Louis Lang (painter)

Louis Lang

Louis Lang , actually Alois Lang , also Joseph Aloisius Lang (born February 29, 1812 in Waldsee , † May 6, 1893 in New York ), was a German-American painter.

Live and act

Lang was born the son of the painter Joseph Anton Lang (1779–1848) and his wife Theresia Henkel (1775–1859) in the Upper Swabian Waldsee.

With a self-portrait as a young artist, the fourteen-year-old already showed promising talent. A whole series of pastels with portraits of the family members have survived from 1829, which document Lang's progress, which presumably go back to lessons with his father.

After attending school in Waldsee, Lang began his further training as a painter, probably at the Stuttgart art school. From there he first moved to Cologne , then a stay in Paris followed . Details are not known at this time. Lang seems to have lived in Stuttgart for some time in the mid-1830s. Apparently Lang saw few future opportunities for a career as an artist in Europe, because in 1838 he boarded an emigrant ship with destination New York.

In Philadelphia , Louis Lang (as he called himself in the United States) achieved initial success as a painter with his own studio. In any case, his income allowed him to embark for Bremen in the summer of 1841 , where he arrived at the end of September. After a brief visit to the family in Waldsee, Lang traveled on to Italy, where he spent the next five years mainly in Rome . In the summer of 1843 he visited Venice for a few months to paint. In Rome, Lang was active in the German artist colony. He was one of the founding members of the German Artists' Association and was elected to the first board of the association in November 1845. Lang also took part in the legendary Cervaro festivals, most recently as "Minister of Finance and Fireworks". Lang recorded the impressions of his stay in Europe in a diary that ended when he returned to America at the end of July 1846.

Now Lang settled in New York, where he rented a studio in the Waverly House Studios on Broadway together with Thomas P. Rossiter (1818–1871) and John Frederick Kensett (1816–1872), whom Lang had met in Rome. At first he had to hire himself out as a decorative painter, but in 1847 he returned to Rome for two years.

Return of the 69th (Irish) Regiment, NYSM from the Seat of War , 1862

Lang was back in New York in 1849, and now a remarkable career as an artist began for him in the USA. In 1852 he became a member of the National Academy of Design ; In 1859 he was a founding member and later an honorary member of the Artist Fund Society . From 1854 to 1856 he stayed in Washington to portray prominent government officials. In the New York artist colony, which has been growing steadily since the middle of the 19th century, Lang was one of the most sought-after painters, so that at the end of his life he had made a small fortune from the proceeds of his art. Lang's genre scenes in particular met the taste of his time. However, he dedicated his largest painting to a highly political topic, the American Civil War .

Although Lang was established in New York, his love for Italy was not extinguished, and so in 1872 he made his way to Europe again to live in Rome for a few more years. He did not return to New York until 1879. While his work treaded conventional paths throughout his life, the artist Louis Lang was obviously considered an eccentric in his late New York years. Lang last lived in Greenwich Village, Manhattan (13 Waverly Place), where he died on May 6, 1893. He was buried in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery; his grave is preserved to this day.

literature

• Brigitte Hecht-Lang: The painter Alois "Louis" Lang. From Waldsee to New York. In: Museum and Heimatverein Bad Waldsee (Hrsg.): 100 years Museum Waldsee. Bad Waldsee 2013, pp. 64–73.
• Barbara Dayer Gallati (Ed.): Making American Taste. Narrative Art for a New Democracy. Cat. Aust. New York Historical Society, New York 2011.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Today Bad Waldsee, district of Ravensburg.
2. ↑ See website for the Baden-Württemberg State Office for Museum Care, Object of the Month, March 2015 .
3. ^ Library and estate of the association today in the Casa di Goethe in Rome.
4. ^ Friedrich Noack: The Germanness in Rome since the end of the Middle Ages. Volume 1, Stuttgart 1927, p. 527.
5. ^ Friedrich Noack: The Germanness in Rome since the end of the Middle Ages. Volume 2, Stuttgart 1927, p. 345. Lang erroneously lists Noack's artist directory under the first name Ludwig Georg; however, it is clearly the painter from Waldsee. Noack mentions Via Sistina 107 and 126 and Via Pontefici 55 as the Roman residential addresses for Lang.
6. ↑ Louis Lang Diary (1841-1846). Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, William L. Clements Library.
7. ↑ Lang had also become a member of the Sketch Club of American Artists in Rome.
8. ^ Barbara Dayer Gallati: Louis Lang. In: Making American Taste. Narrative Art for a New Democracy. Cat. Aust. New York Historical Society. New York 2011, p. 238.
9. ↑ It shows the New York 69th (Irish) Infantry Regiment returning to Manhattan on the morning of July 27, 1861, after the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, in which the Union Army suffered its first heavy defeat. Lang donated the giant painting from 1862 to the New York Historical Society . See Robin Pogrebin: When Applying the Paint Was Spreading the News. from: nytimes.com , October 17, 2011, accessed September 2, 2015.
10. ↑ See Lang, Louis. In: J. Brown, R. Howard, R. Johnson (Eds.): The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans. Vol. 6. The Biographical Society, Boston 1904. ( accessed online September 2, 2015)
11. ↑ See article on Lang's will in The New York Times. May 23, 1893 "Left an eccentric will"; there it says, among other things: "Louis Lang was known for years in the artists' colony of this city as an eccentric."

Web links

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