Louis Krevel

Self-Portrait Louis Krevel (1827)

Krevel: The Krämer family, owners of the St. Ingbert iron works

Krevel: Portrait of the painter colleague Jakob Götzenberger (1834)

Krevel: Portrait of Marie-Louise Stumm (1835)

Self-Portrait Louis Krevel (around 1820)

Louis Krevel (actually: Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig Krevel; born September 19, 1801 in Braunschweig , † May 14, 1876 in Trier ) was an important German portrait painter of the Biedermeier period in southwest Germany .

Life

Youth and stay in Paris

Louis Krevel was born as the first child of the painter , graphic artist and art dealer Johann Hilarius Krevel and his wife Johanne Henriette, b. Rake, born. The father always tried to develop new graphic techniques; This basic attitude may also have aroused a fundamental interest in his son in everything new in painting. During his childhood, Louis Krevel often had to move with his family, as his father was temporarily tied to the locations of Kassel and Braunschweig due to various assignments . In the early days, Louis Krevel received drawing and painting lessons from his father . Then he took lessons from the painter Justus Krauskopf, who ran a private "painting and drawing school" in Kassel. Krauskopf himself was a student of the renowned Parisian painter Jacques-Louis David . Through this contact he was able to bring his pupil Krevel to Paris in 1824, where he trained with various portrait painters. There is no direct evidence of studying with the Parisian classicist painter Antoine-Jean Gros , but style-critical comparisons between the two painters support this thesis. At the age of 26 Krevel was admitted to the Paris Salon of 1827 with a portrait painting . By entering the salon, the artist began a professional painting career, he was recognized in social circles. In 1828 Krevel's name appeared for the first time in the Almanac des 25,000 adresses des principaux habitants de Paris ; there he was noted as a portrait painter. At around the same time, Krevel opened his own studio with representative exhibition rooms.

In 1828 Krevel received an important commission: he created a copy of a painting of Charles X's coronation for the city of Sète , the original of which was made by the French painter François Gérard . In his time, Gérard was considered the Empire's most popular portrait painter . Since Krevel could not live on private commissions alone, it is very likely that he worked as a decorative painter as a sideline; Krevel's documented contacts permit this conclusion.

Return to Germany

Krevel moved back to Germany in 1830 . Presumably the tough competition with the Parisian artists motivated him to return to his homeland. In the following years, the artist initially stayed in the Westphalian region, as evidenced by documents (portrait commissions and exhibition participation). A first commission in the Saar region is documented in 1836, and four years later he participated for the first time in the exhibition of the Berlin Academy of the Arts . His exhibited picture, a portrait of Prof. Edouard d'Alton, received a lot of attention; so judged the young painter Adolf Menzel that it was “an excellent portrait, the most beautiful of the whole exhibition”. Probably the most important and successful sculptor of German classicism , Christian Daniel Rauch , also praised the portrait, saying that it “ surpasses everything that exists of this kind” . It was also Rauch who tried to persuade Krevel to move to Berlin . Apparently, however, Krevel was aware that he was in the south-west of Germany and especially in Saarbrücken without competition for painters and that he was able to keep his order situation stable. In 1837 a "male portrait" Krevel was admitted to an exhibition of the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westphalen in Cologne. A corresponding note in the exhibition catalog of the time suggests that the artist stayed in Baden-Baden for a long time during this period .

Working in the Saar region

Numerous portrait commissions from Saarbrücken and the Saar region are documented up to the mid-1840s. In the period from 1835 to around 1845 Krevel repeatedly traveled to the Saar region to carry out portrait assignments. During this period of prosperous industrialization, a number of new iron works, coal mines and other family-owned factories were founded in the coal and steel region on the Saar. It was from these dynasties that the artist received most of his private commissions. The most important painting commissions for him came from the Krämer families (Eisenwerk St. Ingbert ), von Stumm-Halberg and Böcking (coal and ironworks) and Korn (cloth and wool yarn production). Even before this and after that, Krevel repeatedly worked on orders from the Saar region. Krevel played a dominant role as a portrait painter in the region between Saar and Moselle during the Biedermeier period . With his painting skills, he was able to meet the expectations of the new upper-class class with regard to their need for official representation on the one hand and for an idyllic family atmosphere on the other like no other. On the basis of the numerous Krevel portraits of members of Saarland industrial dynasties, the close family ties of these circles at the time can be demonstrated quite well.

