Caspar Wolf
Caspar Wolf ( May 3, 1735 in Muri AG, † October 6, 1783 in Heidelberg) is one of the most important Swiss painters of pre-romanticism and is considered a pioneer of the high mountain painting. The European art science is increasingly giving him attention as an outstanding member of departure time between the Enlightenment and Romanticism.
Biography
Wolf was the son of a carpenter, who fell into poverty. When he was fourteen, he was able, thanks to the support of the Abbot of Muri complete an apprenticeship as churches and landscape painter. Afterwards he traveled from Munich to Passau and Augsburg and probably met Jakob Christoph Weyermann, a Swiss landscape painter. In Augsburg, where in 1710 a Protestant Academy of Art was founded, also worked Johann Elias Ridinger, Gottfried Eichler, Georg Hertel, Jeremias Wachsmuth and Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner.
In 1760 he returned to Muri and painted altars for chapels and monasteries. The paintings on wood paneling and wallpaper on the first floor of the castle Horben, the former summer residence of the Benedictine monks of Muri, come from him. 1768/1769 Wolf was in Basel. In 1770 he moved to Paris, but returned a year later back to Muri.
From 1773 he made several study trips to the Berner Oberland, as a companion of the theologian Jakob Samuel Wyttenbach and the influential Bernese publisher Abraham Wagner. Their model was Albrecht von Haller, who praised the mountain nature long before Jean Jacques Rousseau. They visited the St. Beatus Caves, the Staubbachfall, the Fieschergletscher, the Engelberger Rostock, Muota, Guttannen, Leukerbad and the Geltenbachfall cave. In 1777 he had about 170 paintings originals painted by glaciers, crevasses, caves, valleys and peaks. Next year, the Vues Remarquables were issued as aquatint in four colors, but without much success.
From 1777 to 1779 he was in Solothurn. Then Wagner, Johann Heinrich Füssli and Wolf traveled to Paris. Wolf worked with Philipp Jakob Loutherburg the Younger until it departed for London. Wolf was in Paris influenced by Claude Joseph Vernet, one of the then most famous landscape painter. Under his leadership Vernet Alps paintings were also made on behalf of a Swiss publisher engravings. The paintings were exhibited as a closed cabinet of Alpine paintings in Paris and Bern and later came to Castle Keukenhof in the Netherlands. It is still unknown how these works got there.
From 1780 he lived in Spa, Aachen, ( where he stayed for curative treatments because of kidney failure ), Cologne, Dusseldorf and Schloss Bensberg. He drew panoramas, villages, churches, parks, cities and example Benrath. In June 1781 wolf held on in Dusseldorf and offered the Dusseldorf Art Academy " 80 performances of Alpengebürge in water color ... for sale at the gallery" to. When his condition improved, he went to Castle Schwetzingen and Heidelberg, where he forget and impoverished in the hospital starb.1785 were 43 of its approximately 200 alpine landscapes published in Amsterdam. His wife, whom he had married in 1760, died 1813 in Muri.
Style and meaning
Alps representations can be found in front of Wolf almost exclusively in products purely documentary view painting. Wolf's major innovation was the idealization of the alpine landscape by unusual perspectives, such as from caves, or through gorges through, as well as by dramatic lighting. Often stands Caspar Wolf's tiny represented Figurenstaffage in stark contrast to the massive expansion of the mountain landscape. Wolf turns also against the trends of the time, to the harmonious landscape design, as found in the rococo and classicist, such as Jacob Philipp Hackert, and leads the viewer the wild elemental force of nature in mind.
All of these stylistic traits acquired special significance in the painting of German Romanticism. Caspar Wolf counts, in addition to Adrian Zingg, Johann Jakob Biedermann and Johann Georg von Dillis, the most important precursors of romanticism.
Museums
In Muri monastery is the Caspar Wolf Cabinet, which is the largest permanent exhibition of the artist claims to be. More extensive groups of works can be seen in the Aargau Kunsthaus and the Oskar Reinhart Museum in Winterthur. The Kunsthaus Zurich and the Kunstmuseum Sion also show individual works on display.
Works (selection)
Gallery
Glacier in the Bernese Oberland
Panorama of the Grindelwald valley, 1774
Lower Grindelwald Glacier, 1774
Boardwalk over the Lütschinen at Gsteig, 1774
Bridge over the gorge at Leukerbad ( mountain view ), 1775
Bridge over the gorge at Leukerbad ( valley view ), 1775
Other major works
- The Staubbachfall in the Lauterbrunnen Valley, around 1775
- View from the Beatushöhle on Lake Thun, 1776
- The Lauteraargletscher overlooking the Lauteraarsattel, 1776
- The Rhone glacier from the valley floor at Gletsch, 1778
- Signatory in a Jurassic Cave, 1778