Michael Welter

Michael Welter (1890)

Michael Welter (born March 24, 1808 in Cologne ; † January 3, 1892 ibid) was a German glass painter and church painter as well as decoration, architecture and portrait painter. His main focus was in the Cologne area.

Life

Welter was taught by Egidius Mengelberg in Cologne from 1825 onwards . Two years later, in 1827/28, he went to Paris for a longer period, where he became a student in the atelier of Pierre-Luc-Charles Cicéri and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine .

Welter returned to Cologne in 1828 and began working as a decorative painter. Between 1829 and 1831 Welter was trained in the Berlin studio of Wilhelm Wach and in the workshop of Carl Wilhelm Gropius in Berlin. From 1830 he was a student at the Royal Prussian Academy of the Arts in Berlin.

Grave in the Melaten cemetery

From August 1831 Welter undertook a two-month journey via Dresden, Meißen, Prague, Regensburg, Nuremberg, Würzburg and Mainz to Cologne. In 1832 he settled in Cologne and began working as a decorative painter. There he founded the Association of Visual Artists (today Kölnischer Kunstverein ) together with his brother-in-law, the historian Ernst Weyden .

In the 1860s, Welter carried out painting work on the Wartburg near Eisenach in the large festival and weapons hall. In 1861/63 he took over the painting of the choir and in 1875/77 of the nave of St. Godehard in Hildesheim . He also designed numerous glass windows, including for the Christ Church in Hanover (1864), the Cologne Cathedral (1866/67), St. Johannis in Lüneburg (1870) and St. Clemens and the Trinity Church in Hanover (1882/83). In 1866/67 he received an order for a miniature copy of the Wartburg paintings for the Bavarian King Ludwig II. In 1867 he added the medieval glass paintings of the collegiate church St. Materniani et St. Nicolai in Bücken . From 1878 he restored some of the murals in the Marienburg (Malbork) in East Prussia. In 1880 Welter finally went on a six-week trip to Italy with his friend, the painter and graphic artist Eduard Gerhardt .

His grave is in the Melaten cemetery in Cologne (lit. C).

Works (selection)

• FC Gau Architecte du Roi à Paris , 1827, pencil and chalk on gray paper / medallion portrait, whereabouts unknown
• Still life , 1827, oil / paper, no size, Cologne, private collection
• Historicizing portrait of an unknown man in profile , 1827, oil / paper, no size, Cologne, private collection
• Architectural sketches , no year, unknown technology, no size, Cologne, private collection
• Candelabra , 1827, unknown technique, no size, Cologne, private collection
• Sketchbooks , no year, unknown technique, no size, Cologne, private collection
• Molière , 1827/28, pencil sketch, 22.5 × 13.8 cm, Cologne, private collection
• (Attributed to Welter :) Manessian song manuscript based on the original in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris , 1827/28, inv. No. Cod.pal.germ. 848, Heidelberg University Library
• Four nude studies , 1827/28, chalk, charcoal and pencil on paper (?), No size, Cologne, private collection; below: nude study , 1827/28, chalk, charcoal and pencil on paper, 47 × 31 cm, Cologne, private collection (plate IV).

Web links

Commons : Michael Welter  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

• Heinz Wolff: On the restoration of the Bücker collegiate church and its historical painting . In: Niedersächsische Denkmalpflege 6 (1970), p. 134f.
• Hermann Arthur Lier:  Welter, Michael . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 55, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1910, p. 375 f.
• Jennifer Falckenberg: Welter, Michael , 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. 307-309.