Cologne time

Krevel settled in Cologne around the middle of the 1840s . This is evidenced by entries in the city's address books, which are documented from 1848 to 1865. In 1842 the artist became a member of the Kölnischer Kunstverein and participated in its annual exhibitions several times with portraits and genre scenes. During this period Krevel went on a trip to Italy, which is evidenced by some of his work. During his time in Cologne, the artist's order book was probably optimal, as a contemporary source shows: “Among the portrait painters living here [in Cologne, ed.], Louis Krevel, whose pictures are particularly distinguished by their fine resemblance and natural color freshness, has the most orders , since his pictures are generally valued, and rightly so ” . There is also evidence that Krevel had contact with the Mannheimer Kunstverein , which came about through his friendship as a painter with the Mannheim- based and quite influential Jakob Götzenberger . In 1856 Krevel also participated in an exhibition at the Berlin Academy of the Arts ( bust portrait of a man and portrait of a boy ).

Late years and death

Krevel ended professional portrait painting in 1865. He withdrew to his private sphere and moved to Freiburg im Breisgau. In 1873 he suffered a stroke and then moved to Trier to live with his sister Jenny, who was widowed. Louis Krevel died there on May 14, 1876 of the long-term effects of the stroke.

Act

Krevel's art of portraiture

Krevel drew from his examination of the great painters of the past. Rembrandt , whose portrait painting he got to know during his trip to Italy, had a strong influence . The painting of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres exerted an equally strong influence on him during his stay in Paris. The artist developed "a powerful modeling, the clear coloring, the pose convincing in its simplicity, a monumentalizing contour [and] a distinctive physiognomy" in his painting style. The inclusion of the new realism , which, in keeping with the taste of the time, replaced the earlier fantasy design in portraits, had an equally strong influence in Krevel's painting.

Krevel's strength was not “the design of groups of figures in motion, in particular their psychological penetration”. It was more to him to portray people to be portrayed very directly, to bring them to the fore and thus to give them an astonishingly powerful physical-psychological presence. He prefers flowing contours and clear shapes. In some portraits, Krevel places his protagonists in a landscape background that often reflects the industrial environment of the people portrayed. Already at a young age, the artist had found a style that was sometimes sophisticated, which “later was useful in satisfying those industrial wives of the Vormärz . In his representative portraits of women in particular, he draws on post-baroque elements that sometimes seem slightly intrusive ”.

Cartes-des-visite with photo portraits by Krevel (1865 and 1874)

Krevel's main works are his portraits of the St. Ingbert ironworks dynasty Krämer as well as several individual portraits of other entrepreneurial families from the Saar region. The individual portraits often show the spouses belonging to each other, they are mostly designed as counterparts .

The newly emerging technique of photography with its technical variants ( heliography , daguerreotype ) increasingly competed with classic portraiture from around the second third of the 19th century. However, the photographic process was limited to small sizes and miniatures, for a long time it was no competition for large-format portrait painting. The portrait painters of the time nevertheless came into contact with the new medium, such as two " Cartes-de-visite " with photographic portraits of Krevel, which he had made in 1865 and 1874. Roland Augustin describes the interactions between photography and portrait painting in the 19th century in a detailed study.

Works (portraits, selection)

• 1820 (about) self-portrait at the easel (oil / canvas)
• 1827 Self-Portrait Paris Period (oil / canvas)
• 1834 Jakob Götzenberger (oil / canvas)
• 1835 Marie-Louise Stumm (oil / canvas)
• 1836 Carl Friedrich Stumm (oil / canvas)

  Philipp Heinrich Karcher (oil / canvas)

  Caroline Maria Karcher (oil / canvas)

  Elise Auguste Korn (oil / canvas)

  Georg Philipp Korn (oil / canvas)

  Henriette Christine Marie von Strantz (oil / canvas)

  Johann Ferdinand Stumm (oil / canvas)

• 1837 Heinrich Böcking (oil / canvas)

  Family portrait of Philipp Heinrich Kraemer (oil / canvas)

  Family portrait of Friedrich Christian Kraemer (oil / canvas)

  Eduard Böcking (oil / canvas)

  Elisabeth Böcking (oil / canvas)

• 1838 Heinrich Adolf Kraemer (oil / canvas)
• 1839 Heinrich Rudolph Böcking (oil / canvas)

  Heinrich Adolf Kraemer's children (oil / canvas)

  Georg Philipp I. Korn (oil / canvas)

  Margarete Wilhelmine Henriette Korn (oil / canvas)

• 1839/41 Caroline Clara Cramer (oil / canvas)
• 1840 Emma and Friedrich Adolf Stumm (oil / canvas)

  Louise Böcking (oil / canvas)

  Ludwig Wilhelm Theodor Schmidt (oil / canvas)

