Ludwig Becker (painter)
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Ludwig Becker (born September 5, 1808 in Rödelheim near Frankfurt am Main , † April 29, 1861 at the Koorliatto Waterhole, Bulloo River , Australia) was a German painter , scientist and naturalist .
Life
Sources about Becker's education, his life in Germany and Australia are sparse and incomplete. Becker attended the Ludwig-Georgs-Gymnasium in Darmstadt. He received his first painting lessons in the Darmstadt gallery. In 1829 he moved to Frankfurt am Main, where he worked as a bookbinder for the publisher and bookbinder Heinrich Ludwig Brönner. There he learned u. a. the production of lithographs . So he illustrated a. a. Works by the zoologist Johann Jakob Kaup , with whom he exchanged letters for years. At the same time he studied at the Städel Art Institute. In 1840 he became court painter in Darmstadt. Here he painted genre pictures and miniature portraits for the court of Grand Duke Ludwig III. from Hessen-Darmstadt.
For political reasons he left Germany in 1848/49, traveled to England and Brazil, and embarked there for Australia, where he arrived on March 10, 1851. He then went to Van Diemens Land, now Tasmania , for about 20 months , where he made scientific observations and made contacts with the Royal Society of Tasmania. In 1852 he went back to Australia, where he looked for gold in Bendigo from 1852-54 , but also made meteorological observations, notes and sketches, which were shown in an exhibition in Melbourne in 1854. In 1856 he became a member of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts and in 1859 of the Philosophical Institute of Victoria . He exchanged letters with ornithologist John Gould about the gray-backed lyre-tail , tried to raise a lyre-tail chick, and sent his drawings of lyre-tail eggs to ornithologists in Germany and France.
When he was over 50, he took part in the amateurishly organized and ultimately catastrophic expedition by Burke and Wills , on which the Australian hinterland was to be explored. He wrote detailed reports about the stages of the expedition and documented animals, plants, rocks and meteorological and astronomical observations in precise drawings in his sketchbooks. He died at the Koorliatto Waterhole, Bulloo River, weakened by the rigors of the expedition, and was buried there. Since 1987 a memorial stone has been commemorating Ludwig Becker, Charles Stone and William Purcell, who died at the Koorliatto Waterhole within a few days.
The scientific and artistic legacy
Becker's sketchbooks, diaries and scientific records and the reports on the expedition are kept in the La Trobe Library in Melbourne and in the Hessian State Archives in Darmstadt . A number of his drawings are in the Bendigo Gallery.
literature
- Marjorie Tipping: Ludwig Becker. Artist and Naturalist with the Burke and Wills Expedition. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, Victoria 1979, ISBN 0-522-84189-9 .
- Marjorie J. Tipping: Becker, Ludwig (1808–1861) . In: Douglas Pike (Ed.): Australian Dictionary of Biography . Volume 3. Melbourne University Press, Carlton (Victoria) 1969. 2nd edition 1974, ISBN 0-522-83909-6 (English).
- Martin Edmond: The Supply Party: Ludwig Becker on the Burke and Wills Expedition. East Street Publications, Adelaide, South Australia 2009, ISBN 978-1-921037-26-9 .
Web links
- Short biography on burkeandwills.net.au
- Photo of Becker's grave on burkeandwills.net.au
- Germans in Australia: Ludwig Becker ( Memento from April 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- Ludwig Becker. Goethe Institute, Australia
Individual evidence
- ↑ Eva Haberkorn, Extraordinary Careers, The Becker Family Archive in the Hessian State Archive in Darmstadt, archive news from hessen, 15/1, 2015, p. 7 ff.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Becker, Ludwig |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter, scientist and naturalist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 5, 1808 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Rödelheim near Frankfurt am Main |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 29, 1861 |
| Place of death | Koorliatto Waterhole, Bulloo River, Queensland , Australia |