Oscar Begas

Oscar Begas: Self-Portrait (?) (Lithograph, 1852)

Self-Portrait (1875)

Oscar Begas: The Artist's Daughters, 1877

Oscar Begas: Portrait of the publisher Leopold Ullstein , 1882

Grave site , Friedenstrasse 8-10, in Berlin-Wannsee

Job Carl Oscar Begas , also Oskar Begas (born July 31, 1828 in Berlin ; † November 10, 1883 Berlin) was a German portrait and history painter . The eldest son of Carl Joseph Begas called "the elder" and brother of Reinhold Begas , Adalbert Begas and Carl Begas the Elder . J. achieved a high reputation and recognition, especially in courtly and middle-class portrait painting. After his death, like many academic artists of his generation, he was soon forgotten. The grave of Oscar Begas, his wife Marie-Elise geb. Beerend and his children are in the old Wannsee cemetery .

Career

Oscar Begas devoted himself to painting under the guidance of his father as a child ; Several sensitive portraits of the closest family members have come down to us from this early phase from 1842 . In his father's studio , he practiced copying and composing images, worked on his father's works and, at the age of 13, carried out his first commissioned work for high society in Berlin. Later, at the Academy of Arts , he initially worked in the field of history painting. After a one year stay (1849/50) in Dresden , where he was a student of Eduard Bendemann , Begas returned to Berlin and in 1852 received the Rome scholarship from the Berlin Academy. In Rome , where he stayed until 1854, he created genre pictures such as a chat at the fountain (1853, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie ) as well as a descent from the cross for St. Michael (Berlin-Mitte) , which won a gold medal.

After his return to Berlin and the early death of his father in November 1854, the continuation of the series of knights of the peace class for the order Pour le Mérite was entrusted to him. Commissioned by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV , he portrayed personalities such as Heinrich Friedrich Link , August Boeckh , Johannes von Müller and Johann Lukas Schönlein . As a portraitist he remained in high and high circles until his death and was represented at numerous exhibitions at home and abroad. He was a member of the Berlin Masonic Lodge Zum Pilgrim.

Works

In his portraits, Begas met the characteristics of each other with a sure hand. Well-known are the portrait of the painter Peter von Cornelius (1861, Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten ), the portraits of the Crown Prince of Prussia, Count Moltke (1868), the building councilor James Hobrecht and his self-portrait from 1850 ( City Museum Berlin Foundation ). His view of the feminine also shows a lot of empathy, for example in the double portrait of his two adult daughters Elisabeth and Susanne (1877, Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin). In the portrait field, Begas remained stuck in the conventions of his time; compared to his father's work, he used representative, sometimes monumentally enhanced portrait formulas that met the taste of the upper middle class of the early days . Even more than in the commissioned portraits, his painterly ability and his love of experimentation are evident in his atmospheric, finely toned winter and autumn landscapes with hunters and game, and in the portraits created for private use. In a portrait of the Upper Silesian magnate Hans Heinrich IX. von Hochberg-Pless from 1865, this could be connected, where the princely hunting lodge Promnitz can be seen in the background (holdings of the Pless Palace Museum ).

Almost nothing of Begas' successful work as a decorative painter in Berlin has survived. His main works in this area are: four compositions from the myth of Amor and Psyche (1866, one scene of the cycle has been preserved in private ownership), the lunettes in the ballroom of the new Berlin town hall (1869/70) and the paintings in the ballroom of the Kaisergalerie shopping mall in the boulevard Unter den Linden in Berlin. The reception of the Salzburg Protestants by Friedrich Wilhelm I in Potsdam (1862) and Frederick the Great after the end of the Seven Years' War in the Charlottenburg Palace Chapel (1863, Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg) were particularly popular among his historically rare pictures.

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Begas' diaries for the years 1843–48 represent an important source of the art and cultural history of Berlin in the period of Vormärz . The original (3 volumes) is in the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, a copy by his son Friedrich Wilhelm (Fritz ) Begas since 2011 in the BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg.

Further paintings (selection):

