Rudolf Koller
Rudolf Koller ( born May 21, 1828 in Zurich, † January 5, 1905 ) was a Swiss painter. Koller was known primarily for his Gotthardpost.
Life
Koller was born the son of a butcher and innkeeper from Schaffhausen and Maria Ursula Forster. First he attended the private school to black garden, later the elementary school to Dame Cathedral. Between 1840 and 1843 he went to the Cantonal Industrial School in Zurich. For his uncle, a landscape painter, he received his first drawing lessons. Already at that time he decided to become horse painter. At Easter 1843 Koller dropped out of school and began training at the drawing teacher Jacques Schweizer, the portraitist Johann Rudolf Obrist and the landscape painter Johann Jakob Ulrich, who taught him the crucial artistic suggestions.
1845 first horse trials originated near Stuttgart in the stud of the King of Württemberg and Koller received orders for horse and dog pictures. 1846/47 was a study in the figure class by Karl Ferdinand Sohn at the Art Academy in Dusseldorf. There Koller became friends with the painters Arnold Böcklin and Anselm Feuerbach.
1847 Koller traveled with Böcklin to Brussels and then went on alone to Antwerp and Paris, where he. Netherlands in the Louvre works of the 17th century copied and got to know the works of modern animal painters like Rosa Bonheur and Constant Troyon By turning to the French Barbizon painters' colony painting came into the great outdoors more and more into the center of his work. In April 1848 Koller returned, plagued by financial worries, back to Zurich.
From 1849 to 1850 he painted on the Hasliberg on Brünigbahn. Later he traveled to Munich, where he met the landscape and animal painter Johann Gottfried Steffan and Friedrich Voltz. In the Upper Bavarian stud horses he painted studies and traveled for study purposes in the Oetztal and the Zugspitze. From April 1851 Koller lived again in Zurich and became friends with the painters Robert ignition and Ernst Stückelberg. In May, he opened in Zurich - Oberstrass a studio and received several orders for animal pictures. 1852/53 he painted - in close collaboration with Robert ignition - field studies at Lake Walen.
On May 5, 1856 married Bertha Schlatter Koller. The Honeymoon led the couple to Vienna, where Koller had been exhibited several times. In 1857 he painted the cow in the herb garden ( Kunsthaus Zurich ). He became friends with the writer Gottfried Keller, the cultural historian Jacob Burckhardt and the literary scholar and philosopher Friedrich Theodor Vischer. Koller 1855 painted a portrait of Bertha Schlatter ( Kunsthaus Zurich ). In the late summer of 1858 Koller was in the area of Richisau in the Canton of Glarus, where the image was Richisau.
1862 acquired Koller 's house to Hornau at that time feral horn Zurich on Lake Zurich. There he lived until his death, worked and held a variety of animals in order to study them as accurately as possible. From November 1868 to June 1869 traveled Koller for nature studies to Florence, Rome and Naples. From 1869 he took students in his studio at: St. Galler ride Emil Meyer and Traugott Schiess, Charles François Vuillermet from Lausanne and Adolf Stäbli from Winterthur.
1870 broke out an eye condition that is increasingly impaired Koller's creative power. At the height of his artistic skills reached him in 1873 the mission of the Board of the Swiss Northeastern Railway. This looked at the adoption of the industrialist and railway pioneer Alfred Escher a gift. Koller decided on the Gotthard, the tunneling Escher had initiated significantly. The Gotthard road, nature study shows a cross- format the empty pass road; the portrait format image The two-horse Gotthardpost brings an accurate study of the carriage (not yet at full speed ), another sketch, finally, the system of the final composition. The Gotthardpost was a composite of the designs and an extension of the panicked calf. The contrast of two different movements of the slowness of the cows and the speed of the carriage Koller scored the desired dramatic effect. The Gotthardpost hangs today in the Kunsthaus Zurich. Koller painted in 1874 for the bank Credit Suisse in Zurich is a replica of it.
To Koller's seventieth birthday a first major work exhibition with more than 20,000 visitors took in 1898 in Zurich. In the same year Koller was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Zurich. In 1900, he traveled for the last time to Italy, where he worked in San Domenico at Florence again met with his friend Arnold Böcklin.
1905 died Rudolf Koller in the Hornau. His tomb is in the cemetery Sihlfeld in Zurich next Gottfried Keller. In the same year, the Kunsthaus Zurich was selected works from the estate of Rudolf Koller, including seven paintings and sixty-seven sketchbooks from all periods of the artist as well as furniture and props from the studio at Zurich horn. Parts from his estate, such as letters, memoirs, and notebooks are in the Manuscript Department of the Central Library Zurich.
Koller's studio and residence to Hornau at the Fröhlichstrasse 1 in 1938 was canceled.
Works (selection)
Two-horse Gotthardpost (1873 )
Cow in the herb garden ( 1857)
Jumping Dog ( 1856)
At the watering hole
Glacier on the Susten Pass, 1856
Richisau (1858 )
Grazing Cow (1898 )
The church St.Remigius in Falera (1898 )
Haymaking in case of imminent thunderstorm, 1854
- Reclining Greyhound, 1852
- Herb study, 1857
- Friedli with the cow, study, 1858
- Siesta, 1860
- Idyll at Hasliberg, 1864
- Two caressing little calf ( Study for " Autumn Willow ", 1867)
- Boy with mold, study, 1872
- Autumn Evening, 1879