RKD STUDIES

Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich (1712-1774),¹ the foremost master of 18th-century eclecticism, came from Thuringia. After having been trained in Dresden, he quickly came into the service of Saxony, first in 1741 as court painter, then 1748 as general curator for paintings and in 1764 as professor at the Academy.² In 1734 he travelled to Holland, 1743-1744 to Italy and worked in between for a year in Braunschweig. He seldom painted direct copies after the old masters (although such copies do exist) [1-3],³ but he knew how to make pleasing paintings in the taste of the 17th-century Dutch masters [4-5].

It is said, that his paintings in the manner of Bartholomeus Breenbergh, Cornelis van Poelenburch [6], Nicolaes Berchem [7] and Jan Both belong to the earliest ‘creations’ in this field, later followed by pieces à la Philips Wouwerman [8].⁴ The painters from the peasant genre onto the fine painters, Adriaen van Ostade till Willem van Mieris II, are not forgotten.

His best-known paintings are those in the taste of Rembrandt [9], like the representation of The Raising of Lazarus [10].⁵ To the many paintings in Dresden also belong the Adoration of the Magi of 1731 [11] and the Presentation in the Temple of 1740 (partly after Gerbrand van den Eeckhout) [12-13]. Furthermore there are two pieces in Braunschweig of 1737 [14], that hold reminiscences of Gerbrand van den Eeckhout and Jan Victors (he studied the Old Masters in Salzdahlum!) and another Presentation in the Temple [15-16],⁶ engraved in 1759 by Georg Friedrich Schmidt (1712-1775) [17], with borrowings from Rembrandt’s Hundred Guilders print [18]), and many others works.

In his time such old master-like paintings were very much praised. People admired his versatility: ‘He can imitate almost every painter; he imitates Rembrandt so strongly that no one will believe otherwise than that it truly is Rembrandt, and the same goes for the Italian Roos [Salvator Rosa]. The spiritual matters that he paints are in the Italian taste, and as delicate in its proportions as [Adriaen van der] Werff’ (in translation).⁷ Meusel remarks quite rightly: ‘In youthful, especially feminine figures, his drawing is more true and nobler, his brush softer and his flesh tones more pleasing, than those of Rembrandt’. Dietrich also paints companion pieces for real Rembrandts, of which Leber cites a characteristic example from a Frankfurt auction catalogue.⁸ One could say, that Dietrich associated intimately with Rembrandt. The irrationality, the power of Rembrandt’s expression, the monumentality of his work, remained a closed book to him, as he turned everything into intimate loveliness. Rembrandt [19-20] and Adriaen van Ostade supplied him in equal measures with materials to depict his themes in a realistic and fanciful way (fig. 86) [21-22].⁹

That he sometimes also ‘exploited’ Italian originals and that he painted landscapes à la Watteau we only mention here for the sake of completeness. At the same time one has to admit that although his technique is Dutch trained, it is personal and doesn’t lack a certain appeal, an assertion which cannot be made about the slick Dou imitations of other artists. Dietrich can only be understood in the context of the artistic life in Dresden. As a collector his prince August III moved in all styles and this historic-esthetic approach found an echo in the painter/museum director, which made him into a peculiarly ambiguous figure. That he was more attracted by the Dutch masters than by other art, may have its origin in the realistic-bourgeois basic attitude.

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Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich
Abraham's sacrifice, dated 1730
Grunewald (Berlin), art dealer Nicolaas Teeuwisse

Dietrich – it is hardly fathomable nowadays – enjoyed international renown. Especially the French collectors of those days, who after all had an open eye for the beauty of Dutch art and also an open purse, purchased his old fashioned paintings, drawings and etchings. Johann Georg Wille (1715-1808) related in his reminiscences of him since 1759 almost on every page, that he either sold or exchanged Dietrich’s paintings in Paris or that he had them on loan to be engraved. Another time he had to translate a letter by Pierre Jean Mariette (1694-1774) to Wille [= Dietrich, ed.] in German, in which a splendid Rembrandt is mentioned, that Mariette sent to Dietrich with the request to receive Dietrich’s graphics in exchange.¹⁰ Dietrich worked on commission for Parisian collectors and for Wille, who allowed himself to assign the required themes. In Paris there seems to have been a market especially for his landscapes à la Both and Berchem and for his genre pieces ‘in the taste of Ostade’. In French auction catalogues of the late 18th century Dietrich, often classified as ‘École des Pays Bas’ [‘Dutch School’], is a regular customer.

In Germany Carl Friedrich Holtzmann (1740-1811) worked after models by Dietrich, at least as an engraver [23]. The little that we have seen from his alleged 2000 images, doesn't allow us to suppose a Dutch training in the manner of Dietrich.¹¹ As theorists Anton Raphaël Mengs (1728-1779) and the classicist Adam Friedrich Oeser (1717-1799) were still under the spell of the Rembrandt veneration [24-26],¹² although there are no traces to be found in their paintings of a liveliness and a chiaroscuro in the manner of Rembrandt.¹³

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Carl Friedrich Holtzmann after Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich
Aphrodite as shepherdess, c. 1790
Dresden, art dealer Galerie Himmel

Benjamin Calau (1724-1785) and Ernst Gottlob (1744-1792), who are working in Leipzig, make use of the old masters in a different way. Calau painted portraits in the smooth Rembrandt manner of Gerard Dou and Balthasar Denner [27-28],¹⁴ and Gottlob contented himself with copies after Jan Steen, Johann Georg Trautmann [29-31] and the so-called Rembrandt drawings of the Winkler collection [32].¹⁵