Josef Anton von Gegenbaur (6 March 1800, in
Wangen,
Württemberg
Württemberg ( ; ) is a historical German territory roughly corresponding to the cultural and linguistic region of Swabia. The main town of the region is Stuttgart.
Together with Baden and Hohenzollern, two other historical territories, Württ ...
– 31 January 1876, in Rome) was an accomplished German historical and portrait painter.
Biography
He studied first at the
Royal Academy in
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
under Robert von Langer, remaining in that city from 1815 to 1823. Among his productions there were two idyllic works, a "Saint Sebastian" and a "Madonna and Child", altar-piece for his native town. In 1823 the painter went to Rome, where he remained until 1826, studying especially the works of
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael (; or ; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual a ...
. He became successful as a
fresco painter, and, on his return to Württemberg, the king made him
court painter
A court painter was an artist who painted for the members of a royal or princely family, sometimes on a fixed salary and on an exclusive basis where the artist was not supposed to undertake other work. Painters were the most common, but the cour ...
and commissioned him to decorate the Royal Villa of Schloss Rosenstein. In 1829 Gegenbaur went again to Rome and worked on frescoes.
During later residence in
Stuttgart he was employed from 1836 to 1854 in decorating the royal Palace with sixteen scenes in fresco from the history of Württemberg. These include incidents in the life of
Count Eberhard II of Württemberg. In the same building are many of his oil paintings, among them being "Two Shepherds", "Adam and Eve after their expulsion from Eden", and "Moses Striking the Rock". In the
Stuttgart Gallery is also his "Hercules and Omphale". His other paintings in oil, ranging in date from 1829 to 1860 include many on mythological subjects: "Sleeping Venus and Two Satyrs", "Leda and the Swan" "Apollo and the Muses", "Bacchus and Ariadne", "Venus and Cupid", "Ceres and Jason", "Aeolus Aeola", "Pluto and Proserpine", "Neptune and Thetis", several Genii and Amorettes, and some portraits. Among Gegenbaur's frescoes, in addition to those already mentioned, are "Jupiter giving Immortality to Psyche", "The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche", four scenes from the life of Psyche, "The Four Seasons", an "Aurora"—all at the Schloss Rosenstein. In addition to these works, we may mention, as well as various Madonnas, "The Ascension of the Virgin", "The Crucifixion", "Hercules and Omphale", the last in the Thorwaldsen Museum in
Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
.
See also
*
List of German painters
This is a list of German painters.
A
> second column was into info box -->
* Hans von Aachen (1552–1615)
* Aatifi (born 1965)
* Karl Abt (1899–1985)
* Tomma Abts (born 1967)
* Andreas Achenbach (1815–1910)
* Oswald Achenbach (1827 ...
Sources
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gegenbaur, J
1800 births
1876 deaths
19th-century German painters
19th-century German male artists
German male painters
Court painters
Academy of Fine Arts, Munich alumni