John Theodore Heins

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John Theodore (also Dietrich or Dirk) Heins (* around 1697 ; † August 10, 1756 in Norwich ) was a British painter and engraver of German origin. He was one of the leading Norwich portrait painters of the 18th century.

Life

Heins probably originally came from Germany. Around 1720 he emigrated to England and settled in Norwich , where he worked as a painter. Up until the 1730s, Norwich was the second most important city after London and was considered cosmopolitan .

Soon after his arrival, Heins received a number of official commissions from local notables . The pictures were shown in St. Andrew's Hall and other public buildings. By the end of the 1720s he had already earned a reputation that was only challenged by the English portrait painter Thomas Bardwell around 1746 . Among Heins' clients were u. a. Singer and musician, in particular he painted several (former) mayors of Norwich such as Francis Arnam and Robert Marsh (1732). His portraits of mayors in official costumes from 1737 and 1738 indicate an attempt at a chronological sequence.

He signed his early works with D. Heins , the D. standing for Dietrich , a German form of Theodore . Around 1730 he changed his signature to Heins . He was sometimes called Heyns in magazines of his time . A self-portrait was created in 1726 and is now on display at the Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery.

In the 1730s / 40s he was occasionally commissioned by families in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk in East Anglia . In 1731 he painted six portraits of the Gainsborough family. Several paintings were also created for the honorable Astley family from Melton Constable, who were allied with the Netherlands: These include Edward and Blanche Astley (1732) and A Musical Party at Melton Constable Hall (1734). He built himself into the latter, which was auctioned off at Christie's 1985 . In 1737 he painted the mother of the future poet William Cowper . This painting inspired Cowper to write the poem On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture out of Norfolk in 1798 . In 1743 he made a portrait of the former British Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole , who was considered one of the most portrayed people of his time. In the same year there was also a portrait for John Hobart , who later became the first Earl of Buckinghamshire .

Around 1740 he portrayed the German-British baroque composer Georg Friedrich Händel . The work was only attributed to him again in 2005 after it appeared at an auction in Cologne and is now on permanent loan from the Saalesparkasse Foundation in the Handel House in Halle (Saale).

In addition, he devoted his genre painting and moral aspects. So address the works Thomas Guy Counting his Money (1737) and The Death of Thomas Guy (1737), which can be seen in the Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery, the as comparison verschriehenen Guy's Hospital founder Thomas Guy .

The engraver Joseph Strutt included it in his Biographical Dictionary of Engravers (1786). At the end of the 1730s, Heins experimented with etching and mezzotint, as shown by works on Robert Camell and Bishop Thomas Gooch . Some of his pictures were published as engravings by George Vertue and Jacobus Houbraken .

Heins was married to Abigail Heins and had two children. His son John Heins (1732–1771) also became a painter.

literature

  • Trevor Fawcett: Eighteenth-Century Art in Norwich . In: The Volume of the Walpole Society 46 (1976-78), pp. 71-90.
  • Richard Jeffree: Heins, John Theodore [Dietrich] . In: Grove Art Online , as of 2003, accessed October 5, 2019.
  • Andrew Moore, Charlotte Crawley: Norfolk Portraits: Catalog . In: Dies .: Family & Friends. A Regional Survey of British Portraiture . HMSO, London 1992, ISBN 0-11-701506-7 , pp. 63-192 (therein portraits of John Theodore Heins).
  • Norma Watt: Heins, John Theodore [formerly Dietrich]. In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Volume 26: Haycock – Hichens. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861376-8 , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), Last updated: 2004, accessed October 5, 2019.
  • Edwin Werner : Heins, John Theodore . In: Annette Landgraf, David Vickers (Eds.): The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2009, ISBN 978-1-107-66640-5 , pp. 321f.

Web links

Commons : John Theodore Heins  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andrew Moore, Charlotte Crawley: Norfolk Portraits: Catalog . In: Dies .: Family & friends. A Regional Survey of British Portraiture . HMSO, London 1992, ISBN 0-11-701506-7 , pp. 63-192, here: p. 104.
  2. ^ A b Andrew Moore, Charlotte Crawley: Norfolk Portraits: Catalog . In: Dies .: Family & friends. A Regional Survey of British Portraiture . HMSO, London 1992, ISBN 0-11-701506-7 , pp. 63-192, here: p. 116.
  3. ↑ Norma Watt: The Civic Face 1700–1900 . In: Andrew Moore, Charlotte Crawley: Family & friends. A Regional Survey of British Portraiture . HMSO, London 1992, ISBN 0-11-701506-7 , pp. 46-53, here: p. 48.
  4. ↑ Norma Watt: The Civic Face 1700–1900 . In: Andrew Moore, Charlotte Crawley: Family & friends. A Regional Survey of British Portraiture . HMSO, London 1992, ISBN 0-11-701506-7 , pp. 46-53, here: p. 47.
  5. ↑ Norma Watt: The Civic Face 1700–1900 . In: Andrew Moore, Charlotte Crawley: Family & friends. A Regional Survey of British Portraiture . HMSO, London 1992, ISBN 0-11-701506-7 , pp. 46-53, here: p. 51.
  6. ^ Hugh Belsey: Gainsborough's Family . Gainsborough's House Society, Sudbury 1988, ISBN 0-946511-09-8 , p. 11.
  7. ^ Moore Andrew (ed.): Houghton Hall: The Prime Minister, the Empress and the Heritage . Philip Wilson Publishers, London 1996, ISBN 0-85667-444-3 , p. 83.
  8. ↑ Alastair Laing, John Maddison: Lord Hobart's Gallery . In: Andrew Moore, Charlotte Crawley: Family & friends. A Regional Survey of British Portraiture . HMSO, London 1992, ISBN 0-11-701506-7 , pp. 39-45, here: p. 45.
personal data
SURNAME Heins, John Theodore
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heins, Dietrich; Heins, Dirk
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British painter and engraver
DATE OF BIRTH around 1697
DATE OF DEATH August 10, 1756
Place of death Norwich , England, UK