Johann Ludwig Ernst Morgenstern
Johann Ludwig Ernst Morgenstern (* 22. September 1738 in Rudolstadt ; † 13. November 1819 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German paintings - restorer , etcher and painter .
Life
Morgenstern was a student of his father Johann Christoph Morgenstern (1697–1767), who was a valet and portrait painter in the service of the princes of the House of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt . His brother Friedrich Wilhelm Christoph Morgenstern , born in 1739 , later succeeded his father. The siblings belong to the second of the five generations of artists who left their Thuringian homeland for the first time with Johann Ludwig Ernst.
At a young age he was drawing horses and battle paintings based on copper engravings by Georg Philipp Rugendas with such talent that his father was soon able to offer him little support in his parents' house. From 1766 he attended the Academy of the Gemäldegalerie in Salzdahlum , where he worked under Ludwig Wilhelm Busch (1703–1772). In 1768 he went to Hamburg , where he restored paintings, and in 1769 to Frankfurt am Main , where he was accepted into the workshop of Christian Georg Schütz the Elder. Ä. found. After three years in Darmstadt , he returned to Frankfurt in 1772.
His original plan to move on to Utrecht came to nothing when he entered the studio of Johann Andreas Benjamin Nothnagel (1729–1804), where he worked for several years in the field of landscape, horse and genre painting. During this time he met the young Swiss architectural painter Johann Vögelin through his former teacher Schütz . He was so enthusiastic about the genre that Morgenstern worked almost exclusively in this niche of painting, but above all in church painting.
By marrying Anna Maria Alleinz , Morgenstern obtained Frankfurt citizenship on September 17, 1776, and by handing over a masterpiece depicting the interior of the church, he also became a master craftsman . His son Johann Friedrich Morgenstern , who was born on October 8, 1777 and later also became a well-known painter, emerged from the marriage .
Morgenstern worked in his field well into old age, contemporary reports mention above all the extraordinary fact for a miniature painter that he could work without glasses until the end. He died on November 13, 1819 at the age of 81; his grave in the Peterskirchhof has not been preserved. The Frankfurt pastor and historian Anton Kirchner gave his necrology , in which he paid tribute to his always cheerful and contented disposition.
plant
In his early years Morgenstern was still active as a painter of battle paintings and landscapes; later, especially in his most fertile years from 1780 to 1810, he mainly made church and building interiors in miniature form. The pictures of this time impress with their perfect perspective and color treatment, lighting and their details. Most of them are oil paintings, more rarely etchings , the former often on copper , which further increases their brilliance. In addition to their artistic value, they are often of inestimable historical value, as they are almost photographic-accurate reproductions of churches shortly before the turmoil of the French Revolution , the secularization they brought about and often radical classicist transformations.
As Philipp Friedrich Gwinner noted in 1862 , Morgenstern's paintings were “bought off the easel, as it were ,” at best prices during his lifetime, and so often ended up in private ownership and in other European countries. His works in museum possession can be found mainly in museums in Frankfurt am Main.
In addition to painting, he was also active as a restorer , for which he had laid important foundations since his stay in Hamburg. Due to his skills, important old masters came into his hands over the years, of whom he often made small private copies as part of the restoration. With the oil miniatures he gradually put together a private painting cabinet in a cabinet with double doors, which his son continued, but was only completed by his grandson Carl Morgenstern . The central part of the cabinet contained 75 pictures, the doors 65 pictures each. The Morgenstern Miniature Cabinet was sold to England in 1857 , but has recently been repurchased to Frankfurt, even though it no longer has the original picture.
literature
- Friedrich Gwinner: Art and Artists in Frankfurt am Main from the thirteenth century to the opening of the Städel'schen Kunstinstitut . Publisher by Joseph Baer, Frankfurt am Main 1862, pp. 389–396
- Rosa Schapire : Johann Ludwig Ernst Morgenstern - A contribution to Frankfurt's art history in the 18th century. Heitz, Strasbourg 1904 (dissertation)
- Wilhelm Stricker: Morgenstern . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1885, p. 230 f.
Web links
- Examples of images from Morgenstern on artnet
- Information on the picture gallery in the residential palace Heidecksburg and selected pictures by Morgenstern
- Morgenstern, Johann Ludwig Ernst. Hessian biography. (As of May 9, 2020). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
- Morgenstern, Ernst in the Frankfurt Personal Lexicon
Individual evidence
- ↑ He was inspector of the picture gallery of the Brunswick pleasure palace Salzdahlum .
- ↑ It was reported about Vögelin that he later became a professor at the art school in Düsseldorf , but this is doubtful. - Cf. Albert M. Debrunner: The golden Swabian age. Johann Jakob Bodmer and the Middle Ages as a model in the 18th century . Dissertation University of Basel 1994. Epistemata: Series Literary Studies, Volume 170, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1996, ISBN 3-8260-1178-3 , p. 183 ( online )
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Morgenstern, Johann Ludwig Ernst |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painting restorer, etcher and painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 22, 1738 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Rudolstadt |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 13, 1819 |
| Place of death | Frankfurt am Main |