Philipp Wirth

Philipp Wirth (1808–1878) self-portrait approx. 1845

Philipp Wirth (born July 7, 1808 in Miltenberg ; † December 18, 1878 there ) was a German painter and photographer . In the thirties and forties of the 19th century he was a portraitist and landscape painter who was known and appreciated in Lower Franconia and Würzburg , who shared the fate of being forgotten with many contemporaries until he was rediscovered in 1918 by the art historians Gustav Pauli and Karl Lilienfeld .

Life

The son of the Miltenberg councilor and chronicler Michael Josef Wirth (* August 11, 1775 ; † May 15, 1864 ) already showed a clear artistic talent as a pupil, which was promoted early by Carl Gottlieb Horstig ( 1763 - 1835 ). Philipp Wirth received systematic drawing lessons from Sebastian Hesselbach in Würzburg from 1822 to 1826 and as an art student at the Munich Academy from 1827 to 1829 . During stays in Vienna and the Eastern Alps (1829 to 1834) as well as in London (1834/1835), he rounded off his studies in portrait and landscape painting . Between 1835 and 1843 Philipp Wirth developed a lively activity as a portraitist in Miltenberg, Wertheim , Aschaffenburg and Würzburg. However, only a few of his oeuvre from this creative period have survived; Especially in Würzburg and Aschaffenburg many pictures were lost during the Second World War .

For reasons that could no longer be reconstructed, the capable portrait painter Wirth left Würzburg and Lower Franconia in November 1843 to go to Paris and devote a longer period of time to art ( Würzburger Abendblatt of November 15, 1843). Without the possibly hoped-for reorientation, Wirth returned to his father's house on Marktplatz in Miltenberg after a few months, ill and in a depressed state, and between 1849 and 1851 he turned to photography, which had been developed shortly before by Louis Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot : together with his brother Franz Joseph he ran a photographic studio in Miltenberg.

After the failure of the photo studio project, Philipp Wirth's personal and financial circumstances deteriorated noticeably: he became a boarder of the Bishop's Fund and from 1877 could no longer look after himself. Completely impoverished, he died on December 18, 1878 in the municipal hospital in Miltenberg.

The Museum of the City of Miltenberg am Schnatterloch presents works by the artist in two of the four gallery rooms.

literature

• Constantin von Wurzbach : Wirth, Philipp . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 57th part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1889, p. 121 ( digitized version ).
• Wolfgang Kimpflinger: Philipp Wirth - a Franconian painter of the 19th century . Aschaffenburg 1983