Julius von Klever

Julius von Klever

Winter landscape , 1883

Julius Sergius von Klever ( Russian Юлий Юльевич Клевер / July Juljewitsch Klever ; born January 19, ^jul. / 31 January  1850 ^greg. In Tartu ; † 24. December 1924 in Leningrad ) was a Russian landscape painter with Baltic German parents.

Life

In 1910 a critic wrote on the occasion of an anniversary exhibition for the sixty-year-old painter in Moscow: "Julius Klever is no less popular in Russia than Repin, Aivazovsky and Kuindschi." Despite his great national and international success, however, he never found comparable recognition as a painter. Many of his painting contemporaries considered him a “salon artist”.

Julius Klever was born in 1850 in the university town of Dorpat, then part of Russia - now Tartu in Estonia - as the son of a chemist. Following family tradition, he has the same first name as his father.

It was fortunate that one of the friends of the Klever family was the painter Konstantin von Kügelgen . He taught as a drawing teacher at the Dorpater Gymnasium and recognized the talent of the young Julius von Klever early on. What Konstantin von Kügelgen conveyed to his protégé was not so much drawing or painting skills, but rather the experiences of his family in Russia. Konstantin von Kügelgen belonged to a famous German-Baltic painting dynasty. His father Karl von Kügelgen and his twin brother Gerhard von Kügelgen were court painters under the Tsars Alexander I and Nicholas I in St. Peterburg.

The fact that Konstantin von Kügelgen brought Caspar David Friedrich's work closer to him was particularly sustainable for the artistic development of the young Julius von Klever . His father's twin brother, Gerhard von Kügelgen, was a close friend of the main master of German Romanticism in Dresden. The external and final symbol for this is the painting “Kügelgen's Grave”, which Capar David Friedrich painted after his friend was the victim of a fatal robbery. He gave it to the widow who took it to Reval. There it is venerated like a sanctuary in the extensive family of Kügelgen. The von Kügelgen family memories reveal the role Caspar David Friedrich played for everyone: “Among the artistic friends of our house, the landscape painter Friedrich was at the top. There were no such pictures before and will hardly come back, because Friedrich was a ninety-first of his kind, like all real geniuses. "

Julius von Klever was not yet 18 years old when he left his familiar home in the idyllic university town of Dorpat to study in the capital of the Russian Empire. A photo as a student in St. Petersburg shows him as a well-bred son from a good family. But in the art eleven slumber a strong talent and an almost adventurous will for artistic self-realization. Following his father's wishes, he begins his studies at the art academy as a freelance student in the architecture class. However, after just a few weeks, he informed him by letter that he had switched to the landscape painting studio.

After a dispute with his respected teacher, the landscape painter Michail Klodt , who also came from the Baltic States, he was expelled from the academy in 1871. Klodt is a founding member of the Peredwischniki artists' association, a very successful movement that, like the Secession in Vienna, Munich and Berlin, strives for independence from state-organized exhibition and art politics.

In 1874 Julius von Klever became a founding member of a counter-movement, the Petersburg Art Exhibition Society, and received first prize at its exhibition. With great diligence and commitment, he organized a personal exhibition with his own work in 1875 on the premises of the Society for the Promotion of the Arts. Several of his paintings are purchased by members of the royal family. In 1877 the painter married the daughter of the retired general Karl Ferro, head of the imperial palace pharmacy in Tsarskoye Selo. The marriage has four children.

The steep rise of the painter promoted by the Romanovs met with sharp criticism from the representatives of the Peredwischniki. Wlamidir Stassow, the influential theoretician of the group, describes Klever's industrious production as a “factory of wall decorations”. Klever escapes these sterile and exaggerated reviews by taking a study trip to the seclusion of the island of Nargen. Today it is called Naissaar and was placed under nature protection by the Estonian government in 1995. The most important painting still preserved from this period, “Fishing Village on Nargen Island” is now in the collections of the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. Julius von Klever exhibited it in the famous Paris Salon in 1881. Then the Grand Duke Alexej Alexandrovich , Admiral General of the Imperial Navy, bought it .

