RKD STUDIES

In Kassel the Dutch pictorial tradition - from Philip van Dijk, mainly in portraiture - continued into the 18th century. We already mentioned the various members of the Quitter family. Johann Georg Freesen (1701-1775), a pupil of Jan van Nickelen in Kassel and of Philip van Dijk in The Hague, held, like the Quitters before him, the office of gallery director under both the landgraves Wilhelm VIII (1682-1760) and Friedrich II (1720-1785). Before he became a court painter in 1744, he was sent for his education to Holland, France and Italy. He copied mainly Netherlandish paintings by Dou, Rembrandt, Anthony van Dyck etc. in the Kassel gallery, but only a copy after Van Dyck survived [1-2].¹

Johann Heinrich Tischbein I (1722-1789)² was a pupil of Johann Georg Freese, but then went to Paris to Carle van Loo, where he remained till 1748 and only returned home to Kassel after a journey to Rome and a stay in Venice. As professor and director of the academy he had a great influence. A Dutch perception can only be detected ‘indirectly’ in his works: his portraits are not as ‘French’ as those of his contemporaries. Most of all, the careful precision of his painting is based on his studying Dutch paintings. Tischbein himself wrote that he owed more to Van Loo and the Dutch masters than to Giambattista Piazzetta.³ Carle van Loo was Dutch by descent, but as a painter he belongs to the French art history. Johann Heinrich Tischbein I was often in Hamburg. He could study Dutch paintings there as well as in the Kassel Gallery. Apart from portraits, he painted some Oriental tronies in the manner of Rembrandt (by way of Tiepolo?) [3], as very often the types on his genre scenes and history paintings seem to derive from Rembrandt’s etchings anyway [4-5].⁴ A Girl in a Window in imitation of Gerard Dou [6] exists next to a series of peasant paintings in the taste of David Teniers II (Kassel) [7-10], although these historicizing pieces do not belong to his best work.⁵

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Johann Heinrich Tischbein (I)
Head of a man with turban, dated 1772
Whereabouts unknown

From 1762 Johann Heinrich Tischbein I was a teacher of drawing and painting at the Collegium Carolinum. From this institution emerged an independent Academy, of which he became the first director in 1775. It had its own building next to the Gallery. His nephew Johann Heinrich Tischbein II (1742-1808), who by the way also taught at the Academy of Drawing, was nominated as the director of the Gallery of Paintings after Freese’s death. The Gallery was open for students and many works that were shown at the yearly exhibitions, were simply copies after the paintings there.⁶

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Johann Heinrich Tischbein (I) or Johann Friedrich August Tischbein
A young woman in a window
Kassel, Stadtschloss Kassel

The younger Tischbein schooled himself in the Dutch masters (a series of etchings of 1788 after Berchem) [11], as did Jacob Tischbein (1725-1791), a brother of Johann Heinrich Tischbein I. Philips Wouwerman and Nicolaes Berchem set the most popular examples.⁷ As so often, the Dutch masters were being used as teachers for the ‘good way of painting’. However, hardly any Dutch influence is left in the mature works by the same painters.

The most important painter from this so talented artistic family was Wilhelm Tischbein (1751-1829). After studying with his uncle Johann Heinrich I in Kassel and with his other uncle Jacob in Hamburg, he stayed in Holland in 1771-1773. We already cited a passage from his autobiography, which is full of references to the forming force of Dutch art.⁸

In the collection of paintings of Counselor of State Daniel Stenglin (1735-1801) in Hamburg he copied Wouwerman [12-13] and Berchem in 1766.⁹ The Rembrandt etchings, that he also copied, he had seen in the collection of Senator Duntzer. ‘I also etched some after my own invention in the manner of Rembrandt, so that some connoisseurs would get confused, after which indeed some sheets were later passed as originals by Rembrandt’ [in translation].¹⁰

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Johann Heinrich Tischbein (II) after Nicolaes Berchem
Landscape with horsemen and cattle at a ford, dated 1785
Kassel, Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel, inv./cat.nr. GS 29969

