Sophia Roentgen

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Sophia Margarethe Antoinette Roentgen (née Tischbein; * 1761 in Hamburg ; † May 24, 1826 in Aurich ) was a German painter and teacher from the Tischbein family of artists .

life and work

Sophia Tischbein was the second (according to other sources: eldest) daughter of the Hamburg painter Magdalene Gertrud Tischbein (née Lilly) and the painter Johann Jacob Tischbein , the so-called "Lübeck Tischbein". Her younger siblings were the painter Magdalena Margaretha Tischbein and the painter August Tischbein . She was born in Hamburg, baptized on January 21, 1761 and grew up in Lübeck . From an early age she received painting and drawing lessons in her parents' workshop, instead of training at the academy, her father “educated her to the same art”, as a contemporary report says.

In 1783 she married the pastor and Freemason Ludwig Roentgen . The couple started their own household in Petkum and had eight children, one of whom died early. Ludwig Roentgen was transferred to Esens in 1793 , where he took the position of consistorial councilor.

Sophie Röntgen was already painting during this time in order to supplement the family income. According to Hamburg auction catalogs from the 1790s, she created landscape, animal and flower paintings, as well as historical pictures, the whereabouts of which are unknown. The only surviving work is her altarpiece from Werdum's St. Nicolai Church from 1795, which on the one hand captivates "with the originality of the depiction of the Lord's Supper and the skillful use of an idiosyncratic light-shadow effect", but on the other hand is in a state that an unprofessional restoration at the beginning of the 20th century, as the art historian Martina Sitt judged in 2016.

Her husband died in 1814, leaving his wife and two grown daughters destitute. Presumably through the mediation of the Emden Masonic Lodge , she got a job in Aurich a year later as the head of a newly founded private girls' school, where she taught handicrafts, drawing and painting. After being unable to walk or paint in the last years of her life due to rheumatism , she taught from the sofa while lying down.

Sophia Röntgen's works that have not been preserved are a self-portrait, a portrait of Ludwig Roentgen, various animal and flower still lifes, and copies of paintings by Johann Heinrich Tischbein the Elder . In a publication from 2016 on the occasion of an exhibition in the Haina monastery , further speculations were made about a portrait of Moses Wessely, which could possibly be ascribed to her, since it was subsequently signed with "Anton".

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Sabine Heissler: Sophia Margarethe Antoinette TISCHBEIN-ROENTGEN . In: Martin Tielke (Hrsg.): Biographisches Lexikon für Ostfriesland . tape III . East Frisian Landscape, Aurich 2001, ISBN 3-932206-00-2 , p. 403–405 ( digitized via ostfriesenelandschaft.de [PDF]).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Melanie Becker: Sophia Antoinette Tischbein, m. Roentgen (1761-1826) . In: Martina Sitt (Hrsg.): Revealed: female painters around Tischbein and the Kassel Art Academy . (on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name in Kloster Haina  2016). Hamburg, ISBN 978-3-936406-53-5 , pp. 34-35 .
  3. ↑ Martina Sitt: A picture, a finding, a letter . In: Martina Sitt (Hrsg.): Revealed: female painters around Tischbein and the Kassel Art Academy . (on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name in Kloster Haina  2016). Hamburg, ISBN 978-3-936406-53-5 , pp. 10-11 .
personal data
SURNAME Roentgen, Sophia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Röntgen, Sophia Margarethe Antoinette (full name); Tischbein, Sophia (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH 1761
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH May 24, 1826
Place of death Aurich