the Austrian ambassador, Baron Stürmer, to live in his house in Constantinople, but preferred to travel, gather impressions and study Paestum and Pompeii until he returned to Naples via Malta and Messina in 1835 . In 1838 he went from Rome via Florence to Zurich.

Stay in Switzerland

In Zurich he organized a public exhibition in which he presented more than two hundred sketches that he had made on his travels in Greece and Italy. In Martin Bodmer he found a patron of the arts who supported Wolfensberger and granted him an unlimited loan to travel to Vienna, Paris and London . In 1839 he traveled to Vienna and was recommended to Prince Klemens Wenzel Lothar von Metternich by the Austrian ambassador in Athens, Baron von Prokesch . Metternich assigned Wolfensberger a large room in the Volksgarten to be able to exhibit his sketches there. He also received a visit from Emperor Ferdinand I and his family.

After a five-month stay, he returned to Switzerland and continued to Paris in the same year. A visit to Vernet could not take place there because he was in Algiers at the time to heal an eye infection. In the spring of 1840 he traveled on to London. Shortly after his arrival he was introduced to William Callins, a member of the Royal Society , and to Hanna Dorothea Burdon in Northumberland , whom he married in 1841. He returned to Switzerland the following year to settle in Zurich.

In London he edited a number of drawings in a work published by Fisher on Greece and Italy. The Englishmen James Sands and Robert Brandard (1805–1862) engraved his drawings in copper. In 1847 he visited Naples for the last time.

Artistic work

Johann Jakob Wolfensberger's model was the painter Salvator Rosa .

The majority of his works were executed in watercolor . For the author of Greek history, George Grote , he drew The Plain of Troy and for his friend Joseph Parkes (1796-1865) the Roman Forum and the Theseus and Jupiter temples in Athens .

In Zurich, Martin Bodmer ( view of Subiaco and Amalfi ), Meyer-Ochsner ( Vesta Temple near Tivoli ), George Grote ( The Plain of Troy ) and Zeller-Füßli ( Sibyl's Temple near Tivoli ) as well as F. Zimmermann in Winterthur ( Acropolis ) owned paintings by Wolfensberger. His works were generally accessible in Zurich's public collections, for example in the Eidgenössisches Polytechnikum Der Aventin in Rome with St. Peter's Dome in the background from 1828; The Acropolis in Athens ; the pencil drawings on Monte Palatine in Rome , near the Acropolis in Athens and the sepia drawing Bach im Walde .

Exhibitions

  • In 1827, 1833, 1846 to 1849, Johann Jakob Wolfensberger took part in the exhibitions organized by the Artists' Society in Zurich.
  • He also took part in exhibitions with Italian and Greek views in Zurich and Vienna in 1838, in Paris in 1839 and in London in 1840.
  • More recently, his works have been exhibited from March 26th to May 1st, 1988 in the St. Gallen Art Museum and from October 2nd to 24th, 2010 in the Halterhaus Fehraltorf .

Fonts (selection)

  • GN Wright, Leicester Buckingham, James Pattison Cockburn, Irton, Major, William Leighton Leitch , WH Bartlett, Johann Jakob Wolfensberger, Lambert Loveday, General: The Rhine, Italy, and Greece: in a series of drawings from nature by Colonel Cockburn, Major Irton, Messrs. Bartlett, Leitch, and Wolfensberger. Fisher, Son & Company, 1841.

Works (selection)

  • View of Naples with the Gulf and Mount Vesuvius in the background. 1827.
  • The painter Theodor Wilhelm Witting (portrait). 1843.
  • View of Subiaco with the monastery of San Benedetto.
  • Waterfall near Subiaco at the foot of San Benedetto.
  • Rocky coast near Amalfi.
  • Northern Italian mountain landscape.
  • View of Palermo with Monte Pellegrino.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Aisle through Alt-Züri: The Froschaugasse. Retrieved May 6, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Julie von Woyna, b. Freiin von Krieg-Hochfelden - Aristocratic Portraits in a Political Context | New Gallery Graz. Retrieved May 8, 2020 .
  3. ^ Edmund Lodge: The Peerage of the British Empire as at present existing . Saunders, 1840 ( google.de [accessed May 8, 2020]).
  4. ↑ Handbook for copper engravers or lexicon of engravers, painter-etchers and form cutters of all countries and schools according to their most valued sheets and works (1870) - Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Retrieved May 8, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Gerold Ludwig Meyer Von Knonau: The canton of Zurich historically, geographically, statistically portrayed: Descendation of all in the same mountains ... Huber, 1846 ( google.de [accessed on May 7, 2020]).
  6. ^ Description of the life of the painter Johann Jakob Wolfensberger. 2010, accessed May 7, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Zurich Central Library / [The painter Theodor Wilhelm Witting] . 1843 ( e-manuscripta.ch [accessed May 7, 2020]).
personal data
SURNAME Wolfensberger, Johann Jakob
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wolfensberger, Johann Jacob; Wolfensberger, JJ
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss painter
DATE OF BIRTH February 20, 1797
PLACE OF BIRTH Rumlikon near Russikon
DATE OF DEATH May 15, 1850
Place of death Zurich