Karl Bodmer
.jpg)
Johann Carl Bodmer (born February 11, 1809 in Zurich , † October 30, 1893 in Paris ), Knight of the Legion of Honor , was a graphic artist , etcher , lithographer , zinc engraver, draftsman , painter , illustrator and hunter. From around 1850 his name was Johann Karl Bodmer , abbreviated and later commonly used in literature: Karl Bodmer . Born in Switzerland, he took French citizenship in 1843 and called himself Jean-Charles Bodmer or (like his son Karl-Henry ) Charles Bodmer ; Identifying names can lead to confusion between father and son. Karl Bodmer also used K Bodmer as a signature after 1843 , while his son Karl-Henry probably used the signature Ch. Bodmer Barbizon .
Karl Bodmer became known in Germany for his watercolors, drawings and aquatints of the cities and landscapes of the Rhine, Moselle and Lahn. In France, his oil paintings with forest and animal motifs and his copperplate engravings, drawings and book illustrations that he made as a member of the Barbizon School are valued .
A large importance for ethnology have its subscribed 1832-1834 in North America and watercolor Indian and landscape images that his employer Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied from 1839 in the work trip in the Interior of North America in the years 1832 to 1834 as published colored aquatints. They show the Wild West subjectively, but realistically; that his pictures influenced Karl May is obvious, but it is completely unfounded.
Today, Bodmer's pictures and Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied's travelogue are among the most important documents about the submerged Indian cultures in the Great Plains on the Missouri River .
The printing plates as well as 386 drawings and watercolors are together with the written estate of Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied in the American Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha ( Nebraska ). Another important collection is kept in the Newberry Library Bodmer Collection in Chicago .
life and work
Training as a Swiss minor master
Karl Bodmer was born as the fifth child of the cotton merchant Heinrich Bodmer and his second wife Elisabeth. Meier was born in Zurich at Oberdorfstrasse 15 in Haus zum Till . He was baptized on Wednesday, February 15, 1809, in the Grossmünster . Godparents were his uncle Johann Jakob Meyer from Meilen and his aunt Ester Bodmer geb. Meier from Esslingen.
In 1811 the Bodmer family moved to the neighboring house at Oberdorfstrasse 17 and in 1812 to the house at Rennweg 16. Karl Bodmer started school in 1815 at the age of six, which at that time only taught spelling, reading, praying, writing, singing and arithmetic. The economic situation during his childhood was difficult due to the Napoleonic Wars , and there were famines throughout Europe during the year without a summer of 1816.
At the age of 13, Karl Bodmer, like his older brother Rudolf Bodmer (1805–1841), began training as an etcher, lithographer and engraver from his godfather Johann Jakob Meyer (* March 4, 1787; † December 3, 1858) .
Johann Jakob Meyer was a respected and widely traveled landscape painter and engraver. On the advice of David Hess , he gave lessons in painting and drawing. He had married in 1817 and had lived in Zurich since Easter 1819. He was one of the so-called Swiss minor masters .
This is the name given to the painters who recorded their landscape and city motifs on site in their sketchbooks in order to have them later etched in their workshop, and who painted their vedute on small canvas in the open air and then sold them to wealthy tourists. In addition, the small masters also produced drawings and watercolors. Apprentices and journeymen worked in their workshop, who made an engraving or an aquatint based on their master’s model , printed it out, colored it and sold it to collectors, just as Karl and Rudolf did with their uncle. In their search for motifs, the small masters also made art trips to the Alps. On such an art trip, Karl Bodmer met the little masters Gabriel and Mathias Lory and Johann Jakob Wetzel.
In 1824 his family moved from Zurich to what was then the suburb of Riesbach. Karl and Rudolf Bodmer lived there at Hof 77 in a twin house at Südstrasse 6 and 10. Hans Läng suspects that the family also lived in one of the two houses until May 1826. In 1825 Karl Bodmer was confirmed at the age of sixteen . Now the two brothers Karl and Rudolf went into business for themselves and earned their living by engraving vedute and vignettes for the FS Füssli publishing house in Zurich. 50 colored aquatints were published there in 1828 and in further editions in 1829 and 1831 with an eight-page booklet under the following title: Promenade Pittoresque par les lieux les plus intéressants de la Suisse et des pays limitrophes composée de cinquante vues en miniature. Dessinées et cravées by C. Bodmer, S. Corrodi & R. Bodmer. During this time, Johann Jakob Meyer advised his nephews and accompanied them in the search for worthwhile motifs for their vedute and vignettes.
In 1828 Karl Bodmer decided to go on a hike and try his luck in Koblenz because the tourists had discovered the Rhine and Moselle as excursion destinations and wanted to take their favorite views home with them as etchings or oil paintings ( Rhine romanticism ). Rudolf moved to Zurich on October 14, 1828 and set up a studio in his apartment at Oberdorfstrasse 2, where he also worked for his brother Karl until his death on September 6, 1841.
Karl Bodmer in Koblenz
Picturesque views of the Moselle, the Rhine and the Lahn
In 1828 Karl Bodmer left Switzerland at the age of 19 and migrated down the Rhine via Basel to Koblenz. He did watercolors and drew around 60 vedutas of cityscapes and romantic Rhine and Moselle landscapes; his brother Rudolf in Zurich or an employee of the company Hölscher in Koblenz made copperplate engravings using aquatint technique; the publisher and bookseller Jakob Hölscher in Koblenz first published them as single images in 1831. The unsigned watercolors and ink drawings by Karl Bodmer, which served as a template for the aquatints and their coloring, remained in the possession of the Hölscher publishing house. Four of them later came to the Middle Rhine Museum in Koblenz . This was followed by an album with 24 loose sheets under the title: Picturesque Views of the Moselle from Trier to Coblenz. Drawn from nature by C. Bodmer. Etched in acqua tinta by R. Bodmer. Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied, who lived near Koblenz, became aware of Karl Bodmer through these landscape and city views, which were made for tourists and collectors .
From 1831 to 1833 an extended album with 30 loose sheets was published by Verlag Hölscher under the title Das Moselthal from Trier to Coblenz. In picturesque views, drawn from nature by C. Bodmer, etched in acqua tinta by R. Bodmer. The sheets appeared in three versions at different prices: in aquatint, in color and finely painted. The formulation finely painted indicates that in addition to the uncoloured and colored aquatint, a watercolor of the same motif in the same size was offered. Since the watercolors made by Karl Bodmer for the publishing house J. Hölscher, which were to serve as templates, were not dated and signed, it is difficult to determine whether these finely painted watercolors were sold because they were also missing signing and dating, whether they were by Karl Bodmer or painted by another painter in the J. Hölscher publishing house's workshop.
This album only contained a brief explanatory text. Bodmer made sure that his vedute published in this loose-leaf album also appeared as illustrations in literary travel journals, which the tourists used to prepare for their trip. First of all, in 1836, his views of the Moselle were published as a book edition together with an extensive text: LKE Seidler: The Moselle Valley between Coblenz and Trier. As an explanatory addition to Bodmer's picturesque views of the Moselle. qu. 4., Hölscher, Koblenz 1836.
In 1841 Picturesque Views of the Moselle appeared in 30 sheets, drawn by Carl Bodmer and engraved by Rudolph Bodmer, Hegy and others, gr. 4. in three copies: aquatint, colored or finely painted by Verlag Hölscher in Koblenz without a year.
Also in 1841 Hölscher published the book The Moselle and its immediate surroundings from Metz to Coblenz; historical-topographical with a text by Otto von Czarnowsky and 32 sheets by Karl Bodmer. The text is based strongly on the literary travel diaries published in 1831 by the Koblenz professor Johann August Klein (1778–1831) and in 1837 by Christian von Stramberg (1785–1868). The engravers of these 32 sheets were Rudolf Bodmer F. Hegi , GL von Kress and Ruff . The spatial depth effect of the pictures was increased by the additional aquatint technique using the copperplate engraving technique: after the engraver had scratched the lines into the copper plate, he reproduced the surfaces by etching with varying degrees of brightness.
In addition, Karl Bodmer published the following sheets with romantic views of the Rhine, Ems and Lahn:
- Panorama of Trier and its surroundings , drawn from nature by Carl Bodmer, in aquatint by Rudolph Bodmer, colored or painted in gouache , 50 × 10½ inches. Verlag Hölscher, Koblenz 1833/1834.
- Rhineland communities Koblenz no year (1836 or earlier)
- Picturesque views of the Rhine and Lahn. Drawn from nature by Carl Bodmer and engraved by the most excellent artists in Germany and France. Verlag Hölscher, Koblenz without a year (published 1836–1837). 1st series in 12 sheets 16½ × 11½ inches in four copies: plain paper, Chinese paper, colored or painted. 2nd series in 6 sheets, drawn by Carl Bodmer, Johann Jakob Siegmund, Ro (h) rdorf and Geibel in three versions: aquatint, colored or painted. Karl Bodmer produced watercolors and ink drawings as a template.
