Willem van Bemmel
Willem Gerritsz. van (Wilhelm von) Bemmel (born June 10, 1630 in Utrecht , † December 20, 1708 in Nuremberg ) was a painter from Holland who worked in Germany and Italy . His family has been living in Utrecht since the 15th century and has held several honorary military posts. Willems brother Jacob Gerritsz. van Bemmel also became a painter (genre, landscapes). Willem van Bemmel was the progenitor of the artist family Bemmel in the Nuremberg area.
Bemmel was probably not a pupil of the landscape painter Herman Saftleven in Utrecht until 1650–54 . The sources are sparse and the biographers who succeeded Joachim von Sandrart (1675/1683) disagree on the curriculum vitae up to 1660. It remains to be seen whether he undertook his first trip to Italy to study languages around 1647 or whether he first went to an unknown painter to apprentice. But like the “Kirchdorf” (Stockholm) signed and dated in 1650, the other paintings and drawings of the early work do not point to Italy either. In 1653, Bemmel worked for the Landgrave of Hessen-Rotenfels, who turned St. Goar am Rhein into his residence. Theodor and Johann Heinrich Roos also worked there. In 1654, Bemmel published a series of graphics on trees, which may have been created earlier and refer to Saftleven as a teacher. In 1656 his great-grandson described him as living in Germany. An undated sketchbook in Oberlin (USA) documents a trip to Italy, which stylistically points to a development in the following years, circa 1656–1660. Stays are Rome, Velletri, Tivoli. The biographers also mention Venice and Naples as well as a stay in England.
In 1662, after a short stay in Augsburg , Bemmel finally settled in Nuremberg and soon became friends with his colleagues Johann Franz Ermels and Johann Philipp Lemke . Bemmel probably became a lecturer at the art academy founded there that same year under the direction of Jacob von Sandrart . Joachim von Sandrart praised Bemmel's virtues as a landscape painter in his Teutsche Academie der Noble Bau-, Bild und Malereikünste (1675).
Bemmel had many students, although it is not certain whether this is due to his teaching at the academy or his atelier. His most important students were probably his sons Johann Georg and Peter ; but Ermels should also be mentioned here.
The painter Willem van Bemmel died at the age of 78 on December 20, 1708 in Wöhrd near Nuremberg.
Bemmel's artistic work captivates above all through his landscapes, a subject that he varied again and again. Bemmel's works show that the artist established academic rules and was able to skillfully create tension with the alternation of light and shadow. His early work was still the representation of natural phenomena such as light, shadow, reflections and the aggregate states of water (haze, spray, etc.) of the so-called Italianisanten. With the rain showers and storm landscapes, he is developing something new here and setting contrasts in moods in the counterparts. His pastoral landscapes, like those of Ermels and Roos, are to be seen in connection with the Nuremberg shepherd poetics of the "Pegnesian Order of Flowers", whose leader, Sigmund von Birken, Bemmel was close friends. Later he briefly follows Dughet, then in his later work there is a witty examination of mountain worlds and motifs of the world of the subterranean, in which Orientals cavort. In particular, his consistently retained image design of a continuous deep space landscape, which makes the viewer into a viewer, was already adopted by students during their lifetime and imitated for a long time. Bemmel's works are represented in all major German museums.
literature
- Wilhelm Adolf Schmidt: Bemmel, Wilhelm von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, p. 313 f.
- Wolf Eiermann, Willem van Bemmel, monograph with a critical catalog raisonné, Petersberg 2007.
- Wilhelm Schwemmer: Willem van Bemmel and his descendants. In: Gerhard Pfeiffer, Alfred Wendehorst (Hrsg.): Fränkische Lebensbilder. Volume 8. Kommissionsverlag Degener & Co, Neustadt / Aisch 1978, ( Publications of the Society for Franconian History, Series VII A. Volume 8), pp. 93-102.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bemmel, Willem van |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Bemmel, Wilhelm von |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 10, 1630 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Utrecht |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 20, 1708 |
| Place of death | Nuremberg |