Nikolaus Lauer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Self-portrait with daughter Regina , Nikolaus Lauer, 1795/96

Nikolaus Lauer (born July 21, 1753 in St. Wendel ; † April 29, 1824 there ) was a German portrait painter .

Life

Susanne Lauer , the mother of Nikolaus Lauer, around 1785
Luise von Mecklenburg-Strelitz , Nikolaus Lauer, 1798

Nikolaus Lauer was born in St. Wendel as the son of Philipp Lauer and Susanne Lauer, geb. Hallauer born. After his training at the Mannheim drawing academy , in 1786 he got a job as a portrait painter with Countess Marianne von der Leyen in Blieskastel . In 1791, Karl II. August Christian von Pfalz-Birkenfeld-Zweibrücken appointed him to the Zweibrücker Hof in Homburg . After two years of activity, Lauer left the city in the wake of the ducal family, who fled from the troops of the Revolutionary Army to Rohrbach in 1793 to the "right bank of the Rhine" . After his discharge from the ducal service, he moved first to Leipzig in 1794, then to Dresden, where he studied the old masters in the picture gallery and moved to Berlin in 1797. The time in Prussia was the most successful of the traveling painter's artistic career. As one of the most renowned portraitists, Lauer created not only portraits of wealthy citizens, but also numerous portraits of members of the Prussian royal family, especially Queen Luise . In the year of the occupation of Prussia by the Napoleonic army, he left Berlin in 1806 and returned to St. Wendel, where he created other portraits of bourgeois personalities and trained painting students in his workshop. After several months in Frankfurt am Main and Berlin between 1809 and 1816, he stayed in his hometown until the end of his life.

Most of the portrait paintings from the time at the Zweibrücker Hof have been lost. Of the numerous pastels that he created for the Prussian royal family, works can be found in Berlin palaces, including the palace on Pfaueninsel and Charlottenburg Palace . The number of his paintings with depictions of wealthy merchants, industrialists and politicians is hardly manageable, since the works are usually not signed and are often privately owned.

Works (selection)

Exhibitions (selection)

  • November 3, 2006 to January 28, 2007: Nikolaus Lauer - Queen and Citizenship: Portraits around 1800 in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin
  • Permanent exhibition of pastel pictures in the city museum in St. Wendel

literature

  • Lauer, Nikolaus . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 22 : Krügner – Leitch . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1928, p. 435 .
  • Hans Klaus Schmitt: The pastel painter Nikolaus Lauer and his painting school. From court painter to portraitist of the bourgeoisie [ed. on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of death ]. St. Wendel 1974, 128 pp., 56 ills.
  • Thomas Wiercinski: The pastel painter Nikolaus Lauer 1753-1854. Catalog raisonné . Museumsverlag, St. Wendel 2004, ISBN 3-928810-54-5 .

Web links

Commons : Nikolaus Lauer  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nikolaus Lauer - Queen and Citizenship: Portraits around 1800. In: smb.museum. Retrieved November 19, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Lauer, Nikolaus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German portrait painter
DATE OF BIRTH July 21, 1753
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Wendel
DATE OF DEATH April 29, 1824
Place of death St. Wendel