- Koblenz and its surroundings in eight sheets by Carl Bodmer and Siegmund, faithfully taken from nature. Engraved in aquatint by Rudolph Bodmer, Martens and Vogel. Verlag Hölscher, Koblenz without a year.
- View of Coblenz. After the nature by C. Bodmer, etched in aquatint by Salathé. Verlag Hölscher, Koblenz without a year (before 1842).
- Views of the Rhine , drawn from nature by Carl Bodmer, A. Di (e) tzler and F. Massau, in aquatint by Rudolph Bodmer, Hegi u. a. in 14 sheets in three versions: plain paper, Chinese paper or colored. Publishing house FC Eisen, Cologne, no year.
- Six views of the Rhine , based on the nature by Karl Bodmer, engraved by Rudolf Bodmer. Publishing house FC Eisen, Cologne 1837.
- Panorama of Coblenz and its surroundings , taken on the Pfaffendorfer Höhe by Carl Bodmer, neatly etched in aquatint by Rudolf Bodmer, 3½ feet long in the Rhineland, ½ feet high in two versions: aquatint or painted. Bädeker Verlag, Koblenz without a year (between 1832 and 1837).
- Souvenirs d'Ems . Twelve picturesque views of the Ems and the surrounding area drawn from nature by Carl Bodmer in two versions: outlined or lithographed. Bädeker Verlag, Koblenz without a year.
The trip to North America
When Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied was planning the trip to North America, he signed Karl Bodmer as a hunter and scientific draftsman in 1832 with the aim of documenting the country and its people as well as flora and fauna with the greatest possible accuracy in images.
The prince demanded ownership of the watercolors and sketches to be made on the trip, except for twelve copies, which were to pass into Karl Bodmer's possession, and took over the obligation to pay Karl Bodmer money for travel and lodging as well as 45 thalers a month. Karl Bodmer's pictures were intended to document the living environment of the Indian population in North America before their unique culture was lost forever.
On May 7, 1832, they left the castle in Neuwied together with the court hunter and taxidermist David Dreidoppel and on May 17 they traveled from Hellevoetsluis near Rotterdam by American ship to Boston , where they landed on Independence Day , July 4th went.
Unfortunately, during this period in North America, cholera was raging and was a constant threat to travelers. The expedition, which lasted 28 months, first led from Boston via New York City and Philadelphia to Pennsylvania to the branches of the Moravian Brothers in Nazareth , Gnadenhütten and Bethlehem , where Karl Bodmer was seriously injured when his rifle burst during a hunting excursion.
During the onward journey along the Ohio River , north of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) , they visited the German city foundation Economy in Ambridge by Johann Georg Rapp and his Harmony Society . On October 19, 1832, they reached New Harmony , Indiana, where they wintered and explored the city and its surroundings. Their hope of meeting Indians there was not fulfilled.
Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied was bedridden for two months and had to cure his cholera. He used his stay in New Harmony to research the North American fauna and flora and to talk to the local scientists Thomas Say and Charles Alexandre Lesueur . Since Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied was planning a trip to the area west of the Mississippi, which was still inhabited by Indians, he was interested in the scientific results of the research trip that Thomas Say had made in the years 1819 to 1820 from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains.
Karl Bodmer traveled alone to New Orleans in January 1833 to ship boxes with collection items to Germany. In the city of Natchez he visited a Choctaw camp and portrayed some representatives of this Indian people who had been expelled from the eastern United States.
On March 16, 1833, the three of them drove on to the Indian Agency for the American West in St. Louis to apply for permits for the journey into the Indian territory. When they visited Major O'Fallon at his country estate near St. Louis, he showed them his collection of Indian paintings by the painter George Catlin , who had already made a trip up the Missouri River to Fort Union in 1831 . At General William Clark's , they met a delegation from Sauk and Fox who wanted to ask the general to release their chief Black Hawk from custody.
On April 10, 1833, they left St. Louis with the map of the Missouri drawn up by the Lewis and Clark Expedition and with barter goods purchased for trading with Indians. They went on the steamer Yellowstone the American Fur Company the Missouri upwards. Karl Bodmer sketched landscapes, animals and Indians and designed portraits of the members of various Indian tribes, while Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied kept a detailed diary and purchased objects for his collection from the Indians.
On the way to Fort Pierre they met members of the Omaha and Ponca . On May 30, 1833, they reached the Fort Pierre trading post and found a Dakota tipi settlement . From there they drove on June 5, 1833 with the steamship Assiniboin past abandoned settlements of the Arikaree to Fort Clark. Here they met Mandan , Hidatsa and Absarokee . On June 19, 1833, they continued to Fort Union, where they met the Cree , Ojibwa , Assiniboin and Blackfoot . Here they got into the wooden keelboat Flora, which was propelled by sails . They met Atsina on the way to Fort McKenzie . They reached Fort McKenzie (= Fort Makensie) on August 9, 1833; they stayed there until September 14, 1833 and met the Piegan (a tribe of the Blackfoot).
For the return trip from Fort McKenzie (= Fort Makensie) they used a narrow and flat Mackinaw sailboat made of wooden planks, which they had loaded with boxes full of collection items and two bear cages. In a storm on September 15th, the boat was full of water. A large part of the botanical collection from the upper Missouri and many Indian leather suits were destroyed by water damage and subsequent mold.
They stayed in Fort Union from September 29 to October 30, 1833. There, Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied gave part of his natural history collection to Germany; In the summer of 1834 the steamship Assiniboine could not leave Fort Union because of low water. The steamer later exploded on the Missouri, burned and sank, so that the zoological results of the research trip were lost. This loss, of which Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied only found out in the fall of 1835, hit him hard; he then tried to add to his remaining collection through swaps and purchases.
On November 8, 1833, they reached Fort Clark, where they experienced a severe winter with temperatures down to −43 ° C and documented the life of the neighboring Mandan and Hidatsa . Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied fell ill with scurvy on March 11, 1834 in Fort Clark , but survived. After eating the leaves and onions of the small, white-flowered Allium reticulatum (today's name Allium textile , the prairie onion ), recovery began. On April 18, 1834, the travelers set out for Fort Pierre in the fully loaded Mackinaw boat. From there they drove on to St. Louis and shipped most of the collections and Bodmer's sketches and drawings to Europe.
During their stay in St. Louis they saw a collection of Native American portraits and scenes of their competitor George Catlin at Major O'Fallon's house and visited the Mounds of Cahokia . After a week they left St. Louis on board the steamship Metamora and traveled to New Harmony for a few days . Then they reached Cincinnati across the Ohio River . From Portsmouth they sailed the Ohio-Erie Canal , which connected the Ohio to Lake Erie until 1913, and reached Cleveland . In Buffalo they visited a Seneca village , then drove to Niagara Falls and a Tuscarora settlement . They reached Syracuse via the Erie Canal , where they saw Onondaga and Oneida . In Philadelphia and New York City they met with scientists for a scientific exchange. On July 16, 1834 they traveled with the Havre package boat from New York to Le Havre , where they arrived in bear cages on August 8, 1834 with four grizzly bears .
Karl Bodmer had made friends with Indians and wanted to stay in America forever. He only returned to Europe at the prince's request and because of an acute illness. After returning home, he planned to move to the American Indian peoples. However, the news of the death of Mató-Tópe and the 500 Mandan in the mud hut village he was visiting due to a smallpox epidemic brought in by whites in 1837 plunged him into months of sadness and dismay and so discouraged that he no longer set foot on the American continent. Henri Béraldi reported that Karl Bodmer later said: "Here in Europe I have acquaintances, in America I had friends."
The first Indian pictures
Karl Bodmer brought more than 400 sketches and watercolors of Indians, plants, animals and landscapes back to Germany from the trip. It still needs to be clarified which watercolors were completed in America and which in Paris over the next three years. Presumably those watercolors that deviate greatly from the later tableaus were created in America.
After a short stay in Neuwied Castle at the end of August 1834, Karl Bodmer traveled to his family in Zurich, where he supervised the work on seven Indian pictures that Heinrich Rudolf Schinz ordered from him for his work Natural History and Pictures of People of Different Races and Tribes, published in 1845 would have.
Until he emigrated to Paris in the autumn of 1835, he lived in the Rhineland, where he published several art portfolios with views of landscapes. This time was marked by increasing tensions with his publisher Jakob Hölscher in Koblenz, who was to publish the work Journey to Inner North America from 1832 to 1834 on behalf of Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied and did not want to accept Karl Bodmer for was responsible for the production of the printing plates and printing blocks and for the coloring of the finished prints. In his letters Jakob Hölscher complained regularly to Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied about Karl Bodmer's work, and these letters of complaint increasingly clouded the relationship of trust between Karl Bodmer and the prince. It is noticeable that Karl Bodmer no longer published his landscape views of the Rhine and the Ems as well as his panorama of Koblenz and its surroundings with Jakob Hölscher, but with the FCEisen publishing house in Cologne and the Bädeker publishing house in Koblenz.
