Gottlieb Welté

Gottlieb Welte, also: Christian Gottlieb Welte, (* December 3, 1748 or 1749 in Mainz, † December 17, 1792 on the farm Lohu ( German LOAL ) in the parish Hageri ( Haggers ), now the town Kohila in a circle Rapla, Estonia) was a German landscape painter and etcher.

Life

Welte was a pupil of his father Anton Welte, before moving to the workshop of Christian Georg Schütz the Elder in Frankfurt entered the mid-1770s.

In Mainz and Frankfurt Welte worked as an etcher and landscape painter. In 1780 he went to Põltsamaa in Estonia, where he worked in the local castle and the local porcelain factory. Later, he was from 1785 to 1788 tutor at the manor of Võisiku near Põltsamaa and then lived in the manor of Lohu, where he died in 1792.

His works, which he carried out predominantly small in size, are stylistically attributed to the Rococo and the transition to classicism. In Estonia, he painted staffages in the French style, in which he portrayed Estonian peasants of his time in the light of the surrounding landscapes. Welte was a typical representative of the Enlightenment - thoughtful, keen to experiment and non-conformist.

His most important work, an illusionistic fresco that covers an area of ​​27.6 square meters, was discovered only in the 1960s behind later applied wallpaper in the hall of the manor of Lohu.

After Welte had been forgotten for many years, a comprehensive exhibition took place in 2007/2008 the Kadriorg Palace in Tallinn Eesti Kunstimuuseum first place, which was then also shown in a similar form in the Landesmuseum Mainz 2008.