Baroque Painting at Nuremberg Author(s): Eberhard Wiegand Source: The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 65, No.

381 (Dec., 1934), pp. 282-284 Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/866064 . Accessed: 04/09/2013 15:46
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BAROQUE

PAINTING

AT

NUREMBERG

BY EBERHARD WIEGAND
ITH the opening, in Septemberlast, of the gallery of Germanic Baroque and Rococo painting, an attempt has been made by a German museum for the first time to bring together a collection not illustrating, only the artistic merit, but also the of the history development of a period of German art which has always been treated rather negligently both by fate and by connoisseurs. The event is all the more welcome as the other museums have either confined themselves to a limited local sphere, like the Baroque Museum at Vienna, or their collections are composed of works long in their possession and assembled by chance. In the beginning, fate was not very propitious to German Baroque painting. The sound and vital natural tradition was interrupted by the disappearance of so many artistsat the time of the Reformation and, in their place, came internationalcourt painters who pandered exclusively to the artistic taste of an upper class very small in size. The fatal separation between craftsmanship and art began. But the fundamental cause of this development was that, with the Reformation, other spiritual forces came to the fore. In general, pictorial art gave way before music, philosophy and poetry. Within the world of art itself, the centre of gravity shifted ; architecture became once more the strongest manifestation of German artistic endeavour; then sculpture, and,, finally, painting. The beginning of German Baroque painting from which so much was hoped and expected, especially from the work of Elsheimer and Liss, came to a sudden end with the early death of these two artists, and, in the subsequent period, the inner uncertainty of German art after the confusion of the Thirty Years' War, allowed the national art to be largely influenced by that of the neighbouring countries. Only gradually during the eighteenth century did the art of painting take on a character of its own, destined later on to assume ever broaderand greater proportions, until it developed a final brilliance. But this late culmination is difficult to show in a museum. It is bound to architecture. Artists such as Holzer, Maulbertsch and Gtinther were obliged to content themselves with sketches and hasty designs which are extremely well worth studying. Whoever really wishes to know them must turn to their frescoes.
The collection comprises the period from I600There are also a few pictures of the early nineteenth century in which the tradition of the eighteenth century still survives. A beginning is made by a few sound and, in the best sense of the word, bourgeois painters, such as M. Krodel the Younger and G. Flegel. In their social and artistic
I8oo.

status, they are still attached to the craftsman's tradition,but the freshnessand force of their pictures and their direct outlook and lively powers of representation lead straight to the Baroque. It is Jan Liss who carriesus right into the middle of the High Baroque. He was an artist of exuberant vitality who spent his time in painting and riotous living. Liss represents the freedom which was becoming more and more characteristic of artists in their work. He was born in Holstein and studied at the " Goltzii Manier " at Haarlem; he then went to Venice, where he died young of plague. Until recently, Liss was regarded as belonging to the Venetian School of Baroque painting, but, in his personal and palpable manner, and in the positive way he carried out the detail work, his art differed just as much from the more decorative and expansive art of a Feti, as it surpassedin vitality, colour sensibility and freedom his Haarlem fellow-pupils and their genre painting-for instance, a Brouwer or a Buyteweech. It is as if, in his spacious compositions, full of movement, and in the bright flickering colours, we have an anticipation of the later Rococo painting. His picture, Peasants Fighting[PLATEI, A], a bold, diagonal composition, saturated in form and colour with the freedom and power of the fully developed Baroque, is quite in the spirit of North German art, indeed, one might almost say in the spirit of P. Brueghel the Elder. The representatives of the academies, Sandrart, Preissler, Schonfeld and painters such as Roos and others, had much ado to assert themselves against Jan Liss. They were respectable, sound portraitists, the painters of edifying events and allegories. The academy replaced the guild, but lacked the vital organic tradition. In the gallery, there is an astonishingly life-like portrait by the rather conventional animal-painter, J. H. Roos, the father of the family of artists. In a yellow leather coat, with a crimson and white scarf and black feathered hat, an officer stands before a dark background. Fresh, both in technique and colour, is the great animal piece by his son Ph. P. Roos. In conformity with the absolutism of the time, the turn of the eighteenth century saw the creation of a stately series of portraits which show, not only what the painter saw, but also how the sitters wanted to be seen. First came the representative portraits of princes, imbued with the style of the
French Court, as exemplified by M. Meytens the Younger. Luxurious garments, orders, theatrical gestures, architectural and landscape backgrounds distract the attention from the personality of the sitter. The human and individual disappear behind the pomp, the pose and the decor. But, in time, there was an inclination towards a more varied and less

283

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A-PEASANTS

FIGHTING, BY JAN LISS.

ABOUT 1620. CANVAS, 67

BY

83 cM.

B-FRAU VON RAUMER, BY JOHANN FRIEDRICH TISCHBEIN. 1798. CANVAS, 71.5 BY 58 cM. (ALL IN THE GERMANISCHES NATIONALMUSEUM,

AUGUST

C-DUKE LEOPOLD FRANZ VON ANHALT-DESSAU BY JOHANN GEORG ZIESENIS. 1768-1769. CANVAS, 126 BY 95 CM.