The great art connoisseur and patron Pawel Tretyakov acquired the painting “Jungle on the island of Nargen” for his collection in 1880. In 1881 Julius von Klever was awarded the title of professor by the Art Academy in St. Petersburg. From 1880 onwards he exhibited regularly at the major art exhibitions in Berlin, Munich and Vienna.

To the coronation celebrations of Alexander III. In 1883 in Moscow, Julius von Klever designed a monumental picture together with the painter Oskar Adolf Hoffmann , who also came from Dorpat . Electric light was used to illuminate the Kremlin for the first time.

Due to his great reputation in Europe, Alexander III appoints. Julius von Klever, whom he held in high esteem, was appointed art commissioner for the 1885 world exhibition in Antwerp. Here Julius von Klever is awarded the King's Cross of the Leopold Order . The Shah of Persia awarded him the Order of the Sun and Lion in the same year . At the Berlin art exhibition in 1888, Julius von Klever was honored with a gold medal. In 1893 Alexander III raised him. in the hereditary nobility. But this lightning-fast career is followed by a decade of crisis with artistic stagnation, scandals and gambling addiction. In addition, he pretends to be his students' work. Only in 1909 did he publicly acknowledge his dance about the golden calf in the " Petersburger Zeitung ": "Life on a large scale and the card game devoured everything."

In 1898 Julius von Klever left St. Petersburg because he feared arrest. He lived near Vitebsk and in Riga for several years. From 1905 to 1909 he tried to establish himself again in Berlin. He rents an apartment in the Sigmundshof 11 studio house. After him, Käthe Kollwitz had her studio here. Klever now paints numerous German landscapes and motifs based on literary models from the Romantic era. During this time he only signs his work in German.

But Julius von Klever senses that the major Berlin art exhibitions and the German art market no longer give him the attention that he received twenty years earlier as a professor and painter at the St. Petersburg Academy. Before the outbreak of the First World War he returned to St. Petersburg. The tsarist rule ended in the revolutionary year of 1917. The Romanov dynasty is assassinated. Many of his aristocratic admirers, whom Julius von Klever had known for many years, fled abroad. Julius von Klever always carefully dated his paintings and so we know that he also painted in these times: landscapes of yesterday's world. He dies in 1924 in the now renamed Leningrad.

A remarkable obituary for him appeared on April 2, 1925 in the " Revaler Boten ", written by the doctor and art historian Leo von Kügelgen . Today Reval is called Tallinn as the Estonian capital. St. Peterburg also bears its ancestral name again. In Russia, Юлий Юльевич Клевер's paintings are present in all major museums and there are numerous publications about him. He is also well represented in the art collections of Estonia, Latvia and Belarus.

Selected Works

• In the Field , 1874, Vladimir-Suzdal Art Museum
• The cemetery , 1876 (in German dedicated to Antonia von Kügelgen), Tallinn Art Museum
• In the evening , 1876, National Museum of Belarus in Minsk
• Niederwald , 1878, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
• Primeval forest on Nargen Island / Inner Forest , 1880, Tretyakov Gallery Moscow
• Fishing village on Nargen Island , 1881, Russian Museum St. Petersburg
• Illumination of the Kremlin on the day of the coronation of Tsar Alexander III. , 1883, Tropinin Museum Moscow
• Little Red Riding Hood , 1887, Novgorod Art Museum
• Der Erlkönig , 1887 (signed in German, Akad. Berl. Art Exhibition 1887, private collection)
• Sunset in the spruce forest , 1889, Irkutsk Oblast Art Museum
• Ambrosovichi , 1899, Vitebsk Regional Museum
• Birch avenue. Abrosowitschi , 1899, Russian Museum St. Petersburg
• Am Strand von Ahlbeck , 1904 (signed in German, private property)
• Walk on the Baltic Sea Beach , 1905 (signed in German, private property)
• Clever Christ on the Water , 1908 (signed in German, private collection)

literature

• Alfried Nehring: Julius von Klever - painter on the Baltic Sea. [Bildbiografie] 2019 (German), self-published, bound in linen with a colored dust jacket, 88 pages, 112 colored illustrations, A4 format, ISBN 978-3-941064-75-1 .

Web links

Commons : Julius von Klever  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Baltic Historical Commission (ed.): Entry on Julius von Klever. In: BBLD - Baltic Biographical Lexicon digital