August Friedrich Oelenhainz

August Friedrich Oelenhainz ( born June 28, 1745 in Endingen ( Balingen ); † November 5, 1804 in Pfalz Castle ) was a German painter.

Life

The son of a minister was educated at Tübingen until his uncle, the painter Wolfgang Dietrich Majer. From 1761 he studied at the " Academie des Arts " in Ludwigsburg at the Württemberg court painter Johann Wilhelm Beyer with whom he went to Vienna in 1768. He took the studies at the Vienna Academy and was in 1769 with his reception piece to the engraver Academy, a nude drawing, gain the first prize. At the imperial court, it has rapidly become a popular painter. From a young age he was regarded as a talented portraitist. Even if Oelenhainz set off again to travel to Germany and Switzerland, but he kept on for most of his life in Vienna. It is only documented a longer stay in Switzerland, which is justified with Olenhainz membership of the Freemasons. This organization enabled him to maintain additional orders and close contact with the great minds of his time. So he portrayed, for example, Johann Caspar Lavater and Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, in the latter he held in 1780 on the Asperg on. From 1790, he worked in Zurich and 1792 in Bern. In Bern he left numerous portraits, of which the portrait of the mayor Albrecht protrudes from Mülinen.

In addition to other well-known personalities he held inter alia specify several members of the houses Liechtenstein and Schwarzenberg in paintings. Especially the portraits of children of the Liechtenstein family show very clearly that Oelenhainz ' influences for the most part in the French portraiture and on a small scale can be found in the English masters. His works refrain from opulent forms of representation in the Baroque sense, but already testify to the desire for the image of the personality of the sitter.

From 1800 he lived in Ulm, and 1801 in Stuttgart. In 1803 he traveled to Paris and died in 1804 on his way home.

His remarkable life and work is largely unexplored until today.

Works (selection)

• Historical Museum Bern
• Kunstmuseum Bern
• Jegenstorf Castle
• Ludwigsburg Palace
• State Gallery of Stuttgart
• Belvedere Vienna