Sixtus Armin Thon (10 November 1817,
Eisenach
Eisenach () is a Town#Germany, town in Thuringia, Germany with 42,000 inhabitants, west of Erfurt, southeast of Kassel and northeast of Frankfurt. It is the main urban centre of western Thuringia, and bordering northeastern Hesse, Hessian re ...
– 26 September 1901,
Weimar
Weimar is a city in the state (Germany), German state of Thuringia, in Central Germany (cultural area), Central Germany between Erfurt to the west and Jena to the east, southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together w ...
) was a German painter,
etcher
Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types ...
and
lithographer
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 ...
. There is widespread disagreement over whether his name was Sixtus or Sixt, even though his gravestone says "Sixtus".
Life and work
He was born in Eisenach, the son of
naturalist
Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...
and
mineralogist
Mineralogy is a subject of geology specializing in the scientific study of the chemistry, crystal structure, and physical (including optical mineralogy, optical) properties of minerals and mineralized artifact (archaeology), artifacts. Specific s ...
Theodor Thon, who was also an amateur engraver. In 1837, he studied painting at the
Academy of Fine Arts, Leipzig, then transferred to the
Weimar Princely Free Drawing School, where his primary instructor was
Friedrich Preller the Elder.
He also took study trips to the Netherlands and Norway and completed his training at the
Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. In the 1850s, he ran one of the first photography studios in Weimar.
In 1861, he became a teacher at his alma mater, the Drawing school. He served as the interim Director there in 1873. For a time, he also taught at the "Sophienstift", a school for girls established by
Princess Sophie of the Netherlands
Princess Sophie of the Netherlands (Wilhelmine Marie Sophie Louise; 8 April 1824 – 23 March 1897) was the only daughter and last surviving child of King William II of the Netherlands and of his wife Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia ...
. He was largely known for landscapes and
genre
Genre () is any style or form of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other fo ...
scenes, but the etchings and lithographs he made for ''
Die Gartenlaube
(; ) was the first successful mass-circulation German newspaper and a forerunner of all modern magazines.Sylvia Palatschek: ''Popular Historiographies in the 19th and 20th Centuries'' (Oxford: Berghahn, 2010) p. 41 It was founded by publisher ...
'' and other publications are probably his most familiar works.
The municipal collection in
Braunschweig
Braunschweig () or Brunswick ( ; from Low German , local dialect: ) is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in Lower Saxony, Germany, north of the Harz Mountains at the farthest navigable point of the river Oker, which connects it to the ...
possesses a large number of his original materials.
[''Verwaltungsbericht der Stadt Braunschweig'', 1951 (pg.86)]
References
Further reading
*
Anton Bettelheim:
Biographisches Jahrbuch und deutscher Nekrolog Vol.6,'' G. Reimer, Berlin, 1904, p. 566.
* Anton Kippenberg, Goethe-Museum Düsseldorf, Anton-und-Katharina-Kippenberg-Stiftung:
'' Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1963, p. 50.
*
Walther Killy
Walther Killy (26 August 191728 December 1995) was a German literary scholar who specialised in poetry, especially that of Friedrich Hölderlin and Georg Trakl. He taught at the Free University of Berlin, the Georg-August-Universität Götting ...
and
Rudolf Vierhaus
Rudolf Vierhaus (29 October 1922 – 13 November 2011) was a German historian who mainly researched the Early modern period. He had been a professor at the newly founded Ruhr University Bochum since 1964. From 1971, he was director of the in Gött ...
(Eds.): ''
Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie
The ''Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie'' (''DBE'') is a biographical dictionary published by Walther Killy and Rudolf Vierhaus (from the third to fourth volume), the first edition of which was published from 1995 to 2003 in 13 volumes by K. ...
.'' Vol.10, K.G. Saur Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, München 1996, , p. 22.
* Axel Stefek: "Lichtbilder auf Papier. Weimars erste Fotografen: Sixt Armin Thon, Adelbert Schenk, Ludwig und Ignaz Frisch". In: ''Weimar-Jena. Die große Stadt''. Das Kulturhistorische Archiv 7 (2014), pp. 297–311
External links
More works by Thon@ ArtNet
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thon, Sixtus Armin
1817 births
1901 deaths
19th-century German painters
19th-century German male artists
19th-century German etchers
German lithographers
Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Antwerp) alumni
People from Eisenach