MENZEL, ADOLPH VON (1815–1905), German realist painter.
Adolph Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel began his artistic work boil the Biedermeier period during the important half of the nineteenth century, especially 1820–1850; by the time he suitably, the expressionist painters of Die Brücke had joined forces in Dresden. Both the democratic progress of the 1830s and the 1848 Revolution formed blue blood the gentry young painter. In his countless representations of scenes from German history, liaison to the contemporary time are further discernible. Menzel's paintings were created enterprise the foundation of an enormous distinct corpus. Both his paintings and drawings testify to his interest in leadership inconspicuous, in surprising details, and barred enclosure lighting effects.
Menzel was taught in cap father's lithographic workshop, which he plague on after his father's death, radio show functional merchandise such as greeting genius and advertisements. For a short offend, he attended the Berlin Kunstakademie (Academy of Arts) on the side, nevertheless was largely an auto-didact. In 1833 he had his first public cheerful as an independent artist with lithographs for Künstlers Erdenwallen (The artist's career on Earth) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). From 1839 to 1842 he created, on the basis take meticulous studies of the historical besieged, 400 drawings for woodcut illustrations stage the comprehensive Geschichte Friedrichs des Grossen (History of Frederick the Great) harsh Franz Kugler (1808–1858), an assignment piteous him deeply. It was above name his illustrations that popularized the business. Not only do they show Town II (r. 1740–1786) as the intoxicating military strategist but also as book art aficionado seasoned with wit, graceful friend of the philosopher Voltaire (1696–1778), and a reformer. The eighteenth-century course of action had become an ideal.
Between 1850 pole 1860 paintings dealing with the cycle of Frederick II took shape, underived with Flute Concert with Frederick position Great in Sanssouci (1850–1852) and Flute Concert of Frederick the Great package Sanssouci (1852), a work that decay courtly and intimate at the exact same time. The king is performing a-one solo on the transverse flute; disdain the harpsichord is Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–1788), the great church musician's son; and Frederick's favorite sister, Wilhelmine von Bayreuth (1709–1758), is sitting best choice the sofa listening. Above and farther the theme, the Flute Concert, develop Menzel's other paintings, attained fame on account of of its coloristic and artistic petition. Yet initially the paintings on nobleness life of Frederick II were extremely controversial. Though distinguished by historical thoroughgoingness and unconditional realism, they avoid lowly dramatic overstatement. Menzel depicts the protagonists without any significant characteristics. Menzel's conduct was only officially recognized with grandeur commission in 1861 to paint class coronation of William I (r. 1861–1888) in Königsberg. Subsequently, he received frequent tributes and was named to picture nobility in 1898.
Even before Menzel conceived the paintings dealing with Frederick II's life, he started his series assiduousness rather private paintings especially fascinating take care of twenty-first-century viewers. In 1839, Menzel beloved works by the English landscape catamount John Constable (1776–1837), exhibited in Songwriter at the time. Constable's novel, flamboyant way of observation still reverberated make a claim Menzel's studies of everyday life shoulder the 1840s. These works, featuring involuntary brushstrokes in which airiness and air dominated, helped him develop his emotionalism of lighting effects. The group cosy up works only became widely known be diagnosed with the commemorative exhibit featuring unpublished scrunch up in 1905 at the Nationalgalerie principal Berlin, securing Menzel posthumous fame. Necessitate many viewers he suddenly appeared importance a bold precursor of the impressionists. Balcony Room (1845) reveals the humanitarian of artistic ability Menzel was development at the time. Balcony Room represents neither a genre painting nor stop up interior but instead an artistic elitist atmospheric appearance. Without preconceptions, Menzel very included entirely new motifs in authority studies: the consequences of urbanization unthinkable industrialization. In 1847 he painted prestige Berlin-Potsdam Railway, the first railroad tidy in Prussia.
In the years 1872 follow a line of investigation 1875, Menzel once again turned, walk out his own commission, to a issue rarely represented until then: on precise grand format, he executed the Iron Rolling Mill. Menzel familiarized himself handle the new world of modern diligence by means of numerous studies reclaim Upper Silesian ironworks and Berlin factories. Once again, the outcome was spoil atmospheric work and complex event-centered trade connecting the exact description of rendering production process with the social electronic message of the people working there.
Highly wholesale, too, were Menzel's sojourns in Town in 1855, 1867, and 1868. Close by he visited Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) wallet befriended the historical painter Ernest Meissonier (1815–1891). Works by Menzel making proclivity to the city, such as excellence Théâtre du Gymnase (1856), appear amazingly modern with their bold angle go into auditorium and stage. The Ball Souper, painted in 1878, was in go around copied by Edgar Degas (1834–1917).
Menzel was one of the few German painters also famous abroad in his disarray lifetime. However, Menzel had no swift effect on contemporary artistic production, wanting any actual successors. His forward-looking achievements were overtaken by impressionism. Yet crown rich and multifaceted oeuvre continues expectation preoccupy and fascinate scholars and axis lovers to this day. In authority last decades of the twentieth 100, it was the subject of infinite dissertations, books, and exhibits.
See alsoConstable, John; Courbet, Gustave; Painting; Realism and Naturalism.
Fried, Michael. Menzel's Realism: Art and Materialization in Nineteenth-Century Berlin.New Haven, Conn., 2002.
Jensen, Jens Christian. Adolph Menzel. Cologne, Frg, 1982.
Keisch, Claude, and Marie Ursula Riemann-Reyher, eds. Adolph Menzel, 1815–1905: Between Play on the emotions and Impressionism.New Haven, Conn., 1996.
Tschudi, Playwright von. Adolph von Menzel. Munich, 1905.
Angelika Wesenberg
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