Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich

Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, and Christian Ernest Guillaume Dietricy (* October 30, 1712 in Weimar, † April 23, 1774 in Dresden) was a German painter, etcher and engraver.

Life

Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich was born the son of the court painter Johann Georg Dietrich in Weimar. His mother was Johanna Dorothea Dietrich, daughter of the court painter Johann Ernst Rentsch from Weimar. His sister Maria Dorothea Wagner later became known as a landscape painter, as well as his nephew Johann Georg Wagner. Even Dietrich's youngest sister Rachel Rosina Böhme was a painter.

Dietrich received his earliest education in Weimar with his father Johann Georg Dietrich. After moving to Dresden in 1724 Dietrich was promoted by the landscape painter Johann Alexander Thiele. August the Strong soon noticed the young talent and let the Count Brühl for further education Dietrich's take care of has its patrons.

After a long journey that had taken him from may 1734 in the Netherlands, Dietrich 1741 by Augustus III was. appointed court painter. A subsequent study trip to Italy in 1743, as a result Dietrich renamed to Dietricy, had an impact on Dietrich's work but only conditionally. The following years are to create the richest and most successful Dietrich. Throughout Europe, his works were traded. He received honorary memberships of academies in Augsburg, Bologna and Copenhagen and was in 1764 appointed director of the school of painting of the Meissen porcelain factory. A year later he received a professorship, which he held until his death at the Art Academy in Dresden. After his death, the widow of Dietrich, Adrian Zingg initiated a complete edition to be published, which included 87 sheets and partly contained leaves, the consummate Zingg. The title page is the fourth reprint of a rocky landscape of Dietrich, which is designed in the style tradition of Salvator Rosa.

Work

Dietrich's work covers all subject areas and techniques of painting of his time. Also, various art movements of the 17th century can be found in his oeuvre again.

First, Dietrich was limited to the imitation of the famous Dutch painters such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Adriaen van Ostade, Cornelis van Poelenburgh and Nicolaes Pieterszoon Berchem, but also Antoine Watteau, which are technically the original style often aligned in such a way that counterfeiting Dietrich sold as real " Rembrandt " were.

From contemporaries his landscape etchings were the most highly prized, Johann Joachim Winckelmann called Dietrich in this respect even the Raphael of all time in landscapes. They represent a precursor for the realistic landscape painting, represented for example by his pupil Johann Christian Klengel. Its approximately 181 traditional printmaking blades are characterized mainly by the virtuosity of the technique and the range of its representation motives. Dietrich printed graphic oeuvre includes themes of old and New Testament representations, mythology, allegory, history, landscapes, livestock and pastoral pieces, animal studies, coat of arms, vignettes, decorated letters, half-length figures, busts, genre paintings of heads, etc. The main focus is on landscape representations to judge that are etched in a virtuoso manner of the Dutch masters of the 17th century or Italian masters of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century and occupy a focal point in his prints oeuvre.

The infamous art thieves Stéphane Breitwieser began his foray through the museums of Europe in 1995 with a painting by Dietrich, whose plastic properties reminded him of Rembrandt.

On the occasion of his 300th birthday is a published by Hirmer Verlag monograph by art historian Petra Schniewind -Michel life and work of this extraordinary artist re-submit its significance was largely forgotten in the wake of the changing taste in art in the 19th century.