His emigration to Paris in the autumn of 1835 was not yet a final farewell to Germany. From 1847 to 1848 and from 1851 to 1854 he worked as a landscape painter in Dormagen-Horrem , where he met Anna Maria Magdalena Pfeiffer (* 1828), who was 19 years his junior. It was not until 1848 that he separated from Germany and finally relocated to France in the artists' village of Barbizon; because he had come to the conclusion that his artistic development in Germany was not being properly appreciated. This assessment was justified. The public interest in his pictures was so low that they were neither shown at art exhibitions in Germany nor bought by museums. From today's perspective this is surprising: his watercolors from America, which are among the best watercolors of the 19th century, were never shown or published in Germany.
Karl Bodmer's disdain in the first half of the 19th century had two reasons. Despite his training as an etcher, lithographer and engraver, Karl Bodmer did not have any art training recognized in Germany and dedicated himself in his pictures to those motifs which, according to the official view, were not suitable for works of art.
At the time, there were two training paths for a recognized art education in Germany: attending grammar school and university or, instead, attending an art academy, both combined with a subsequent multi-year art trip to Rome. A long study visit to the German artist colony in Rome was seen as an essential addition to art education and as an important preparation for career advancement. Friedrich Noack reports in his book Das Deutschtum in Rom since the end of the Middle Ages that around 1200 German artists had embarked on such a study trip to Rome during the Romantic era, which lasted about 35 years.
The city of Koblenz was under the influence of the Düsseldorf Art Academy , where artists from America such as Albert Bierstadt also received their art education. At that time, the view of art of the Düsseldorf Academy Director Wilhelm Schadow from 1826 to 1859 was decisive for the assessment of the works of art and their value. For Wilhelm Schadow there was a hierarchy of image motifs. At the top were subjects from church tradition, followed by idealistic motifs from philosophy, poetry and history, as well as the poetically conceived portrait. These image motifs were part of the academy training in Düsseldorf until 1850 . From 1850 onwards, Wilhelm Schadow reluctantly accepted genre painting as a subject.
The painting of landscapes, animals and people saw Schadow as a copying of little artistic value. Painters like Karl Bodmer, who devoted themselves to these pictorial motifs, were not highly valued in Germany at the time and were not well paid for their work. That could have been the cause of Karl Bodmer's emigration from Germany. Then there was the economic crisis at the end of the 1840s, in which even established artists in Germany were left without income.
Karl Bodmer in Paris
The panels of North America
In the autumn of 1835 Karl Bodmer moved to Paris . There he met the painters Jean-François Millet and Théodore Rousseau and the writer Théophile Gautier . In 1844 he was received by King Louis-Philippe , who later gave him a monogrammed diamond ring.
In 1836 he exhibited numerous of his own watercolors from North America in the Louvre salon , which he had loaned from Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied. The watercolors , some of which already anticipate later Impressionism and Expressionism , received devastating newspaper criticism because they did not correspond to the taste of the time.
Thereupon Prince Karl Bodmer gave the order to adapt the planned tableaus and vignettes to contemporary tastes in order to ensure the saleability of the work. It is a tragic decision that Karl Bodmer decided not to paint watercolors because of this negative criticism. It was not until nine years later, from 1845 to 1847, that Karl Bodmer exhibited again American landscape watercolors in the Paris Salon. Today the American watercolors are considered the highlights of his life's work.
Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied selected those from the numerous watercolors that he wanted to include in his book Journey to Inner North America from 1832 to 1834 . He asked Karl Bodmer to supervise the production of the illustrations against the payment of a monthly wage of 100 thalers, of which he had to use half of the money for wages and expenses.
Karl Bodmer then supervised 20 renowned engravers in Paris, Zurich and London, who made 63 steel and 18 copper plates on which they reproduced the watercolor templates precisely. The engravers used pantographs to precisely enlarge the templates and their proportions.
Of the 81 plates, 48 large ones appeared as picture panels ( called tableau ) in large format and 33 smaller ones as vignettes . After printing, he instructed the artists to color the panels and vignettes according to his instructions . He therefore constantly traveled back and forth between the cities of Paris, Zurich and London to ensure the exact execution of the prints and their colored versions. On November 10, 1837, the first delivery of the German edition was offered in five different versions. The prices for each of the 20 deliveries ranged between three thalers, five silver groschen and ten thalers, depending on the type of paper and the number of colored engravings. This resulted in prices for the entire German works of between 60 and 200 thalers. For comparison: a skilled worker in Koblenz earned 200 thalers for a whole year.
Between 1837 and 1842 Jakob Hölscher published the German-language book project Journey to Inner North America in Koblenz from 1832 to 1834 as a two-volume work with a picture atlas in individual deliveries. Because of the 81 Bodmer illustrations, it is considered a milestone in the history of book printing in the 19th century.
The travel descriptions comprise a total of 1340 text pages into which 52 small woodcuts are inserted. The text by Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied contains, in the order of his diary entries, not only travel descriptions and reports about the Indian peoples, but also notes about the flora and fauna of North America and a description of the industrialized eastern states of the USA. The separate picture atlas consists of 81 illustrations and a map; it was offered in five different versions, which contained different paper qualities and either uncolored black and white images or colored color images.
The printed text by Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied contains around three hundred thousand words, while the manuscript contained around five hundred thousand words. The manuscript was shortened considerably before publication, for example to describe drinking bouts, to depict the sexual habits of the Indian tribes visited and to include some unflattering remarks about the white traders on the Missouri. Chapter 21 in Volume 2 is suitable as an introduction to reading the text (e.g. the reprint by L. Borowsky Verlag, Munich 1979); there Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied describes the original river landscape of the Missouri and its fauna in 1833. This river trip in untouched nature must have been a unique experience.
The list of subscribers lists 215 people and institutions who ordered a total of 277 copies, 160 of which were in the simplest version without coloring. It turned out that further buyers of the work were very difficult to gain. Tensions arose between Karl Bodmer and Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied, as Bodmer had contractually agreed to take over responsibility for sales in France and England. The first French edition appeared from 1840 to 1843 and the first English edition followed from 1843 to 1844. The economic depression of 1846 and the revolution of 1848 dampened demand everywhere, and a financial debacle loomed. In 1847 Karl Bodmer renounced all of his rights to the original records and transferred the responsibility for marketing to Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied and his family. He did not hand the plates over to the Prussian embassy in Paris until 1856, where they were temporarily stored until 1873 due to the Franco-Prussian War . When they reached Neuwied Castle, Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied had died six years ago.
Hans Peter Treichler reports that Karl Bodmer drew a downright devastating balance at the time: he, Bodmer, sacrificed ten of the best years of his life to the picture atlas. Even if he excepted the two years in America, this commitment had permanently damaged his artistic career, and the neglected could not be brought back with a high degree of commitment and willpower.
Karl Bodmer in Barbizon
Forest landscapes and pictures of animals
Karl Bodmer moved from Paris to Dormagen-Horrem in 1847 , opened a studio there and devoted himself increasingly to landscape painting. He soon returned to Paris, then in 1848/49, like Théodore Rousseau and Jean-Francois Millet, because of the French February Revolution in 1848 and a cholera epidemic in Paris, he moved to Barbizon , which is outside Paris, southwest of Chailly-en-Bière , near the forest from Fontainebleau .
At the time, Barbizon consisted of various farms and cottages owned by charcoal burners and forest workers. The center of the place was a grocer with the inn Auberge Ganne , which became the meeting point for artists. This inn on Grande Rue was run by the trained tailor François Ganne and his German wife and offered the newly arrived artists their first accommodation.
The real attraction at that time was the varied approximately 25,000 hectare forest of Fontainebleau with gnarled old oaks, beeches and chestnuts, with ravines, moors, heather and large boulders. At that time Karl Bodmer described himself as the painter of the forest . An oak in the forest later became known as the Bodmer Oak ; Claude Monet painted it in his 1865 painting Le chêne Bodmer, forêt de Fontainebleau , and Eugene Cuvelier published a photograph entitled Beech Tree Near the Bodmer Oak .
