Matthew Kern

Matthäus Kern: Guardian Angel , 1840

Matthäus Kern: artist workshop, 1846

Matthäus Kern (born September 5, 1801 in Riedhausen , † June 22, 1852 in Vienna ) was a German painter , lithographer , engraver and etcher .

Life

Kern was born in the village of Riedhausen in Upper Swabia , which was then part of the Koenigsegg-Aulendorf County . He was a student of the painter Johann Georg Sauter in Aulendorf and studied from 1823 to 1827 at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts with Johann Peter Krafft . There he made friends with Friedrich von Amerling and Karl Heinrich Rahl .

Until 1848 he worked with short breaks in Vienna, where he was in demand as a portrait painter (especially of miniatures with watercolors ) and painter of detailed interior views of castles and churches. In particular, members of the nobility up to the imperial family (including Emperor Ferdinand I ) were among his clients. He was also successful in genre painting , here he preferred scenes from literature, for example from the works of Lenau , Uhland or Zedlitz .

As a lithographer he published, among other things, group portraits such as a portrait cycle of living Austrian poets on one sheet (1841), the portraits of the “Tyrolean Heroes of 1809” (1844) and a sheet with 48 portraits of the members of the “Landtag in Pressburg ”.

In the revolutionary year of 1848 , for lack of noble commissions, Kern withdrew from Vienna to his home village of Riedhausen, later to the nearby Königseggwald and to Switzerland, where he painted frescoes for churches in order to be able to support his family who had stayed in Vienna. In 1850 he returned to Vienna sick and exhibited again at the exhibitions of the Academy , in 1852 he died in Vienna.

Works (selection)

• Portrait of Franz Grillparzer , Museum of the City of Vienna
• Portrait of Johann Nepomuk Vogl , Museum of the City of Vienna
• Self-portrait , watercolor, 1832, private collection
• Portrait of a gentleman , 1846, Kunsthalle Bremen
• Artist workshop , 1846, Museum of the City of Vienna

literature

• Paul Beck :  Kern, Matthäus . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 51, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1906, pp. 120-122.
• Paul Beck: Swabian Biographies. 16. Matthäus Kern, painter from Riedhausen , in: Diöcesanarchiv von Schwaben , 16th year 1898, issue 4, pp. 49–52 ( digitized version )

Web links

Commons : Matthäus Kern  - collection of images, videos and audio files