NUREMBERG)

PLATE I. BAROQUE PAINTING AT NUREMBERG

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BaroquePainting at Nuremberg
theatrical conception. It is true that the usual accessories and gestures are retained by Ziesenis in his excellent portrait of Duke Leopold Franz von Anhalt-Dessau [PLATE I, C], done entirely in tones of red and yellow, but the prince does not appear as a ruler but as a weary, carelessly posed gentleman. The portraits by Pesne, Desmarees and Joh. Val. Tischbein the Elder afford further examples of the conception. A fundamental change only occurred in the second half of the century. It was a reversion from the rich, official type to a more simple, more personal style. Outwardly, the change was expressed in the costume. Instead of the gala dress, intended to enhance the sitter, we have the simple coat. Above all, the bourgeois portrait gained more and more in importance. From the point of view of art history, it represented a victory over the French It is significant that the two great prototype. portrait painters, A. Graff and F. August Tischbein, although both court painters, give us the impression of ordinary bourgeois painters. Graff was objective and sought to be true to nature; consciously or unconsciously, in his late period, his art approached that of Rembrandt in his early days. F. August Tischbein was different. He was the only painter who can bear comparison with the great contemporary English portraitists. While Graffendeavoured to grasp the character of his sitters, Tischbein was more superficial. His portraits have grace, smiling freshness and courtly reserve, and these characteristics of the late Rococo are emphasized by a delicate, light grey colour and tone, in which Leibel and Courbet appear to have been anticipated. [PLATE I, B]. The series of portraits ends with the work of Amerling, Abel, Edlinger and Kriiger. The frontiers of the eighteenth century are passed and the Biedermaier period begins. A whole room is devoted to designs for wall paintings and altarpieces which only represent a small portion of the widespread activity in South Germany. Austria is represented especially by Maulbertsch and Kremserschmidt. Except for one panel portrait, the work of Maulbertsch is seen only in sketches. He shows us a world of many original aspects, ingenious, bold and full of pictorial emphasis. And, in spite of his virtuosity, his religious themes are given with deep feeling, realized and heightened by a chiaroscuro which is not a mere foil designed to bring out contrasts, but a " place full of mysteries " [PLATE II]. Kremserschmidt is more temperamental, more sensitive and less versatile. His Bacchanal(1790) in theme and composition is a concession to classicism, but its picturesque fluency and intangible light effects are, as it were, a protest against this severe linear style. In Bavaria we have, besides Munich, the Augsburg Academy. Johann Holzer was the most important artist of this group. Together with the design for the ceiling of the gallery in the Castle of WUirzburg, which was never carried out, we have the design for his most important work, the destroyed frescoes in The architectural backMiinster-Schwarzach. in his as shown earlier design for Wurzburg, grounds, and in Gunther's sketch have almost disappeared, and the motive and grouping have dissolved into a whirl and rush of figures and clouds which fill up the space of the cupola. The whole freshness of the first conception, with all its intimacy and freedom of design and colour lives in these works which are, however, only an echo of those great creations which welded architecture, painting, sculpture and decoration into one composite unity and formed a brilliant close to the mighty Baroque period in Germany.

SHORTER NOTICES
by Van Dyck preserved in the Print Room of the British Museum include a good many of the separate figure studies, done in black chalk on faded blue paper, which were his favourite means of indicating the pose that a sitter's body and draperies were to take in an ensuing oil portrait. Most of these drawings have a recognized connexion with an oil-painting, and bear the sitter's name. A few still remain unidentified, growing however yearly fewer, as increasing photographic records bring corresponding paintings to light. This year one more name has been restored. A drawing hitherto called A Lady Unknown,Hind 67, purchased I895, No. 9.15.I072, from the Spencer A], is now Wellesley, and Malcolm collections [PLATE seen to have a definite connexion with the figure of Lady Anne Cecil, Countess of Northumberland, first wife of Algernon, the Ioth Earl (16o2-1668) as she is seen with him and their little daughter in the group painted by Van Dyck,x now belonging to the Earl's descendant, Lord Leconfield, at Petworth House, Sussex. We are

TESS OF NORTHUMBERLAND.-The drawings

A VAN DYCK DRAWING OF ANNE, COUN-

indebted to Lord Leconfield for his kind permission to publish here, for the first time, this family group [PLATE B]. The addition of a scarf to the lady's costume, and an alteration in the position of her left arm, rather obscure the connexion, yet it can be clearly seen. The direct frontal position of her body (a position rare in Van Dyck's work), the turn of her head, the open-square neck, its border and little bow, the stringlaced bodice, the tabs below her waist, the heavy fold of skirt below her right arm, and the direction of that arm, all correspond and are alike. The difference in the pose of her left arm raises various questions, the following one especially. Did Van Dyck execute first a single-figure painting in all points like our drawing? and then merely repeat it with alterations when he came to do the group ? We cannot think so, for no such single-figure painting can be found in either her own or her husband's family, which,
1 LIONEL CUST : Van Dyck, [9goo], Catalogue, Series VI, No. 146, BAKER : Catalogue of the picturesat PetworthHouse. p. 279 ; COLLINS Privately printed, Medici Society [1920], p. 30, with photograph. Old catalogue number, 289.

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