• Child's portrait of the brother Hellmuth, 1842 (BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg)
• Half-length portrait of the mother in front of a mountainous landscape, 1842 (BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg)
• Portrait of Oskar von Arnim, 1848, oil / canvas, formerly Kröchlendorff Castle, Uckermark
• Self-portrait, around 1850, 67.5 × 54 oil / canvas (Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin)
• View of St. Gangolf in Heinsberg, 1851 oil / cardboard (BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg)
• Portrait of a young girl, 1852 oil / canvas 31.5 × 31.5 (2001 Neumeister auction house, Munich, lot 271)
• The Fall of Pomepeji, 1852 (Berlin, Academy of the Arts, art collection)
• Roman water carrier, 1853 oil / canvas 61.5 × 48.5 (Lindenau Museum Altenburg)
• The Expulsion from Paradise, 1856, oil / canvas 231 × 171 (private property, NRW)
• Ecce Mater Amabilis, 1856 27.5 × 21.5 oil / cardboard (BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg)
• Portrait of Marie-Elise Begas, 1857, 134.5 × 104 oil / canvas (Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin)
• Portrait of the privy councilor Dr. Johann Lukas Schönlein , 1858, oil / canvas, 119 × 98 (Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg)
• Portrait of the sculptor Louis Sußmann-Hellborn , 1858 (whereabouts unknown)
• Color sketch of the Hermannsschlacht in the Teutoburg Forest , around 1859 (Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin)
• Girl at the flower window, 1860, 64 × 48 oil / canvas (Sotheby's Munich 1992, lot 23)
• The reception of the Salzburg Protestants by Friedrich Wilhelm I in Potsdam , 1862, oil / canvas (private property, currently on loan from BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg)
• Adelgunde v. Alvensleben, oil / canvas
• Portrait of Julius Springer , 1867, oil / canvas, 86 × 71 (Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin)
• Portrait of Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia , 1867, oil / canvas (The Royal Collection Trust / Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II)
• Alexander von Pfuel as a hunter, 1870, oil / canvas (private collection)
• Ellen Franz, later Helene Freifrau von Heldburg as Leonore in Torquato Tasso , 1870 ( Sondershausen Castle Museum )
• Allegory of Autumn / Abundantia, 1871 and 1873, each 119 × 152 oil / canvas, former overhead portals of the Kaisergalerie shopping arcade in Friedrichstrasse (2006 Kunsthaus Lempertz, auction 886, lot 248)
• Portrait of the son Alfred Begas with violin, 1871, 56.5 × 43.5 oil / canvas (Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin)
• Portrait Franziska Speyer , 1872, oil / canvas 59.3 × 80 (Georg Speyer Haus, Frankfurt am Main)
• Banker Adelbert Delbrück , 1872 79 × 60 oil / canvas (Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin)
• Village in the mountains, 1872 19.5 × 29 watercolor / cardboard
• Woodcock hunting on Rügen , 1872 (Berlin Academy Exhibition 1872)
• Portrait of Georg Speyer , 1873 Oil / canvas 60 × 81 (Georg Speyer Haus, Frankfurt am Main)
• Resting Venus, 1875, 134 × 176 oil / canvas (Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues, formerly Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin)
• Self-portrait, 1875, oil / canvas, 75.5 × 60.3 (Berlin-Wannsee, House of the Lutheran Community Service GmbH, former Villa Kretzschmar)
• Portrait of Adolph Menzel , 1875, oil / canvas, 72.8 × 55 (Museum Georg Schäfer, Schweinfurt)
• On the driven hunt in the forest, 1876, whereabouts unknown
• Portrait of the daughter Elisabeth Begas, oil / canvas, 65 × 72 (private property, NRW)
• The artist's daughters, Elisabeth and Susanne, 1877, 124.5 × 91 oil / canvas (Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin)
• Caritas (Mutterglück), 1877, oil / canvas 111 × 90.5 oil / canvas (Fischer auctions, November 9, 2000, lot 1137)
• Judgment of Paris, 1878, oil / canvas 97 × 75 (BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg)
• Summer garden in Wannsee with a flowering banana tree, 1878, oil / canvas, 71 × 64 ( Galerie Mutter Fourage , Berlin-Wannsee)
• Portrait of a Young Woman, 1878 65.5 × 51.5 oil / canvas
• Portrait of Lieutenant General Theophil von Podbielski (1814–1879), approx. 65 × 95 cm, oil / canvas (private collection)
• Young Roman Woman, 1882, oil / wood, 56 × 45 cm (Berlinische Galerie - State Museum for Modern Art, Photography and Architecture)
• Portrait Elisabeth Heegewaldt, painted posthumously in 1883 70 × 60 oil / canvas (BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg)
• Marie-Elise Begas, née Beerend, the artist's wife, 1883 95 × 73 oil / canvas (BEGAS HAUS, Museum for Art and Regional History Heinsberg)

literature

• Wolfgang Cortjaens: Oscar Begas (1828-1883). A Berlin painter between court and bourgeoisie . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2017, ISBN 978-3-7319-0410-6 (with catalog raisonné of the paintings)
• Wolfgang Cortjaens (Ed.): Family ties. The correspondence from Carl Joseph Begas d. Ä. with Oscar Begas 1840-1854 . Sources on German art history from classicism to the present, vol. 7, on behalf of the German Association for Art History, ed. v. Bernhard Maaz . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-412-50919-4
• Eberhard Ruhmer:  Begas, Oskar. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 745 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Irmgard Wirth: Berlin painting in the 19th century . Siedler Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-572-10011-9 , p. 328.
• Stadtmuseum Berlin / Berlin Museum / Märkisches Museum: Painting I, 1: 16.-19. Century. Directory of the holdings of the future Stadtmuseum Berlin. With a critical catalog of the paintings in the Berlin Museum , arr. v. Sabine Beneke u. Sybille Gramlich, Berlin 1994, pp. 79-87, No. 35-49.
• The Jewish Cemetery Schönhauser Allee , Berlin , ed. by the Jewish Community of Berlin, edited by Jörg Kuhn and Fiona Laudamus with a foreword by Klaus-Henning von Krosigk and an introduction by Wolfgang Gottschalk, Berlin 2011, p. 40, No. 21 (on the family of Marie Begas née Beerend)
• Rita Müllejans-Dickmann and Wolfgang Cortjaens (eds.): BEGAS HAUS Heinsberg. Vol. 2: The Begas Collection . Wienand Verlag, Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-86832-178-4

Web links

Commons : Oskar Begas  - collection of images, videos and audio files