Johannes Esaias Nilson
Johannes Esaias Nilson , also Johann Esaias Nilson (born November 2, 1721 in Augsburg ; † before April 3, 1788 ibid) was a German miniature painter , draftsman and engraver of the 18th century from the artist family Nilson .
Life
From 1730 to 1738 Nilson attended St. Anna's Protestant grammar school in Augsburg. The kit manager (responsible for the storage and repair of military equipment in the armory ), engineer, draftsman and copper engraver Johann Thomas Kraus (1696–1775) trained him in the basics of architecture and perspective theory . Guided by his parents, he began painting miniatures . In addition, he completed an undocumented apprenticeship with Hieronymus Sperling and his wife.
Still without his own painter justice (ie approval by the guild ), he had been a designer for local copperplate publishers since 1741, including for JG Hertel . Nilson, too, could not afford to be just a painter in the Augsburg art scene. Most of his contemporaries, among them the brilliant Johann Evangelist Holzer , the Frescomaler Götz, (...) were alongside or mainly engravers and etchers. Augsburg, which had established an important tradition as a printing location and art trading town since the Renaissance , had grown into the German capital of the copper engraving trade in the 18th century. The large art publishers (...) needed designers (...) for their diverse programs, in which portraits , devotional images , ornamental sheets and templates were in the foreground.
In 1752, when his father died, Nilson inherited both his craft business and the license to practice his own profession in accordance with the guild rules. In the same year he founded his own copper engraving publishing house. In 1761 he was appointed court painter to the Electoral Palatinate by Karl Theodor von der Pfalz . Five years later, Nilson joined the Catholic "Kayserlich Franciscischen Akademie der Freie Künste und Wissenschaften" in Augsburg, of which he became president in 1778. From 1769 until his death in 1788 he was Protestant director at the Augsburg Imperial City Art Academy .
Johannes Esaias Nilson died on April 11, 1788. The burial took place in the Protestant cemetery in Augsburg.
family
Nilson was a son of the painter Andreas Nilson (1690–1751) , who came from Gothenburg in Sweden , and the miniature painter Rosina Barbara Nilson , widow of the Augsburg painter Heinrich Miller.
In 1755 he married the painter Rosina Catharina Crophius, daughter of the Augsburg City Librarian and Rector of St. Anna, Philipp Jacob Crophius (1666–1742). He had six children with her:
- Rosina Catharina (1755–1785), drawing teacher
- Michael †
- Friedrich †
- Barbara (1758–), married the publisher Xaver Huter
- Johann Jakob (1759–1826), drawing teacher, married M. Rosina Prechter
- Christoph Andreas (1760–1833), drawing teacher, notary, art historian, married to ACB Morell
The sons Christoph Andreas and Johann Jakob Nilson both worked as drawing teachers in St. Anna. The two illuminists Susanna Christina Johanna (1786–) and Catharina Christina Johanna (1791–) as well as the drawing teacher Johann David Nilson (1799–1867) and the aquatint engraver Wilhelm Johannes Esaias Nilson (1788–) emerged from Johann Jakob Nilson's marriage.
In 1764 Johannes Esaias Nilson married the artist Eva Margarethe Schmid and after her death in 1765 Susanne Schuhmacher. The latter was given to him by his son Johann Philipp Nilson (1770–1828). He was married to Barbara Zink for the third time, with whom he had two children: the son Christoph Friedrich (1811–1879) and the daughter Louise (1812–1880).
plant
Johannes Esaias Nilson is one of the most important representatives of the Augsburg style , as the (southern German) Rococo was called; he is assigned to the Augsburg School . In the triumvirate of the great Augsburg graphic artists, to which Georg Philipp Rugendas (1666–1742) and Johann Elias Ridinger (1698–1767) belong alongside Nilson , he was born the latest. Nilson worked as a miniature painter, draftsman and engraver during the rococo heyday .
In terms of content, he dealt with figure pictures, individual figures, decorative motifs of all kinds, shepherd scenes , peasant and love games, theater scenes, monthly pictures , cover pictures, fictitious scenes and all areas of commercial graphics . His style can be described as playful and rocailles-oriented , but is basically determined by a strict linearity.
