JB Isenring - Selbstbildnis Papierkopie e Daguerreotypie (FPh53)

Johann Baptist Isenring (12 May 1796,

Lütisburg Lütisburg is a municipality in the ''Wahlkreis'' (constituency) of Toggenburg in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland. History Lütisburg is first mentioned in 1214 as ''Liutinsburch'' Bereits früher belegt sind. The hamlet of Rindal was f ...

- 9 April 1860,

St. Gallen , neighboring_municipalities = Eggersriet, Gaiserwald, Gossau, Herisau (AR), Mörschwil, Speicher (AR), Stein (AR), Teufen (AR), Untereggen, Wittenbach , twintowns = Liberec (Czech Republic) , website ...

) was a Swiss landscape painter and printer. He was also the first Daguerrotypist in Switzerland.

Life and work

As a boy, he completed a carpentry apprenticeship in

Zürich Zürich () is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. It is located in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zürich. As of January 2020, the municipality has 43 ...

. From 1816 to 1817, he travelled to Munich and Vienna, working as a house painter and gilder. Thanks to a stipendium from the

Canton of St. Gallen The canton of St. Gallen, also canton of St Gall (german: link=no, Kanton St. Gallen ; rm, Chantun Son Gagl; french: Canton de Saint-Gall; it, Canton San Gallo), is a canton of Switzerland. The capital is St. Gallen. Located in northeastern ...

, he was able to enroll at the

Academy of Fine Arts, Munich The Academy of Fine Arts, Munich (german: Akademie der Bildenden Künste München, also known as Munich Academy) is one of the oldest and most significant art academies in Germany. It is located in the Maxvorstadt district of Munich, in Bavaria, ...

, in 1820, where he studied landscape painting and watercolors. In 1823, he returned to St. Gallen and, by 1825, began self-publishing a series of

aquatint Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching that produces areas of tone rather than lines. For this reason it has mostly been used in conjunction with etching, to give both lines and shaded tone. It has also been used h ...

s called '' Thurgegenden''. In 1828, he opened an art shop and, in 1831, published what would be his largest collection of

lithograph Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...

s. ''Picturesque Views of the Most Remarkable Cities and Places in Switzerland'' (Malerischer Ansichten der merkwürdigsten Städte und Flecken der Schweiz). In 1839, as soon as he heard about the invention of the Daguerreotype, he acquired a camera in Paris and became Switzerland's first photographer. In August 1840, he presented one of the world's first photography exhibitions, with cityscapes, portraits and art reproductions, for which he printed a four page catalog. The exhibition was taken on the road and shown in Zürich, Munich,

Augsburg Augsburg (; bar , Augschburg , links=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German , label=Swabian German, , ) is a city in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, around west of Bavarian capital Munich. It is a university town and regional seat of the ' ...

, Vienna and

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

. In 1841, he opened a "Studio for

Heliography Heliography (in French, ''héliographie)'' from ''helios'' (Greek: ''ἥλιος'')'','' meaning "sun"'','' and ''graphein (γράφειν),'' "writing") is the photographic process invented, and named thus, by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce around ...

" in Munich. That same year, he produced the first colored Daguerreotypes, using a mixture of

gum arabic Gum arabic, also known as gum sudani, acacia gum, Arabic gum, gum acacia, acacia, Senegal gum, Indian gum, and by other names, is a natural gum originally consisting of the hardened sap of two species of the '' Acacia'' tree, ''Senegalia sen ...

and

pigment A pigment is a colored material that is completely or nearly insoluble in water. In contrast, dyes are typically soluble, at least at some stage in their use. Generally dyes are often organic compounds whereas pigments are often inorganic compo ...

s. The dyed powder was applied with fine brushes and fixed to the surface with a heat treatment. He patented this technique. The proceeds from his first eight months of royalties was used to purchase his "Sonnenwagen" (Sun Car), a photography studio on wheels with a built-in darkroom; the first of its kind. He was aware of the shortcomings of being able to produce only one copy of each photograph, so he began working on a duplication technique. Originally, he tried setting several cameras side by side or on top of each other and triggering them simultaneously, but the results were not consistent.Kritik der Fotografie.
/ref> He never solved the problem to his satisfaction. For many years, he worked as a travelling photographer throughout Switzerland and Southern Germany, until his physical condition was no longer up to the effort. He then settled in St. Gallen, where he worked primarily as a landscape painter and engraver. Most of his photographic work has not been preserved.

References

External links

*
Union List of Artist Names, s.v. "Isenring, Johann Baptist"
retrieved 1 July 2012. {{DEFAULTSORT:Isenring, Johann Baptist Pioneers of photography 1796 births 1860 deaths Portrait photographers 19th-century Swiss photographers 19th-century Swiss painters Swiss male painters People from St. Gallen (city) 19th-century Swiss male artists