An artists' colony had existed in Barbizon for decades and Karl Bodmer became an influential member of the Barbizon School . He devoted himself to outdoor painting . Like the other artists of the painter's colony, he wanted to show nature in its pristine originality. His circle of friends included Peter Burnitz , Narcisso Virgilio Díaz de la Peña , Théodore Rousseau and Jean-François Millet . Together with Millet, he lithographed four prints in 1852 on behalf of a wealthy American from St. Louis on themes from American history: the robbery of the daughters of Daniel Boone and Callaway by the Indians , the liberation of the daughters , Simon Buttler and Major McCulloch . In the lithograph En Foret ou Haute Futaie from 1851, Karl Bodmer created the forest landscape and Jean-Francois Millet created the female figure.
He received a lot of recognition for his oil paintings with landscapes that he painted in Barbizon. Barthélemy Menn visited him, and Jean-Francois Millet drew him in 1850 and painted various pictures with motifs from Bodmer's North American sketches.
In 1851 he went back to Dormagen-Horrem. However, since his artistic development in Germany was not properly appreciated, he returned to Barbizon in 1854 and in 1856 bought the house of the American painter William Morris Hunt at 40, rue Grande for 4000 francs. He lived there for 30 years.
He brought his partner Anna Maria Magdalena Pfeiffer (1828–1903, later French name: Anne-Marie-Madeleine Pfeiffer) with him from Kleinkönigsdorf near Horrem, who gave birth to his three sons.
Karl Bodmer received numerous commissions as a painter of forest and animal pictures. He presented his works in exhibitions. From 1850 onwards, he took part in the Salon de Paris on a fairly regular basis with forest landscapes and depictions of animals. Between 1855 and 1878 he showed pictures at world exhibitions, for example in Paris in 1855 and 1867, in Vienna in 1873 and again in Paris in the Swiss pavilion in 1878. He also took part in exhibitions in the French provinces, for example in 1859 in Marseille. Critics such as Théophile Gautier , Paul Mantz and Philippe Burty emphasized that his forest and animal pictures would take the viewer into a world of untouched nature.
Garda Alexander interprets Karl Bodmer's picture deer in the forest (see illustration) in a perception text as follows:
- “In the distance, between birch trees, deer can be seen, the scene is bathed in soft light: it could be very early morning. ‹The Deer in the Forest› by Karl Bodmer are in their home. You are not looking for closeness, prefer the distance. Their restraint corresponds to their free and wild nature in nature. There they can only be recognized and perceived from a distance. They are special beings who form a world, a community with the forest dwellers: an animal world that could tell myths. The colors are true to nature, coordinated tone in tone. The gentle, mild world, the animal kingdom, accepts people as fellow creatures. The deer claim their own territory and demand respect for it: With watchful eyes they meet the gaze of the beholder from a distance. You can disappear into the thicket at any time and escape human attention. "
Karl Bodmer also worked as an illustrator for German, French and American magazines; he used zincography , which was also used by Charles Emile Jacque in Barbizon , and achieved great mastery in this technique. 20 sheets appeared in L'Illustration , 24 sheets in Le Monde illustré , twelve sheets in La Chasse illustrée , further sheets in Le Magasin pittoresque , L'Art , L'Artiste , L'Événement illustré , Graham's Mag. (Anonymous) , Haper's Weekly , Illustrated Switzerland and Swiss Family Book (anonymous).
He illustrated books by well-known writers: by Théophile Gautier ( La nature chez elle 1870, Marc éd., With 37 etchings), Jules Jacques Veyrassat ( Hamerton's chapters on animals ), Jean de La Fontaine ( Fables in the so-called edition of douze peintres, published by Jouast in 1873), Victor Hugo ( Quatre-vingt-treize , Paris 1876), E. Muller ( La Forêt , Paris 1878) and Louis Christophe François Hachette (Evangiles) . When Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied published an illustrated catalog of North American reptiles in 1865, he made seven hand-colored etchings for it. In addition to his artistic work, he taught various master classes, among them in 1877 the Solothurn painter Otto Frölicher .
Karl Bodmer's son Karl-Henry (= Karl Heinrich, called Charles) was a locksmith according to his marriage registration on December 22, 1877, but worked as a painter and photographer. A collection of 80 photographs in 18 × 24 cm format was acquired in 2005 by the Musée Nicéphore Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône . These photographs were taken in Barbizon and the Fontainebleau forest between 1870 and 1880.
Hans Läng points out that Karl Bodmer also took and published photographs. Since Karl Bodmer called himself like his son Karl-Henry Charles Bodmer , it is difficult to correctly assign photographs to one of the two.
There are photographs in the Dietmar Siegert collection (“Peasant woman at a pond in the forest of Fontainebleau” 1870/75) and in the Musée d'Orsay (inventory no Signature Ch.Bodmer Barbizon carry a consecutive number from a catalog of works. This signature differs from the signature of Karl Bodmer (K Bodmer) and should therefore refer to the son Karl-Henry.
If a French citizen had distinguished himself through special achievements for twenty years, he could be accepted into the Legion of Honor and the associated medal from the head of state personally awarded. On July 31, 1876, Karl Bodmer was named Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in a festive ceremony . This honor was accompanied by an annual pension of 250 francs, which was to be paid to the recipient's widow in the event of death. This probably led Karl Bodmer to marry his partner Anna Maria Magdalena Pfeiffer, who from now on called herself Anne-Marie Madeleine Pfeiffer, on October 7, 1876.
Last years in Paris
Despite his artistic success, he had to sell his house at 40, rue Grande in 1884 for financial reasons because the publishers delayed the publication of his works until his death in order to achieve a higher sales price. In his house is now the Hotel Les Charmettes ; a plaque outside indicates the previous owner Karl Bodmer.
Karl Bodmer moved back to Paris. Illness and lack of money overshadowed the last years of his life. The efforts of E. Müller from Zurich to persuade the Zürcher Künstlergesellschaft to purchase the painting Group of Deers in the Forest, which became known through good reviews and illustrations in magazines , failed; Finally, the Zürcher Künstlergesellschaft decided to buy at least two chalk drawings by the painter to alleviate his misery.
Inwardly lonely, deaf and blind, tormented by rheumatism and arthritis, he died on October 30, 1893 in Paris. His grave is in the cemetery of Chailly-en-Bière near Barbizon, near the graves of his painter friends Théodore Rousseau and Jean-Francois Millet.
Awards
- 1851 Second class medal in the Salon de Paris
- 1855 Third class medal at the Paris World's Fair
- 1863 medal
- 1876, July 31: Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur of the Legion of Honor
- In front of the theater at Neuwied Castle is a fountain with the figures of Karl Bodmer, Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied and Matô-Tope, donated in 1985 by Friedrich Wilhelm Fürst zu Wied and created by the Leutesdorf artist Guta Stephanow von Freydorf .
The artistic estate
On April 27 and 28, 1894, a year after his death, Bodmer's artistic estate was auctioned at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris. The first catalog number named the picture, which was rejected by the people of Zurich, Group of deer in the forest .
George A. Lucas , who came from Baltimore, worked as an art agent in Paris in the late 19th century. He visited Karl Bodmer personally and, after his death, one of his sons, and bought prints and drawings for his George A. Lucas collection , which also contains a sketchbook by Karl Bodmer. On April 26, 1894, he inspected Bodmer's estate before it was sold; however, it cannot be assumed that he auctioned works there, as there are no paintings in his collection with auction stamps. The George A. Lucas collection was temporarily owned by the Maryland Institute and is now in the Baltimore Museum of Art . The collection includes sketches from Bodmer's trip to America and drawings of animals and landscapes from the Barbizon area.
Edward Everett Ayer (1841–1927), a wealthy businessman from Chicago, bought 42 of the 59 watercolors, drawings, sketches, engravings and lithographs from the trip at the estate auction on April 27 and 28, 1894 in the Hotel Drouot in Paris America and added this Bodmer collection to his Ayer collection , which he donated to the Newberry Library in Chicago in 1911 . The Bodmer collection is now called the Newberry Library Bodmer Collection and contains a total of 44 works by Karl Bodmer.
Both collections contain exclusively works from Karl Bodmer's private collection. These include watercolors that he made in his Paris studio as templates for the tableaus. The comparison of these watercolors with the earlier watercolors and sketches shows what changes he made for the print version at Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied's request.
Bodmer's works and printing plates, which he had to give Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied, were kept in Neuwied Castle and were forgotten. Stanley Pargellis , director of the Newberry Library , and the German scientist Dr. Joseph Röder ensured that they were rediscovered. A traveling exhibition brought 118 watercolors to America from 1953 to 1955 and made the watercolors known there.
In 1959, the art dealer M Knoedler & Co from New York acquired all of the archival materials and Karl Bodmer's works of art and printing plates stored in Neuwied Castle and exhibited them at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha (Nebraska). The following year, the Omaha-based Northern Gas Company bought the collection for the Inner North Foundation and gave it to the Joslyn Art Museum, first on loan and in 1986 as a gift.
