Ernst Fries

Ernst Fries ( born June 22, 1801 in Heidelberg, † October 11, 1833 in Karlsruhe ) was a German landscape painter in the transition from Romanticism to Realism. He was buried in his home town of Heidelberg.

Life

Ernst Fries was born as the son of bankers, manufacturers of dyers madder and painting collector Christian Adam Fries in Heidelberg. His father's love of art and the prosperous conditions in his family allowed him to artistic education and a financially worry-free painting and travel. His two, almost twenty years later -born brothers, William and Bernhard Fries, became painters.

Ernst Fries received from 1810, together with Carl Philipp Fohr and Carl Rottmann lessons from Friedrich Rottmann, the father of Carl Rottmann, " University of character masters" in Heidelberg. From 1815 to Ernst Fries was taught by Karl Kuntz in Karlsruhe. In 1816 he continued his studies in Munich. 1818 Fries came to Darmstadt, where he trained at Georg Moller in perspective and architectural drawing.

Fries turned over the years more and more to the landscape painting. 1820/21 he studied at the Munich Academy. Ernst Fries toured the Rhineland, Tyrol and Salzburg. From 1823 to 1827 he went to the classic study trip to Italy. After his return, he lived in Munich, returned in 1831, however, to Karlsruhe, near his home in Heidelberg, where he had been appointed Grand Duke of Baden court painter.

Ernst Fries died in Karlsruhe in 1833 by suicide. Its present tomb is a resin copy, by the crumbling original grave system was replaced sandstone. It shows a classicizing sarcophagus in house shape, reminiscent of the grave monument of Jean Jacques Rousseau.

Work

In his Roman period Fries undertook along with various artist friends artistic immensely profitable trips that made ​​him a good knowledge of the immediate and wider surroundings of Rome and southern Italy. Here was fulfilled his art and his exceptional colourist talent became apparent. His Italian landscapes are characterized by poetic conception of nature and stylized treatment of their forms, are drawn in detail, warm, strong, harmonious flavor. They act calm, and are largely free of romantic pathos. This and the use of subdued colors in loose, liquid contract indicates the beginning of realism in landscape painting.

The works of the early dead, oil paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints, are among the best of the German early 19th century art. With Carl Rottmann and Karl Philipp Fohr together Ernst Fries was the picturesque center of Heidelberg Romanticism. A rich collection of drawings, sketches, books and engravings is at a descendant in Germany privately owned. His paintings are represented in several museums, eg the great art galleries and graphic collections Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Karlsruhe, Schweinfurt Museum Georg Schäfer and Munich. The Palatinate Museum in Heidelberg has about 180 works the most comprehensive collection of works by Ernst Fries. 1927, 1972 and 2001/2002 took place there big special.