Louis Eysen

Louis Eysen

Louis Eysen (born November 23, 1843 in Manchester , † July 21, 1899 in Munich ) was a German landscape and portrait painter .

life and work

Eysen came from a family that had lived in Frankfurt am Main since the 18th century . He was born the second of five children to the silk dyeing businessman Philipp Bernhard Eysen and his wife Auguste Wilhelmine Lemmé. The family returned to Frankfurt in early 1850. Eysen's father died in 1853, and thanks to a generous inheritance, Eysen was able to enter the drawing class at the Frankfurt Städelschule immediately after finishing school in 1861 . He only took courses with Andreas Simons , the lecturer in architecture. In addition, Eysen took private lessons from the history painter Friedrich Karl Hausmann and learned the art of woodcut from the xylograph Andreas Stix . Until 1865 the woodcut was the main art direction for Eysen. In the years 1865 to 1869 Eysen made frequent short trips with his friend and colleague Peter Burnitz to Berlin and Munich . By his own admission, Eysen attended all important exhibitions during this time.

During one of his stays in Munich, he made friends with Victor Müller (1830–1871), through whom he soon met Wilhelm Leibl and his circle . In 1869 he completed his training at the Städelschule and went to Paris at the end of the same year . There he soon met Adolf Schreyer and Otto Scholderer . Through Scholderer, Eysen met the portraitist Léon Bonnat , with whom he did a brief apprenticeship. Here he was also introduced to Gustave Courbet , whom he admired . Through these influences and experiences, Eysen dedicated himself entirely to modern painting.

The artist's mother , 1877.

When the Franco-German War threatened in 1870 , Eysen went back to Frankfurt am Main. He kept in close contact with the Leibl Circle through Hans Thoma and Wilhelm Steinhausen . This exchange of experiences only diminished in 1873 when Eysen settled in Kronberg im Taunus . Influenced by Leibl and Courbet, he was inspired daily by the landscape of the Taunus , and it was precisely through this subject that he joined the Kronberg painters' colony , which had been established by Anton Burger .

In 1874 Eysen undertook a trip of several months to Florence and Rome to combine healing and art. He also spent the winter of 1876/77 in Italy, but this did not result in any improvement in the disease. Since his stomach ailment could not be cured even with regular cures, Eysen settled in Merano in 1879 with his mother and sisters Mary and Emma .

He had already come to appreciate this area the year before: the favorable climate because of his illness and the landscape for painting. Eysen acquired the Villa Holstein in the Obermais district of Merano and the family lived there for the next 20 years. Eysen lived very withdrawn and, as an artist, extremely isolated. This loneliness also meant that Eysen did not initiate a "school" or teach students in his life. Even the correspondence with Thoma and Steinhausen fell asleep over time.

As far as his health permitted, Eysen undertook extensive hikes in the near and far surroundings. In Pustertal and on Lake Garda some of his finest landscapes emerged. During his years in South Tyrol, Eysen was only given the opportunity to exhibit twice: in 1888 at the exhibition at the Akademie der Künste (Berlin) in Berlin and in 1895 at the major art exhibition in the Munich Glass Palace .

The fact that he went completely unnoticed by art critics at both exhibitions hit the artist, who tended to self-doubt, very much. From 1895 Eysen's condition deteriorated more and more, so that he could hardly paint. In the summer of 1899 he had to undergo an operation after all. Louis Eysen died of heart failure on July 21, 1899 at the age of 55 in Munich.

In January 1900 friends of his initiated a memorial exhibition which was shown in Obermais. Following the great interest, this exhibition was shown in Karlsruhe in the following years , where Hans Thoma was very committed to him. After that she could be seen in Munich and Frankfurt. The exhibition in the Galerie Keller & Reiner in Berlin formed the conclusion . Almost all of his artistic oeuvre could be seen, which in addition to some drawings and woodcuts consisted of around 180 paintings.

Eysens preferred almost exclusively small formats for his paintings. His extremely meticulous painting style and his ever-present self-doubts did not allow any of the larger formats that were very characteristic of painting at the time. The preferred subject in Eysen's work is the landscape. Influenced by the “Munich Realism” of the Leibl Circle and the new direction of the Barbizon School , he managed to find his own unmistakable style early on.

Works (selection)

• Woman with umbrella in countryside
• Melting snow in early spring
• South Tyrolean landscape
• Meadow ground

literature

• Eva Knels: Eysen, Louis In: Savoy, Bénédicte and Nerlich, France (ed.): Paris apprenticeship years. A lexicon for training German painters in the French capital. Volume 2: 1844-1870. Berlin / Boston 2015.
• Margarete Braun-Ronsdorf:  Eysen, Louis. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 711 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Hanny Franke (ed.): Louis Eysen, a Frankfurt painter. Hanny Franke Archive, Eschborn 1978.
• FD Innerhofer: The painter Louis Eysen , in: Magazine of the Ferdinandeum for Tyrol and Vorarlberg. 1904, p. 304 ff. Digitized
• Wilhelm Petzet (Ed.): Wilhelm Leibl and his circle. Exhibition catalog, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, July 25 to September 29, 1974. Prestel, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-7913-0087-3 .
• Siegfried de Rachewiltz (ed.): Louis Eysen (1843–1899) and Meran. Exhibition catalog, Landesmuseum Schloß Tirol, March 25 - June 29, 1997. Athesia, Bozen 1997.
• Wilhelm Dieter Vogel (Ed.): Louis Eysen (1843-1899). The graphic work. Kunsthandlung Schneider, Frankfurt am Main 2000.
• Wilhelm Dieter Vogel (Ed.): Louis Eysen. Letters to Wilhelm Steinhausen, Hans Thoma and his family. Transferred, organized and published by Wilhelm Dieter Vogel. Steinhausen Foundation, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-00-027752-8 .
• Werner Zimmermann: The painter Louis Eysen. Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1963.

Web links

Commons : Louis Eysen  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Literature by and about Louis Eysen in the catalog of the German National Library
• Louis Eysen at artfacts.net
• Biography at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main