Paul of Franconia

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A mountain landscape with a rider next to a tower

Paul von Franken (born July 6, 1818 as Paul Franken in Oberbachem , † November 8, 1884 in Düsseldorf ) was a German landscape and genre painter . He belonged to the Düsseldorf School of Painting and was a member of the artists' association Malkasten . Paul von Franken is known as the painter of the Caucasus . His work can be assigned to the late Romantic period .

Life

Paul von Franken was born in Oberbachem, now a district of Wachtberg , and grew up in Godesberg. He was the son of Wilhelm Hugo von Franken (1784–1840), who was mayor of Villip from 1816 to 1840 and from 1818 to 1840 mayor of Godesberg , now part of a borough of Bonn . His mother was Wilhelmina Regina Weiser. The father had completed the title of nobility in 1826 as a registrar himself. Although the family's title was finally revoked in 1844, Paul Franken continued to sign with von Franken .

Paul von Franken had studied at the Royal Prussian Art Academy in Düsseldorf in 1841 and 1842 and was a student of Friedrich Wilhelm von Schadow , among others . After 1842 von Franken went on study trips and had longer stays in Brussels , Antwerp and Amsterdam . From 1846 to 1849 he lived in Dresden and showed his painting The Preparation for Confession there in 1848 at the exhibition of the Academy of the Arts . After returning to Düsseldorf, he married his Dresden student in 1851, the Baltic painter Helene Köber from Mitau , who is now Jelgava in Latvia , who was born in 1825 . After stays in Paris , Mitau, Saint Petersburg and Moscow , the couple lived in Tbilisi from 1853 . On behalf of the Russian government, von Franken traveled to the theaters of war in the Caucasus and documented the landscapes and people that fascinated him. Von Franken also undertook study trips to Asiatic Turkey and Yerevan . After he returned to Düsseldorf in 1860, he processed the many impressions and sketches in his paintings. The painter died in Düsseldorf in 1884.

His daughter Helene Franken , born in 1856, married the explorer and ethnographer Karl von Hahn (1848–1925) in 1875 .

Paul von Franken was next to Siegmund Lachenwitz in 1849 the best man of the second marriage of the genre and portrait painter Peter Schwingen .

Works (selection)

Cossack camp near Tbilisi
  • 1841 Portrait of the father Wilhelm Hugo von Franken
  • 1848 Preparation for confession
  • 1850 The doctor's visit
  • 1851 fish trade
  • 1859 view of Tbilisi
  • 1859 Kazbek
  • 1862 A Duchhan
  • 1864 View from Colchis
  • 1866 The Analabar in Tbilisi
  • 1878 Caucasian Landscape
  • Cossack camp near Tbilisi
  • The devastation of Tbilisi by the Persians
  • The Maiden's Tower (Qiz Qalasi) in Baku on the Caspian Sea

Many works are considered lost, but are still known from catalogs for exhibitions at that time.

literature

Web links

Commons : Paul von Franken  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: A Painter in the Caucasus  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Horst Heidermann: Life and work of Peter Schwingen
  2. ↑ a b Goethe-Institut: Project Germans in Georgia
  3. ^ German biography, published by the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences : Hahn, Karl von
  4. ↑ Horst Heidermann: Paul von Franken, the painter of the Caucasus - from Oberbachem . In: Association for Customs and Local Beautification Oberbachem e. V. (Ed.): Oberbachemer series of publications . Issue 2. Wachtberg 1997, p. 25-31 .
personal data
SURNAME Franken, Paul von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Franken, Paul (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German landscape and genre painter
DATE OF BIRTH July 6, 1818
PLACE OF BIRTH Oberbachem
DATE OF DEATH November 8, 1884
Place of death Dusseldorf