His greatest work in terms of size, figures and differentiation is the contemporary depiction of the multiple division of labor in the Polish salt mine Wieliczka . This work from 1760 is an early example of the depiction of the incipient industrial production in art and a testimony to the social history of work. A copy of this rare sheet by Nilson has been preserved in the Graphisches Kabinett of the Augsburg Art Collections.
In his early work, Nilson mainly drew with ink on paper, whereby the obscure structure of the brush in the sense of the Rococo style was very convenient. Drawing materials that support clear lines, such as red chalk , lead or graphite pencil , were mainly used by Nilson in his late work, which arose after the change in style (around 1770) to classicism .
In the field of copper engraving, Nilson was one of the most productive representatives. Many ceramic factories in the empire, including the Meissen porcelain factory, used parts of his engraving as samples for their production. The factory in Rotterdam known as 'De Bloempot' also used his engravings from the 'Twelve Months' for a tableau series. As a commercial artist, he created templates for everyday use, including book covers, series of illustrations and ex-libris , official graphics such as coats of arms , seals and banknotes, as well as occasional graphics such as invitations, party programs, greeting cards, advertising leaflets, menus, theater posters and maps.
Around 1780 he increasingly turned to book illustration . So he created vignettes for the first, anonymously published edition of Friedrich von Schiller's robbers . 1783 he recorded a complete series of figurines of all persons acting for Maximilian Blaimhofers Sweden in Bavaria , a drama that the historical example of the occupation of Landshut by the troops of Swedish King Gustav Adolf enlightened virtues as citizenship and reason touted.
After the end of the playful Rococo art era, Nilson joined classicism , which was characterized by a clear form, inspired by antiquity . Probably the most expressive picture of the artist is the design for a vase on a monument (Städtische Kunstsammlungen Augsburg, Schaezlerpalais ): A representative of the Rococo, surrounded by antique props , tears up a sheet titled “Shellwork”, the graphic element of the previous era.
literature
- Ulla Heise : Nilson, Johannes (Johann) Esaias . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 92, de Gruyter, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-023258-5 , p. 406 f.
- Gun-Dagmar Helke: Johann Esaias Nilson (1721–1788). Miniature painter, engraver, publisher and art academy director from Augsburg . Munich 2004, ISBN 3-89235-082-5
- Wolfgang Augustyn: Nilson, Johann Esaias. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , pp. 278 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Meinrad von Engelberg (Red.): Nilson Online: Print version of the online catalog of the exhibition in the Schaezlerpalais Augsburg March 22–12. May 2002 . Augsburg 2002.
- Doris Hascher: Facade painting in Augsburg from the 16th to the 18th century . Augsburg 1996.
- Lydia L. Dewiel: From the life of an Augsburg copperplate engraver and publisher Johann Esaias Nilson . In: Bayern im Rokoko , Munich 1989, pp. 69–76.
- Lydia L. Dewiel: Johann Esaias Nilson. A Rococo engraver . Munich 1967.
- Marianne Schuster: Johann Esaias Nilson. A South German Rococo engraver . Munich 1936.
- Olgerd Grosswald: The copper engraving of the XVIII. Century in Augsburg and Nuremberg . Munich 1912.
- Hans Boesch: The studbook of the Augsburg painter and copper engraver Johann Esaias Nilson . In: Zeitschrift für Bücherfreund e, 1902/03, issue 12, March 1903.
- Wilhelm Adolf Schmidt : Nilson, Johann Esaias . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1886, p. 700 f.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dewiel: Nilson . In: Bavaria in Rococo , p. 70.
- ^ Christiana Johanna Katharina Nilson , in: Germany, Heiraten 1558–1929 , familysearch.org, accessed on June 22, 2013.
- ↑ Reiner Zeeb: Johann Esaias Nilson's "Wieliczka Salt Mine" (1760) and the new partial catalog . In: Critical Reports . Issue 3/02, p. 79–85 ( PDF download from Heidelberg University [accessed October 6, 2017]).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Nilson, Johannes Esaias |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Nilson, Johann Esaias |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German miniature painter, draftsman and engraver |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 2, 1721 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | augsburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | before April 3, 1788 |
| Place of death | augsburg |