About the paintings by Aert van der Neer he said: ‘they had a great effect on my youthful, delicate mind and taught me the beauties of sun and moon in an even more intimate way…’ [in translation].¹¹ In this way he also copied ‘the excellent head with the helmet’ by Rembrandt in Kassel and other paintings by the master,¹² as well as night pieces by Godfried Schalcken and paintings by Rubens and Van Dyck. About his own works of this time he judges thus: ‘I studied portrait painting after Van Dyck, Rubens and Rembrandt and practiced myself also after Nature’ [in translation].¹³

Especially successful is his copy after Paulus Potter’s Learning to Walk, which was in Kassel at that time [14-15].¹⁴ On his Dutch trip he saw Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson by Dr. Nicolaes Tulp and The Night Watch and gave an excellent description of them, having a keen eye for Dutch art and Dutch life. If Tischbein’s paintings had been lost, and if one had to image his art on the basis of this information, one would think to have discovered a second Dietrich. Tischbein, however, had also been in Italy for twenty years, from 1779 till 1799, where, as he himself stated, he saw the Italian landscape through the eyes of Adam Elsheimer, Nicolaes Berchem, Jan Both and Cornelis Poelenburch.¹⁵ Here in Italy the famous portrait of Goethe in the Campagna originated, a classicistic work of art one would think free from Dutch influence [16]. But an in-depth study has shown us, that the pose of the reclining figure is derived from a shepherd boy by Berchem [17]!¹⁶ Tischbein settled later in Hamburg and ultimately in Eutin, and many works by his hand still are to be found in Hamburg and Oldenburg.

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Wilhelm Tischbein after Paulus Potter
Peasant family with cattle, c. 1771-1777
Dessau (Dessau-Roßlau), private collection Dr. Tischbein

15
Paulus Potter
Peasant family with cattle, dated 1646
Munich, Alte Pinakothek, inv./cat.nr. 565

His portraits, romantic landscapes and classicistic compositions are personal inventions and free from imitation of older art. We can only speak like Leber, about an occasional ‘shimmer of Rembrandt’s stormy character’, especially in the head studies, which are partly direct copies after Rembrandt [18-19].¹⁷ He sometimes used artificial lighting effects like the Rembrandt imitators from Frankfurt such as Johann Georg Trautmann. Also a painting of an interior (Hamburg 579) [20] has reminiscences of Dutch examples. Personal creations and copies after Dutch masters go side by side; even later in life he continued to make copies and imitations of Dutch works. He painted a still-life with birds in the manner of Melchior d’Hondecoeter and copied after Rembrandt [21-25],¹⁸ Philips Wouwerman, Matthias Scheits and others.¹⁹ Maybe the Dutch tradition would have found an even more vivid expression in his work, had it not been disturbed by an Italian sojourn. But that is an idle thought and moreover an unhistorical one, as the Italian journeys of this generation were not of an accidental nature but an expression of the new classical or classicistic attitude.

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Wilhelm Tischbein
Head of a man with a brown beard, c. 1814
Oldenburg (place, Lower Saxony), Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Oldenburg, inv./cat.nr. LMO 29.988

Let us end this contemplation of the ‘School of Kassel’ with the less important Johann August Nahl II (1752-1825) from Bern, a pupil of Christoph van Bemmel and Johann Heinrich Tischbein I. He also was in Italy, England and Holland, before he finally settled in Kassel. Only a few etchings after Rembrandt bear witness to his Dutch schooling; for the rest he is a classicistic landscape and history painter. A cousin and pupil of Johann Heinrich Tischbein I, Ludwig Philipp Strack (1761-1836) also started as an imitator of the old masters.²⁰ He copied especially Berchem [26-28].²¹ His paintings from 1793 however are already free, romantic creations, which can best be compared with Claude Lorrain [29-31].

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Wilhelm Tischbein after follower of Rembrandt or after Gerbrand van den Eeckhout
The angel in the house of Tobias, 1808 or later
London (England), British Museum, inv./cat.nr. 1851,0412.60

The ‘Tischbein’ case has already taught us, not to draw too far-reaching conclusions because of these copying activities. The Dutch paintings, especially Rembrandt’s works, formed painterly examples for young artists in the same way as the Italian and the French masters [32-33].²²