Since then, the museum's holdings have included 386 drawings and watercolors by Karl Bodmer, the diaries and travel correspondence from Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied, as well as other documents such as newspaper clippings, invoices, invitations and maps. From 2008 the diaries of Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied will be published in three volumes in English translation with the drawings and watercolors by Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied contained therein. The first volume with the diaries from May 1832 to April 1833 was published in 2008.
In 1989 the Joslyn Art Museum published a hand-colored and limited edition of 125 copies of the Illustrated Atlas of the Journey to Inner North America 1832–1834 , which was produced with the original printing plates. The museum and the University of Nebraska Press have published drawings and watercolors from the museum's holdings in various book publications . In 1984 the exhibition catalog Karl Bodmer's America was published with 359 reproductions of drawings and watercolors that Karl Bodmer had made during his trip to America . According to Hans Peter Treichler, the original watercolors are artistically superior to the later engraved illustrations in terms of their spontaneity, but also in terms of their coloring and lines.
In 1999 the Joslyn Art Museum founded the Bodmer Society . The exclusive character of this Bodmer Society is shown by the fact that the admission fee is $ 5,000.00 and the annual membership price is $ 2,500.00 (as of 2008).
Karl Bodmer's illustrations of North America come in different colors because they were colored by hand. Today they are not only in the museums mentioned, but also in The Whitney Gallery of Western Art in the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in the city of Cody (Wyoming, USA), in the German Leather Museum in Offenbach, in the Swiss North America Native Museum NONAM in Zurich and in a few other mostly American museums. His European pictures can be found in public and private collections, for example in the Middle Rhine Museum in Koblenz , in the Middle Moselle Museum Traben-Trarbach (with 4 original printing plates), in the Georg Schäfer Museum in Schweinfurt, in the Simeonstift Trier City Museum , in Berlin, London, Zurich, Montpellier and Paris. Many of his works are offered through the art trade.
No written records were found in Bodmer's estate. However, it is possible that there was a diary with drawings by Karl Bodmer that has been lost. Hans Peter Treichler writes:
- “In February of that year [1947] a middle-aged woman went to the public library in the town of Montclair, New Jersey, and asked for information about a certain Karl Bodmer. In her family there is a handwritten book with many drawings that bears this name; a great-grandmother on his mother's side left it, she in turn received it from the painter as a reward for caring for him during an illness. The librarian has no advice and the woman says goodbye without leaving a name or address. " When the librarian looked at the 1947 book Across the Wide Missouri by Bernard Augustine De Voto with pictures by Karl Bodmer months later, the librarian remembered the request and tried unsuccessfully to reach the woman via radio, television and newspapers. It is possible that the great-grandmother Karl Bodmer met in mid-September 1832 in Bethlehem (Pennsylvania), where Karl Bodmer had been badly wounded during a hunting excursion by breaking his rifle, as Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied reports in Chapter 6 of his book.
Work and reception
Karl Bodmer had his artistic roots with the so-called Swiss minor masters of the 18th century and with the painters of German Romanticism. The encounter with contemporary American and French painting became significant for his later work. A romantic tinted classicism led to an idealization of the representation and to a special lighting that gives the pictures their spatial plasticity and depth.
_(1865)_by_Karl_Bodmer.jpg)
Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied asked him to document the country and its people as well as flora and fauna with the greatest possible accuracy in the picture. So in 1832 from the small Swiss master who had learned Veduten to do with people staffage, a scientific illustrator who completed it before the advent of photography drawings and watercolors of such accuracy that Bernard Augustine De Voto 1947 in his book Across the Wide Missouri wrote :
- "These images have the sharpness and selectivity of medical drawings that capture anatomical or surgical conditions: Here the pencil enables clarity, emphasis and separation of parts and levels that the camera lens is unable to achieve."
For Karl Bodmer, the search for the originality of nature was essential. It was thanks to him that he presented natural landscapes as biotopes and habitats . His tableau with the bison herd on the upper Missouri shows this, as does the etching The Forest of Fontainebleau .
Karl Bodmer was way ahead of his time in his image design. This is shown by his impressionist watercolor Forest View on the Lehigh River in Pennsylvania , his expressionist watercolor Pioch-Kiäiu and his surrealist lithography Young Girls Are Surprised by Indians.
Since he had to hand over the American watercolors to Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied, they were neither exhibited nor published in German-speaking countries. Despite the lack of a history of impact, they are among the most important watercolors of the 19th century.
Karl Bodmer's son Karl-Henry , who called himself like Karl Bodmer Charles , took over the image of his father and continued his work as a painter and photographer.
After his death, Karl Bodmer was forgotten as a watercolorist, painter and illustrator; the pictures in the book Journey to Inner North America in the years 1832 to 1834 remained, however, always present through numerous reprints, which often do not even bear his name. Because of his documentary and unprejudiced representation of the Plains Indians , their culture and their environment, he succeeded in producing valuable documentation of the submerged Indian cultures in the Great Plains on the Missouri. That is his personal contribution to the world cultural heritage of mankind. Bodmer's influence on Karl May cannot be proven. The frequent and often anonymous quotations of his pictures and their redesign in photographs, advertising shots and films finally condensed his pictures into visual topoi in the stock of images of Western civilizations.
The reception of Karl Bodmer's oeuvre in the 20th century only took place in the United States and Switzerland. This can already be seen from the fact that the existing biographies were only created in Switzerland and the United States. In Germany and Austria the reception is still pending. In the German-language works on the Barbizon School, Karl Bodmer is only mentioned in a subordinate clause or in a single footnote.
However, Germany is a good location for research. The work Journey to Inner North America in the Years 1832 to 1834 is in the original edition in numerous German libraries. Some German copper engraving cabinets (for example the Kunsthalle Hamburg ) have sculptures that were created in Barbizon.
Exhibitions
Exhibition on the occasion of the 200th birthday of Karl Bodmer
Karl Bodmer's native city of Zurich honored him from February 8 to November 8, 2009 in the North America Native Museum with a successful special exhibition that was visited by 14,251 visitors.
The exhibition with the name Karl Bodmer - a Swiss artist in America showed all the prints (some in different versions) from the work Journey to Inner North America in the years 1832 to 1834 . In addition, there were valuable exhibits from this trip to America from the collection of Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied , which the Linden Museum in Stuttgart and the Ethnological Museum in Berlin made available on loan. This was one of the most comprehensive exhibitions on Karl Bodmer that was shown in Europe. The curator of the exhibition was the Americanist and Bodmer specialist Hartwig Isernhagen from Basel. A catalog was published which deals with the exhibited pictures and objects and contains fundamental contributions beyond that.
See also
- Rudolf Bodmer
- Indians of North America
- Indian image in the German-speaking area
- New Harmony
- Fur trade in North America
- Toussaint Charbonneau
literature
Biographies
- Hermann Alex. Müller: Biographisches Künstler-Lexikon , Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1882, p. 61 .
- Hans Vollmer : Bodmer, Karl . In: Ulrich Thieme , Felix Becker (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists from Antiquity to the Present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. tape 4 : Bida – Brevoort . Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1910, p. 170 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
- Carl Brun : Bodmer, Karl . In: Carl Brun (Ed.): Swiss Artist Lexicon. 1. Vol. A-G. Huber & Co, Frauenfeld 1905, pp. 159-161 ( digitized version ).
- Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs de tous les temps et de tous les pays . Nouvelle edition, Volume 2, Paris 1976, p. 108.
- Hans Läng : The Indian Bodmer . Collection for ethnology. St. Gallen Museums Foundation, St. Gallen 1992.
- Hans Läng: Indians were my friends. Life and work of Karl Bodmer 1809–1893. Hallwag Verlag, Bern / Stuttgart 1976, ISBN 3-444-10198-8 . 3rd supplemented edition: Knobel Art Collection, Zug 1993, ISBN 3-9520463-0-2
- Hans Läng: Karl Bodmer - His life and work. In: Prairie and Plains Indians. The journey into inner North America by Maximilian Prinz zu Wied and Karl Bodmer. With catalog raisonné. Verlag Hermann Schmidt, Mainz 1993, ISBN 3-87439-289-9 , pp. 61-89.
- Läng, Hans: Bodmer, Karl. In: Sikart
- Hans Peter Treichler : Karl Bodmer. In: Hans Peter Treichler: The mobile wilderness. Biedermeier and the far west. Schweizer Verlaghaus AG, Zurich 1990, pp. 109–246, ISBN 3-7263-6523-0
- Hans Wernher von Kittlitz: Bodmer, Karl . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 12, Saur, Munich a. a. 1995, ISBN 3-598-22752-3 , pp. 88-90. (with details of museums, exhibitions and literature).
