August Wilhelm Ferdinand Schirmer (born 6 May 1802 in Berlin; died 8 June 1866 in

Nyon Nyon (; outdated German: or ; outdated Italian: , ) is a municipality in Nyon District in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland. It is located some 25 kilometers north east of Geneva's city centre, and since the 1970s it has become part of the Ge ...

) was a German

landscape art Landscape painting, also known as landscape art, is the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, especially where the main subject is a wide view—with its elements arranged into a coherent composi ...

ist.

Biography

Schirmer was born in Berlin. As a youth Schirmer painted flowers in the royal porcelain factory; afterwards he became a pupil of

Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow Friedrich Wilhelm von Schadow (7 September 1789 – 19 March 1862) was a German Romantic painter. Biography He was born in Berlin, the second son of the sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow, who gave him his first lessons in drawing. He then turne ...

in the Berlin Academy, but his art owed most to

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

. In 1827 he went to Italy, where his sojourn extended over three years. He became a disciple of his countryman Joseph Koch, who built historic landscape on the Poussins, and is said to have caught inspiration from J. M. W. Turner. In 1831 Schirmer established himself in Berlin in a studio with scholars. From 1839 to 1865 he was professor of landscape in the academy. Schirmer's place in the history of art is distinctive. His sketches in Italy were more than transcripts of the spots; he studied nature with the purpose of composing historic and poetic landscapes. On the completion of the Berlin Museum of Antiquities came his opportunity. Upon the walls he painted classic sites and temples, and elucidated the collections by the landscape scenery with which they were historically associated. Schirmer's goal was to make his art the poetic interpretation of nature and he deemed technique secondary to conception.

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References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Schirmer, Friedrich Wilhelm 1802 births 1866 deaths 19th-century German painters 19th-century German male artists German male painters German landscape painters Artists from Berlin People from the Margraviate of Brandenburg Prussian Academy of Arts alumni