Jules Helbig

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Jules Helbig (1821-1906)

Jules Chrétien Charles Joseph Henri Helbig , also Julius Helbig (born August 8, 1821 in Liège , Kingdom of the United Netherlands , † February 15, 1906 ibid, Belgium ), was a Belgian history painter and restorer . He created neo-Gothic wall paintings , altars and panel paintings in the late Nazarene style of the Düsseldorf school of painting , as well as church furniture and sculptures . He also worked as an art writer and biographer .

Life

Helbig was the son of the Mainz- born banker Jean-Baptiste Helbig and his wife Anne-Marie, née Lauteren, who was also born there, and the brother of the bibliophile Henri Helbig (1813-1890). After the death of his mother, he grew up in Breuberg Castle near Neustadt in the Grand Duchy of Hesse . There his uncle was the rent master . At the age of thirteen he returned to his hometown. From the end of the 1830s he studied graphics and painting at the Liège Art Academy. During this time he mainly created landscapes and portraits . In 1840 he moved to the Düsseldorf Art Academy , where he attended Rudolf Wiegmann's architecture class, the preparatory class, and the class for antiques and painting under Wilhelm Schadow until 1843 . Under the influence of the Nazarene milieu of the Düsseldorf School of Painting, Helbig turned to religious subjects and history painting. The historical monumental painting of this school was also considered exemplary in Belgium at the time and was promoted politically by the Belgian politician Charles Rogier . Helbig received further impulses from his friend, the art and architecture theorist August Reichensperger , a promoter of neo-Gothic in Germany and a founding member of the Central Cathedral Building Association in Cologne .

Nazarene depictions from the life of Saint Foillan on a neo-Gothic winged altar in the parish church of Saint-Pholien in Liège

Together with the painter Jean-Mathieu Nisen (1819–1885), a student of the Liège Academy, who had spent the years 1841 to 1843 in Rome and had met Friedrich Overbeck among others in the “Eternal City” , Helbig became who after his studies returned to Belgium in 1850 to design the Liège Church of the Holy Cross. The parish had come up with the plan to design the interior of the church according to models of German monumental painting. In order to study these models, Nisen and Helbig traveled to Aachen , Cologne , Bonn , Remagen , Frankfurt am Main and Speyer in September / October 1851 on the basis of a travel grant from the Belgian government . They visited the painting of the Aachen town hall by Alfred Rethel , the choir painting of the Cologne Cathedral by Edward von Steinle , the frescoes in the auditorium of the University of Bonn by Carl Heinrich Hermann , Jakob Götzenberger and Ernst Förster as well as the wall paintings of the Remagener Apollinari church by Ernst Deger , Andreas and Karl Müller and Franz Ittenbach , as well as the wall and ceiling paintings in the Städel Institute in Frankfurt by Philipp Veit and the paintings of the Speyer Cathedral by Johann von Schraudolph and Joseph Schwarzmann .

In 1863 Helbig became a member of the Gilde de Saint-Thomas et de Saint-Luc , an association for the study of ancient Christian art and for the promotion of its "true principles", established in the same year by the Belgian architect Jean-Baptiste Bethune and the British art historian WH James Weale (1832-1917) was founded. Weale, in cooperation with Helbig, Bethune and other members of the guild, organized the celebrated exhibition of medieval liturgical art in Mechelen on the occasion of the Catholic Congress held in this city in 1864. In 1883 Helbig became editor of the Revue de l'art Chrétien . He followed the painter and art professor August Adolf Chauvin as secretary of the Salon de Liège .

Helbig's main phase of church painting was between 1852 and 1884. With Édouard van Marcke (1815–1884) he developed paintings for the churches of the Holy Cross, St. Denis and St. Jacob in Liège and Notre-Dame in Sint-Truiden . He also created paintings for the Church of St. Christoph and St. Pauls Cathedral in his native town, as well as for the Church of St. Jakob in Tournai . Helbig's neo-Gothic style met with increasing criticism, particularly from the Royal Commission on Monuments, of which he had been a member since 1889.

Histoire de la peinture au pays de Liège (1873)

Helbig's literary works include the following writings:

literature

  • Thieme-Becker , Volume XVI (1923), p. 323 f.
  • Anne Boonen: Les reproductions peintes de tissus médiévaux par Jules Helbig (1821–1906). Formation d'une collection et catalog . In: Gentse Bijdragen tot de Interieurgeschiedenis , Volume 34 (2005), pp. 63-132.
  • Anna Bergmans: Jules Helbig (1821-1906). Un peintre frontalier entre Rhin et Meuse . In: C. De Ruyt, I. Lecocq, M. Lefftz, M. Piavaux (Head): Lumières, formes et couleurs. Mélanges in homage to Yvette Vanden Bemden . Namur 2008, pp. 49-66.
  • Anna Bergmans: The painter Jules Helbig (1821–1906), a border crosser between the Rhine and Maas . In: Wolfgang Cortjaens, Jan De Maeyer, Tom Verschaffel (eds.): Historicism and cultural identity in the Rhine-Maas area. The 19th century in the area of ​​tension between regionalism and nationalism . Leuven University Press, Leuven 2008, ISBN 978-90-5867-666-5 , p. 381 ( Google Books ).

Web links

Commons : Jules Helbig  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See entry Helbig, Julius under nos. 5242–5244 in the finding aid 212.01.04 Student lists of the Düsseldorf Art Academy , website in the portal archive.nrw.de ( State Archive North Rhine-Westphalia )
  2. ↑ Bettina Baumgärtel , Sabine Schroyen, Lydia Immerheiser, Sabine Teichgröb: Directory of foreign artists. Nationality, residence and studies in Düsseldorf . In: Bettina Baumgärtel (Hrsg.): The Düsseldorf School of Painting and its international impact 1819–1918 . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86568-702-9 , Volume 1, p. 432
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Cortjaens: Between institutionalization and individual exchange. German-Belgian cultural transfer using the example of the Düsseldorf School of Painting from 1831 to 1865 . In: Bettina Baumgärtel (Ed.), Volume 1, p. 169.
personal data
SURNAME Helbig, Jules
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Helbig, Jules Chrétien Charles Joseph Henri (full name); Helbig, Julius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian history painter and restorer
DATE OF BIRTH August 8, 1821
PLACE OF BIRTH Liege , Kingdom of the United Netherlands
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1906
Place of death Liege , Kingdom of the United Netherlands