- William J. Orr: Karl Bodmer. The Artist's Life. In: David C. Hunt, William J. Orr, WH Goetzmann (Eds.): Karl Bodmer's America. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha NE 1984, ISBN 0-8032-1185-6
- Bodmer, Karl . In: Biographical Lexicon of Swiss Art. Dictionnaire biographique de l'art suisse, Dizionario del'arte svizzerra. Zurich and Lausanne . Zurich 1998, ISBN 978-3-85823-673-9 , p.
Catalog raisonnés
- Complete works
- Hans Läng: Indians were my friends. Life and work of Karl Bodmer 1809–1893. Pp. 175-183. Hallwag Verlag, Bern / Stuttgart 1976, ISBN 3-444-10198-8
- Prints with motifs from Switzerland
- JJ Meier: The new roads through the canton of Graubünden , Zurich 1825
- The Panten Bridge in the canton of Glarus (based on a model by Carl Bodmer) 1825
- FS Füssli: Promenade Pittoresque par les lieux les plus intéressants de la Suisse et des pays limitrophes composée de cinquante vues en miniature. Dessinées et cravées by C. Bodmer, S. Corrodi & R. Bodmer. Zurich 1828, 1829 and 1831
- S. Corrodi: Promenade pittoresque , Zurich 1835
- JJ Meier: Souvenirs de St. Maurice , Zurich 1835
- Prints with motifs from Germany
- Ms. Röhling (?) (Ed.): Panorama of Coblenz and its surroundings. Taken from the Pfaffendorfer Höhe by Carl Bodmer, etched in aqua tinta by Rudolph Bodmer . Koblenz 1830. [From 1832 probably published by K. Baedeker]
- Jakob Hölscher (Hrsg.): Picturesque views of the Moselle from Trier to Coblenz. Drawn from nature by C. Bodmer. Etched in acqua tinta by R. Bodmer. 24 sheets . J. Hölscher, Koblenz 1831
- Jakob Hölscher (Hrsg.): Picturesque views of the Moselle from Trier to Coblenz. Drawn from nature by Carl Bodmer, etched in aquatint by Rudolph Bodmer . Three deliveries with a total of 24 sheets, Koblenz 1831
- Jakob Hölscher (Ed.): The Moselle valley from Trier to Coblenz. In picturesque views, drawn from nature by C. Bodmer, etched in acqua tinta by R. Bodmer . 30 sheets. Koblenz 1831-1833
- Karl Baedeker (Ed.): Panorama of Coblenz and its surroundings, taken on the Pfaffendorfer Höhe by C. Bodmer, engraved by Rudolf Bodmer . Coblenz (no year)
- Jakob Hölscher (Hrsg.): Picturesque view of Nassau and Lahnstein. Drawn by Carl Bodmer and engraved by Rudolph Bodmer . Koblenz 1833
- Jakob Hölscher (Hrsg.): Panorama of Trier and its surroundings. Drawn by Carl Bodmer and engraved by Rudolph Bodmer , Koblenz 1833
- Jakob Hölscher (Hrsg.): Panorama of Trier and its surroundings drawn from nature after C. Bodmer. Engraved by R. Bodmer . Koblenz [1833]
- Jakob Hölscher (Ed.): Picturesque views of the Moselle in 30 sheets, drawn by Carl Bodmer and engraved by Rudolph Bodmer, Hegy and others. Koblenz (no year)
- Jakob Hölscher (Ed.): Panorama of Trier and its surroundings, drawn from nature by Carl Bodmer, in aquatint by Rudolph Bodmer, colored or painted in gouache, 50 × 10 1/2 inches. Koblenz 1833/34
- Jakob Hölscher (Ed.): LKE Seidler: The Moselle valley between Coblenz and Trier, as an explanation of the picturesque views [C. Bodmers 1831], drawn from nature by Carl Bodmer . Etched in aqua tinta by Rudolph Bodmer. 30 aquatint leaves. Koblenz 1836
- FC Eisen (Ed.): Views of the Rhine based on nature drawn by Carl Bodmer, Hegi u. a. in fourteen sheets in three copies . Cologne (no year)
- Jakob Hölscher (Hrsg.): Picturesque views of the Rhine and the Lahn. Taken from nature by Carl Bodmer, engraved by the finest artists in France and Switzerland (R. Bodmer, Ruef, Salathé, Himely, Martin and others). Koblenz 1836/37
- FC Eisen (Ed.): Six views of the Rhine, based on the nature by Karl Bodmer, engraved by Rudolf Bodmer . Cologne 1837
- Jakob Hölscher (Ed.): Koblenz and its surroundings in eight sheets by Carl Bodmer and Siegmund, faithfully taken from nature. Engraved in aquatint by Rudolph Bodmer, Martens and Vogel . Koblenz (no year)
- Jakob Hölscher (ed.): Picturesque views of the Moselle in 30 sheets, drawn by Carl Bodmer and pushed by Rudolph Bodmer, Hegy and others. Koblenz (no year)
- Jakob Hölscher (Hrsg.): Picturesque views of Coblenz and its surroundings. In eight sheets faithfully taken from nature by Carl Bodmer and Siegmund, engraved in aquatint by Rudolph Bodmer, Martres and Vogler. Koblenz 1839
- Othmar Metzger: Rudolf and Karl Bodmer's activity in the Rhineland (1832–1841). In: Yearbook for History and Art of the Middle Rhine and its Neighboring Areas 12/13, Neuwied [1962], pp. 71–77.
- Hans Läng: Indians were my friends. The life and work of Karl Bodmer 1809–1893 [therein also details on Rudolf Bodmer], Bern, Stuttgart 1976 ISBN 978-3-9520463-0-2
- Willy Leson (Ed.): Romantic journey through the Moselle valley. From Koblenz to Trier. With graphics by Carl Bodmer and texts by Johann August Klein and Christian von Stramberg. [With the engravers Rudolf Bodmer, F. Hegi, GL v. Kress, Martens and Ruff] Cologne 1978 ISBN 978-3-7616-0422-9
- Wilhelm Engelmann (Ed.): Bibliotheca geographica. Directory of the works published in Germany from the middle of the 18th century up to the end of 1856 on geography and travel, including maps, plans and views. 2nd half: Special part (pages 390, 681f, 822f, 826, 988.). Published in 1857 and 1965 (reprint of the 1857 edition, Meridian Publ., Amsterdam).
- Othmar Metzger: Rudolf and Karl Bodmer's activity in the Rhineland (1832–1841) . In: Yearbook for the history and art of the Middle Rhine and its neighboring areas. Vol. 12/13, 1960. Raiffeisendr., Neuwied Rh. 1962, pp. 71-77. (This article covers only part of the German prints. The information in Wikipedia is more complete)
- Adolf Nitsch: How does a small picture get into a large institute? Stahleck Castle on a watercolor by Karl Bodmer. In: Rheinische Heimatpflege 38, 2001, pp. 46–47.
- Elisabeth Heitger: The Koblenz painters and their works in the 1st half of the 19th century . Bonn 1982, p.
- W. Reiniger / I. Faust: Bingen am Rhein - pictures of an old town - catalog of woodcuts, copper and steel engravings and lithographs . Bad Kreuznach 1994
- Michael Schmitt: The illustrated descriptions of the Rhine. Documentation of the works and views from the Romantic period to the end of the 19th century . (= Urban research series C sources, vol. 7), Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 1996, p.
- Otto von Czarnowski (text): With Carl Bodmer from Trier to Koblenz. A trip to the Moselle around 1830 (Aquatints by R. Bodmer, GL von Kress, Franz Hegi and Ruff). Rhein-Mosel-Verlag, Alf / Mosel 2006 ISBN 978-3-89801-033-7
- Wolfgang Lambertz: Carl Bodmer- A Swiss painter discovers the Moselle - [in it also details about Rudolf Bodmer]. In: Wolfgang Lambertz (Ed.): Picturesque Moselle - paintings and prints from 100 years - Bernkastel-Kues and Cochem . Zell (Mosel), 2007, pp. 8–12, with four color images. [Small color catalog with works by various artists, published for the exhibition from June 14th to 29th, 2007 in Cochem / Mosel]
- Alexander Thon, Stefan Ulrich: Blown by the showers of the past…. Castles and palaces on the Moselle, [including several aquatint engravings by Rudolf Bodmer based on drawings by Carl Bodmer], Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-7954-1926-4
- Prints with motifs from the USA
- David C. Hunt, William J. Orr, WH Goetzmann (red.): Karl Bodmer's America. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska 1984.
