Peter Ludwig Kühnen

Romantic Rhine landscape with castle ruins in the sunset

Lone fisherman in the evening light , 1841

Peter Ludwig Kuhnen , some sources also Kuhnen and Belgium known as Pieter Lodewyk Kuhnen and Pierre Louis Kuhnen, (*  14. February 1812 in Aachen ; † 22. November 1877 in Schaerbeek in Brussels ), a German was a landscape painter of romanticism .

Live and act

The son of the businessman Simon Gerlach Kühnen and Anne Plum became an orphan at the age of thirteen. With the support of the Aachen city administration, he then received an apprenticeship as a lithographer in the " La Ruelle'sche Accidenzdruckerei " in Aachen. In his spare time he took painting lessons from Johann Baptist Joseph Bastiné at the Aachen drawing school . There, his teachers attested him enormous diligence and great technical precision. At first Kühnen specialized in drawings of coats of arms and miniature portraits, which he made of numerous personalities. From around 1830 he created his first landscape paintings. In the mid-1830s, Kühnen received an order from Duke Prosper Ludwig von Arenberg to paint his sons. He was also known for these works, especially among Belgian artists and art connoisseurs. Motivated by this and encouraged by several Belgian painters such as Gustav Wappers , Josef Geefs, Eugène Joseph Verboeckhoven and Ferdinand de Braekeleer , he relocated to Brussels in 1836, where, however, a little later an eye disease caused by the use of magnifying glasses forced him to abandon extremely fine and precise miniature painting.

After largely recovering from his eye disease, Kühnen devoted himself to landscape painting, with which he achieved his greatest success. His paintings were represented at several international art and painting exhibitions. In 1842 he won the silver medal at the Brussels Salon and three years later the gold medal. In 1846 he was in Paris , the highest prize of the Salon de Paris awarded in 1850 again a first prize in Bruges . He was also represented four times at the painting exhibition of the Kunstverein zu Bremen as well as in London and America. As a result, Kühnen received numerous commissions from art lovers and members of the Belgian nobility. He has also been appointed as a private tutor for some talented young artists in painting and drawing classes.

The Belgian royal family also became aware of Kühnen. King Leopold I of Belgium hired him as a drawing and painting teacher for his only daughter, Charlotte of Belgium . Years later, when Charlotte had already become Empress of Mexico as the wife of Maximilian I of Mexico , she arranged for Kühnen to be honored with the Order of Our Dear Women of Guadalupe in 1865 for his many years of art lessons . Previously, Kühnen had received the Knight's Cross of the Order of Leopold from the Belgian king in 1856 .

family

Peter Ludwig Kühnen was married to Anna Barbara Josefine Hubertine, née Beckers (1807–1864), who herself was a landscape painter well-known among connoisseurs. Their son, Simon Gerlach Leopold Victor Kühnen (born June 25, 1836 in Aachen), did the same as his parents and became a well-deserved portrait painter . After his death, Peter Ludwig Kühnen bequeathed a large part of his works to the Royal Museum of Modern Art in Brussels and the Suermondt Ludwig Museum in Aachen.

Works (selection)

• Romantic river and mountain landscape , oil on canvas, o.A.
• Landscape with a pond , n.a.
• Figures by a ruin in an extensive wooded landscape , oil on canvas, o.A.
• Sheep before a farmhouse in a wooded river landscape , oil on canvas, o.A.
• A sunlit cottage near a pond , oil on canvas, o.A.
• A landscape with three men in a boat , o. A.
• Evening landscape with resting hikers on a path , oil on canvas, o.A.
• A wooded landscape with cattle and a cottage along a brook , oil on canvas, o. A.
• View of town , oil on canvas, o.A.
• Animated landscape with waterfall , oil on canvas, o.A.
• The wood gatherers , oil on canvas, o.A.
• Figures in a river landscape , oil on canvas, o.A.

Literature and Sources

• J. Fey: On the history of Aachen painters of the 19th century . In: From Aachen's prehistory. Announcements from the association for customers of the Aachen prehistory . Tenth year 1897, No. 4/8. Pp. 84/85. google-online
• Cristiaan Kramm: De levens en works of Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters, van den vroegsten tot op onzen tijd (1857) , Gebroeders Diederichs, Amsterdam, 1856–1864 dbnl-online (ndl)

Web links

Commons : Peter Ludwig Kühnen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Painting at invaluable.com