• 1840/45 Heinrich Böcking (oil / canvas)
• 1845 Pauline von Scheibler (oil / canvas)

  Bernhard Christian von Scheibler (oil / canvas)

  Elise Natalie Karcher (oil / canvas)

  Edmund Karcher (oil / canvas)

  Sophie Johanna Philippine Schmidt (oil / canvas)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gerhard Koelsch : Johann Hilarius Krevel and the lithochromy - a search for traces . In: Kultur des Biedermeier, p. 33 ff.
2. ^ Biedermeier culture, p. 2
3. ^ Biedermeier culture, p. 3
4. ^ Biedermeier culture, p. 3
5. ^ Walter Petto: Merchants, entrepreneurs, civil servants, officers - on the genealogy of the portrayed group of people . In: Biedermeier culture. Pp. 115-128
6. ^ Deutsches Kunstblatt - newspaper for visual arts and architecture. 2 (1851) p. 126
7. ↑ Exhibition catalog No. 495 a. 496. Berlin 1856, p. 41
8. ↑ Robert W. Floetmeyer: On the change of portrait painting in 1800 . In: Biedermeier culture. Pp. 13-20
9. ↑ Floetmeyer, ibid.
10. ↑ Floetmeyer, ibid.
11. ↑ Roland Augustin: Traces of Presence - Louis Krevel's portrait painting in the dawn of photography . In: Kultur des Biedermeier, p. 51 ff.

literature

sorted by year of publication

• Johann Jakob Merlo :  Krevel, Ludwig . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1883, p. 149 f.
• Eduard Böcking: The Stumm family as ironworks owners from the Hunsrück in the 18th century. Mülheim / Ruhr, 1902.
• Louis Krevel (1801-1876). Exhibition catalog . Saarland Museum and Museum of the City of Trier in the Simeonsstift. Saarbrücken / Trier, 1956
• Walter Dieck: Saarland portraits of the painter Louis Krevel. In: Saarbrücker Hefte; 1957/5, p. 8 ff.
• Walter Dieck: Louis Krevel, a 19th century portrait painter from the Rhineland . In: Walraff-Richartz-Jahrbuch 20 (1958), p. 275 ff.
• Josef Giesen: Louis Krevel - an almost forgotten portrait painter . In: Art and the beautiful home; Born 1966/67, no. 12, p. 575 ff.
• Wolfgang Becker: Paris and German painting 1750–1840 . Munich, 1971 (studies on 19th century art; 10)
• Hans-Walter Herrmann : The economic executives in Saarland in the time of early industry 1790-1850 . In: Business leaders in the Middle Ages and Modern Times 1350–1850. Limburg / Lahn, 1973. p. 281 ff.
• Teja Hohensee: Louis Krevel (1801–1876) - a portrait painter of European standing . In: Rheinische Heimatpflege . New episode. Vol. 17, No. 4, 1980, p. 271 ff.
• Ingeborg Decker-Staab:  Krevel, Ludwig. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 32 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Gottfried Boehm: Portrait and Individual - on the origin of the portrait in the Italian Renaissance . Munich, 1985.
• Ingeborg Krueger: Portrait of Henriette Stumm. On the acquisition of a painting by Louis Krevel (1836) . In: The Rheinisches Landesmuseum; Born in 1986, No. 5, p. 68 ff.
• Christof Trepesch: About entrepreneurs, workers and factories. Industry and art in the Saar region . In: IndustrieMenschenBilder. Ed .: Liselotte Kugler. Saarbrücken: Histor. Museum Saar, 1996. p. 52 ff.
• Peter Burg: Saarbrücken 1789–1860. From the residential city to the industrial center . Blieskastel: Gollenstein-Verl., 2000. (Saarland Library; 14)
• Christof Trepesch (ed.): Culture of the Biedermeier - the painter Louis Krevel. Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 2001, ISBN 3-88462-175-0
• Roland Augustin: Biedermeier Culture. The painter Louis Krevel (exhibition catalog). Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft , Worms 2001. ISBN 978-3-88462-175-2
• Eva Elisabetha Schmidt: Louis Krevel (1801–1876) - life and work. A contribution to portrait painting of the first half of the 19th century. University, Bonn 2009. (Dissertation)
• Robert Skwirblies: Krevel, Ludwig (Krevel, Louis) , in: Savoy, Bénédicte and Nerlich, France (ed.): Paris apprenticeship years. A lexicon for training German painters in the French capital . Volume 1: 1793–1843, Berlin / Boston 2013, pp. 158–160.

Web links

• Thomas Kuhtz: Industrial nobility in a Biedermeier portrait. In: Cassone - art-magezine