- John C. Ewers: Views of vanishing frontier. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha (Nebraska) 1984 + 1985
- Marsha V. Gallagher: Karl Bodmer's eastern views. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska 1996
- W. Raymond Wood, Joseph C. Porter, David C. Hunt: Karl Bodmer's studio art: The Newberry Library Bodmer Collection. University of Illinois Press. Urbana and Chicago 2002.L
- Brandon K. Ruud (Ed.): Karl Bodmer's North American Prints . Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha Ne 2004, ISBN 0-8032-1326-3 (contains an introduction by Ron Tyler about Karl Bodmer and the American West , an overview by Brandon K. Ruud about the making of North American prints, an illustrated catalog of the tableaus and vignettes in their various versions, a synopsis of the watercolors, drawings and prints with identical motifs, a list of later prints based on Bodmer's models and a list of his later works in Barbizon)
- North America Native Museum Zurich (Karin Isernhagen): Karl Bodmer. A Swiss Artist in America 1809-1893. A Swiss artist in America. Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich 2009. ISBN 978-3-85881-236-0 (Text: German and English. With a bibliography and images of all tableaus and vignettes from NONAM, North America Native Museum - Indian and Inuit cultures in Zurich).
- Prints with motifs from Barbizon
- Henri Beraldi: Les graveurs du XIXe siécle. Guide de l'amateur d'estampes modern , Volume 2; Librarie L. Conquet, Paris 1885, pp. 137-143. ( Digitized version, this French catalog raisonné names the prints that Karl Bodmer published in France)
- Philip Gilbert Hamerton: The Portfolio , Vol. 1-2. With illustrations by Karl Bodmer. London 1870.
- Philip Gilbert Hamerton: Chapters on Animals. With 20 illustrations by J. Veygrassat and Karl Bodmer. Boston, Roberts Brothers, 1977.
Journey to Inner North America from 1832 to 1834
- German first editions
- Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied: Journey to Inner North America from 1832 to 1834 , 2 volumes of text and 1 picture atlas with illustrations by Karl Bodmer, J. Hölscher, Koblenz 1839–1841.
- Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied: North America in Pictures , 1846. A second edition was started in 1851, but probably not completed. The work contains selected pictures from the picture atlas with explanations by Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied.
- Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied: Directory of the mammals observed on my trip to North America . Berlin, 1862.
- Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied: Directory of the reptiles that were observed on a trip in northern America . Nova Acta Academiae Caesareae Leopoldinae Nat. Cur. 32, I, 8, E..Blochmann & Sohn, Dresden 1865 (With 7 hand-colored illustrations by Karl Bodmer of turtles and two salamanders. Also published separately: Frommann, Jena.)
- French first edition
- Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied: Voyage dans l'interieur de L'Amérique du Nord exécuté pendant les années 1832, 1833 et 1834 . Arthus-Bertrand, Paris 1840–1843.
- English first edition
- Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied: Maximilian Prince of Wied's Travels in the Interior of North America, during the years 1832–1834 ; Translation by H. Evans Lloyd; Achermann & Comp., London 1843-1844. (Excerpts from it appeared in 1906 as a photomechanical facsimile with halftone images in Early Western Travels, 1748–1848 , Volumes 22–25, by Reuben Gold Thwaites, Arthur H. Clark Company, Cleveland-Ohio. New edition: Reuben Gold Thwaites: Early Western Travels, 1748 -1846 . AMS Press, New York 1966.)
- Reprints of Karl Bodmer's original plates
- Leipziger Edition : Edition of uncolored prints from the original plates of the picture atlas published by Verlag Schmidt and Guenther, Leipzig 1921–1922, under the series title Reprints of Rare Americana .
- Alecto Historical Editions : Limited Edition Prints . London 1989-1993. Hand-colored and limited to 125 copies new edition of the tableaus and vignettes using the original printing plates by Karl Bodmer under the name Bodmers America . The coloring deviates from the restrained coloring of the originals, which Karl Bodmer authorized with his blind stamp , and is determined by a stronger color.
- Hand-colored prints from new image plates
- Collection limited to 50 copies : Karl Bodmer Images, hand-colored edition for “Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition” (13 volumes), edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites, Dodd, Mead & Company, New York 1904–1905; here 29 images on 2 websites
- Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied: Directory of the reptiles that were observed on a trip in northern America . Bibliomania , Salt Lake City 2006, ISBN 1-932871-04-7 ISBN 1-932871-03-9
- Photomechanical reprints
- Indians: Facsimiles to Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied: Journey to Inner North America 1832–1834 . Unchanged photomechanical reprint of two volumes of text, vignettes and plates. Central antiquariat Leipzig 1968
- Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied: Journey into the inner North America 1832–1834 . Reprint with two text volumes, vignette tape and blackboard folder. Verlag L. Borowsky, Munich 1979 (complete edition)
- Walter Hansen: The journey of Prince Wied to the Indians . Verlag W. Ludwig, Pfaffenhofen-Ilm 1977 (shortened to a continuous and easily legible text version with black and white photographs)
- Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied: Journey into the inner North America 1832–1834 . Reprint of the tableaus and vignettes in good color print quality with very shortened text, inexpensive. Taschen, Cologne 2001
- Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied: Directory of the reptiles that were observed on a trip in northern America . Bibliomania! , Salt Lake City approx. 2006. ISBN 1-932871-04-7 (bound), ISBN 1-932871-03-9 (unbound)
- Reuben Gold Thwaites: Early Western Travels, 1748-1846 (vol. 22-25), Arthur H. Clark Compagny, Cleveland-Ohio 1906
- Reuben Gold Thwaites: Early Western Travels, 1748-1846 . AMS Press, New York 1966
- American first editions of the Sketches and Watercolors
Collection at the Joslyn Art Museum
- David C. Hunt, William J. Orr, WH Goetzmann (Eds.): Karl Bodmer's America. With a biography by William J. Orr: Karl Bodmer. The Artist's Life. and the first publication of Bodmer's American sketches and watercolors in the Joslyn Art Museum in top quality. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha Ne 1984, ISBN 0-8032-1185-6
- John C. Ewers: Views of vanishing frontier. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha Ne 1984, 1985, ISBN 0-936364-12-2
- Marsha V. Gallagher: Karl Bodmer's eastern views. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha Ne 1996, ISBN 0-936364-26-2
- Karl Bodmer's North American Prints
Collection at the Joslyn Art Museum
- Brandon K. Ruud (Ed.): Karl Bodmer's North American Prints. Illustrations of prints and essays by Ron Tyler and Brandon K. Ruud. Foreword by J. Brooks Joyner. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska in association with the University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, 2004. ISBN 0-8032-1326-3
- Collection in the Newberry Library Bodmer Collection in Chicago
- W. Raymond Wood, Joseph C. Porter, David C. Hunt: Karl Bodmer's studio art. The Newberry Library Bodmer Collection. University of Illinois Press, Urbana / Chicago 2002, ISBN 0-252-02756-6
- Travel diaries of Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied in English translation
- Stephen S. Witte, Marsha V. Gallagher (Eds.): The North American Journals of Prince Maximilian of Wied. Volume 1: May 1832 - April 1833. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha (Nebraska) 2008. (English translation with drawings and watercolors from the diaries.)
- Stephen S. Witte, Marsha V. Gallagher (Eds.): The North American Journals of Prince Maximilian of Wied. Volume 2: April - September 1833. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska 2010. (English translation with the drawings and watercolors in the diaries.)
- Stephen S. Witte, Marsha V. Gallagher (Eds.): The North American Journals of Prince Maximilian of Wied. Volume 3: September 1833 - August 1834. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha (Nebraska) 2012. (English translation by William J. Orr, Paul Schach and Dieter Karch with the drawings and watercolors in the diaries. Foreword by John Wilson.)
- The Berlin and Stuttgart North America Collection by Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied
- North America Native Museum Zurich: Karl Bodmer. A Swiss Artist in America 1809-1893. A Swiss artist in America. Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich 2009. ISBN 978-3-85881-236-0 (Text: German and English. With a bibliography and images of all tableaus and vignettes from the NONAM, North America Native Museum - Indian and Inuit cultures in Zurich.) .
Journey to the interior of North America 176 years after Karl Bodmers and Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied's journey
176 years after Karl Bodmer and Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied's journey, Ulrich and Elke Schmotz took their route from Boston to Fort McKenzie exactly to the day. 176 years after them, you were at the same locations on the same days as Karl Bodmer painted his watercolors and Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied recorded his diary entries:
- Ulrich Schmotz: Dead End. Journey to the interior of North America. traveldiary.de Reiseliteratur-Verlag, Hamburg 2013. ISBN 978-3-944365-22-0
- Ulrich Schmotz: Dead End - Journey into the interior of North America Ulrich Schmotz's diary with travel report (beginning in the present)
Film and video
- Film: Bodmer's Journey:
The years 1833 and 1834, in which Bodmer drove up the Missouri with the German naturalist and ethnologist Prince Maximilian zu Wied , are the subject of the film Bodmer's Journey . The Swiss filmmaker Luke Gasser made this film in 2010 as a documentary essay. The film with a running time of 105 minutes is set up in a kind of road movie and designed with reenactments .
- Video: A prince among Indians. The travels of Maximilian zu Wied. A prince among Indians (video)
The first broadcast of the film produced by Terra X was on ZDF on March 12, 2017 at 7.30 p.m. The 93-minute video, produced in Germany in 2017, is available on the Internet until March 11, 2027, 7.30 p.m.
Web links
- Hans Läng: Bodmer, Johann Karl. In: Sikart
- Publications by and about Karl Bodmer in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library
- Literature by and about Karl Bodmer in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Karl Bodmer in the German Digital Library
- Search for "Karl Bodmer" in the SPK digital portal of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
- Digital edition of Volume 1 of Journey to Inner North America from 1832 to 1834
- Digital edition of Volume 2 of Journey to Inner North America from 1832 to 1834
- Bodmer and Maximilian in the American West: An Illustrated expedition of North America (English)
- Pencil drawing "Karl Bodmer" by Jean-François Millet 1850
- Madelyn Dean Garrett: Karl Bodmer's Aquatints: The changing Image. University of Utah 1990. (English)
- Website about Karl Bodmer, including his North American drawings
- Bodmer's panels of North America
Remarks
- ^ At Carl Brun: Schweizerisches Künstler-Lexikon (1905) there is the addition of miles . The addition does not contain a title of nobility, but a reference to the fact that Johann Carl Bodmer comes from the community of Meilen and that his family has been recorded in Meilen in the civil register since ancient times.
- ↑ The former house at Südstrasse 10 no longer exists. The house number now uses a house that was built at the beginning of the 20th century.
- ↑ This concerns the watercolors over pencil drawings "View of Bingen with Klopp Castle" 1835 (29.7 × 43.8 cm), "View of Godesburg and Siebengebirge" 1836 (31 × 43.4 cm), "Castle Stolzenfeld, Lahneck Castle in the background ”1836 (29.6 × 38.7 cm) and the ink drawing in black and gray“ The enemy brothers near Bornhofen am Rhein, in the foreground a procession ”1836 (30.5 × 43.8 cm ). The origin of these four originals is indicated in notes on the back of the sheets. Literature: Inventory catalogs of the Middle Rhine Museum Koblenz Vol. VI: The paintings, watercolors and drawings of the 19th century. Koblenz 1999. Pages 116-118 (No. 350-353), illus. Pages 223 and 384-385. Illustrations and descriptions also from Othmar Metzger: Rudolf and Karl Bodmer's activity in the Rhineland (1832–1841) . In: Yearbook for the history and art of the Middle Rhine and its neighboring areas. Vol. 12/13, 1960. Reiffeisendr., Neuwied Rh. 1962, pp. 71-77.
- ↑ In this context it is interesting that the Georg Schäfer Museum has eight high-quality watercolors with Moselle landscapes in the format 9 × 14 cm with motifs by Karl Bodmer ("Bernkastel and Kues", "Burg Eltz", "Lehmen", "Neumagen", "Piesport", "St. Maximin in Trier", "Trarbach, Traben und die Gräfinburg" and "Zeltingen"), which are also missing the signature and date of Karl Bodmer.
-
↑ Almost the entire series is in a colored version in the Middle Moselle Museum in Traben-Trarbach. This museum is also in possession of the original printing plates from the pictures Kröv , Piesport , Starkenburg and Trarbach . The City Museum Simeonstift Trier also has a collection of views of the Moselle by Karl Bodmer. The images accompanying the 1841 book appeared as photomechanical reprints in the following publications:
- Karl Christoffel (Ed.): Drive around 1000 vineyards. Moselle journey on the paths of romance from Arras Castle to Porta Nigra. Verlag Heimatscholle, Trier 1959, with excerpts from Adam Storck (1818), Christian von Stramberg (1832), Friedrich Menk (1840), Johann Georg Kohl (1851) and others. a. Due to the strong reduction to 13.5 × 9 cm and the rasterization, the 16 reproduced aquatints lost much of their original quality.
- Willy Leson (Ed.): Romantic journey through the Moselle valley from Koblenz to Trier , Bachem Verlag, Cologne 1978, with texts by Johann August Klein (1831) and Christian von Stramberg (1837). The reproduction of the 32 images in the format 20.9 × 14.1 cm gives an impression of the original character of the aquatints, but the reduced contrast leads to lower levels of brightness, to a loss of detail and sharpness.
- With Carl Bodmer from Trier to Koblenz. A journey through the Moselle around 1830 , Rhein-Mosel-Verlag, Alf / Mosel 2006, ISBN 978-3-89801-033-7 with 31 color reproductions of colored aquatints, with a reproduction of a non-colored aquatint and with text excerpts from the book by Otto von Czarnowsky (1841). This illustrated book is the first publication of colored aquatints that Karl Bodmer designed between the ages of 22 and 23 and which were mostly completed by his brother Rudolf. It is not known whether Karl Bodmer did the coloring himself. Except for one (Piesport), the originals are in the Middle Moselle Museum Traben-Trarbach. It contains two broad panoramas of Trier and Koblenz in the format 41.8 × 12 cm, while the other images have the smaller image size of 16 cm × 9.9 to 11 cm. Despite the small format, the images impress with their contrast, sharpness and restrained colors. However, the reproduction of the uncoloured aquatint of the town of Piesport lacks the soft gray tone of the aquatint due to its strong image contrast.
- ↑ a b A colored version is in the Middle Moselle Museum in Traben-Trarbach.
- ↑ The watercolors over pencil drawings "View of Bingen with Klopp Castle" 1835 (29.7 × 43.8 cm), "View of Godesburg and Siebengebirge" 1836 (31 × 43.4 cm), "Stolzenfeld Castle, in the background the Lahneck Castle "1836 (29.6 × 38.7 cm) and the ink drawing in black and gray" The enemy brothers near Bornhofen am Rhein, in the foreground a procession "1836 (30.5 × 43.8 cm) are in the Middle Rhine -Museum Koblenz.
- ↑ Information on David Dreidoppel .
- ↑ GRIN Taxonomy 'Allium reticulatum'
- ^ Wolfgang Büscher: Hartland. America on foot. Rowohlt, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-87134-685-9, pages 46-58.
- ↑ Information on the manufacturing process of the printing plates .
- ↑ Source: Hans Peter Treichler: The mobile wilderness. Biedermeier and the far west. Schweizer Verlaghaus AG, Zurich 1990, page 195.
- ↑ Karl Bodmer's sons are: Karl-Henry (= Karl Heinrich, called Charles, locksmith, painter and photographer * September 11, 1854 in Chailly en Bierre; † 1934), Frédéric-Rodolphe (Friedrich Rudolf, painter * October 18, 1856 in Chailly en Bierre) and Henri-Adolphe (Heinrich Adolf, painter and writer * April 13, 1863 in Chailly en Bierre).
- ↑ Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied: Directory of the reptiles which were observed on a trip in northern America . Nova Acta Academiae Caesareae Leopoldinae Nat. Cur. 32, I, 8, E. Lochmann & Sohn, Dresden 1865
- ↑ Source: Hans Läng: Indians were my friends. Life and work of Karl Bodmer 1809–1893. Hallwag Verlag, Bern / Stuttgart 1976. Page 152f.
- ^ Henri Beraldi does not have any further details. Hans Läng (1976, p. 148ff) speaks of an honorary mention of the exhibition in the Paris Salon.
- ^ Catalog: David C. Hunt, JG Studholme: Bodmer's America. Editions Alecto, London. The colored tableaus are also sold individually in the museum shop: Limited Edition Prints ( Memento from April 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Source: Hans Peter Treichler: The mobile wilderness. Biedermeier and the far west. Schweizer Verlaghaus AG, Zurich 1990, page 157.
- ↑ Bodmer Society ( Memento from February 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Source: Hans Peter Treichler: The mobile wilderness. Biedermeier and the far west. Schweizer Verlaghaus AG, Zurich 1990, page 159.
- ↑ The German translation by HP Treichler was quoted from his book The Moving Wilderness , page 158.
- ↑ Detailed information on the new edition of the Alecto Historical Editions Print 1-41 (pdf) ( Memento of July 24, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) and Print 42-82 (pdf) ( Memento of July 25, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ The handwritten German original version of Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied's travel diaries is owned by the Joslyn Art Museum and has not yet been published (as of April 2013).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bodmer, Karl |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Bodmer von Meilen, Johann Carl; Bodmer von Meilen, Johann Karl (from around 1850); Bodmer, Jean-Charles (on his marriage certificate on October 7, 1876) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swiss painter, artist of the Wild West, later French painter of the Barbizon School |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 11, 1809 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Zurich |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 30, 1893 |
| Place of death | Paris |