RKD STUDIES

The artistic life at the court of neighboring Braunschweig was, just like in Kassel, in close contact with the princely collection in Salzdahlum. Artists from Kassel came to Brunswick and vice versa. The portraitist Magnus Quitter, who came from a family in Kassel, first found employment as court painter and gallery director of Salzdahlum, before he succeeded his brother as mining inspector (!) in Kassel. Dietrich Ernst Andreae (1680-1730), whom we have met already, was active as a portrait painter in Kassel for two years (1717-1719). As a pupil of Jan van Bentum, he had absorbed some Dutch influence. His self-portrait in Braunschweig may serve as an example of this: it unites Rembrandt and the Haarlem tradition [1].¹

Johann Georg Ziesenis (Copenhagen 1716-Hannover 1776) was in Holland for a long time as a portraitist, but Dutch 17th-century art had no impact on his work [2-3].²

1
Dietrich Ernst Andreae
Self-portrait of Dietrich Ernst Andreae (c. 1680-1734) in green dressing gown, between 1717-1719
Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, inv./cat.nr. 636

This could rather be said of Johann Christian Samuel Gohl (1743-1829), who was descended from a Dutch family, in particular of his Self-Portrait with Shadowed Face (Braunschweig) [4].³ In self-portraits we frequently notice the impact of Rembrandt. Philipp Wilhelm Oeding (1697-1781), a pupil of Johann Kupezky, took over the smooth surface treatment and warm light, at that time the epitome of Rembrandt’s art [5].

Ludwig Wilhelm Busch (1703-1772), a pupil of Andreae and for a while head of the Gallery at Salzdahlum, painted in the style of Rembrandt [6-7], Gerard Dou [8] and Adriaen van Ostade. His paintings are very rare nowadays, but some etchings after Rembrandt support this oral tradition [9-12].⁴

6
Ludwig Wilhelm Busch
The Liberation of Peter by an angel from prison (Acts 12:6-10)
Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum

The recollection of Dutch examples revived more clearly and stronger in animal and landscape painters. August Querfurth (1696-1761) was an excellent painter of horses and battles which are related to Philips Wouwerman [13-19],⁵ Jan Martszen de Jonge and Jan Huchtenburg [20-24].⁶ He was the son of the Braunschweig court-painter Tobias Querfurth, who married the daughter of painter Joachim Luhn, who is well known to us. We will encounter August Querfurt again when we come to speak about Vienna, where he settled in 1743.⁷

13
August Querfurt after Philips Wouwerman
Barn interior with a hunting company departing
Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, inv./cat.nr. 609

The two Weitsches, father and son, are curious representatives of the Dutch spirit in Germany. Johann Friedrich Weitsch (1723-1803),⁸ a.k.a. Pascha-Weitsch, copied the landscape paintings in the Gallery of Salzdahlum. More in line with contemporary taste he followed Frederik de Moucheron rather than Jacob Ruisdael [25-26]. In the beginning he only painted small paintings in the style of these masters and animal paintings after Paulus Potter and in the manner of Adriaen van de Velde and Johann Heinrich Roos, but through the years he also painted more impressive works. The strange thing is however, that he saw nature with Dutch eyes. When he paints a subject from the erstwhile forest at Querum near Braunschweig [27-28], one believes to see a composition in the manner of Jacob van Ruisdael, to such an extent had he familiarized himself with the technique and the conception of Dutch art. From 1788 he was also the head of the gallery of Salzdahlum. Again, one gets the impression that the Dutch landscapists served as a justification for 18th-century artists who wanted to paint a realistic-romantic landscape during a time in which elegant, French portraiture or conversation pieces were the only presentable thing.

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and August Querfurt Martin van Meytens (II)
Portrait of Charles August Prince of Waldeck-Pyrmont (1704-1763), in 1753
Bad Arolsen, private collection Schloss Arolsen

His son Friedrich Georg Weitsch (1758-1828)⁹ copied his father, Paulus Potter and Philip Peter Rosa da Tivoli. In 1776 he was a pupil of Johann Wilhelm Tischbein I in Kassel and will also have enhanced his schooling through the examples of the Dutch masters in the gallery there. His landscapes are even more romantic than those of Ruisdael. However, he was mainly a portraitist and history painter. In this area one could also follow the Dutch manner. This is demonstrated in the portrait of his father with candlelight (Braunschweig) in the manner of Gerard van Honthorst and Gerard Dou [29] and the fresh portrait of Aloys Ludwig Hirt (1759-1837) before a bright wall (collection Fürstenberg in Donaueschingen, from the year 1785) [30], which seeks to emulate Jan de Bray and Pieter de Grebber from Haarlem.¹⁰

Weitsch sr. was also in contact with Johann Georg Wille in Paris, who sent his pupil J.L.L.C . Zentner (active c. 1783-1794) to Braunschweig to make prints after Weitsch’s paintings. Weitsch jr. provided paintings by his father and old Dutch masters to the collector Bernhard Hausmann (1784-1873) in Hannover.¹¹ His knowledge of old painting may explain why he was sent to Paris in 1815, to reclaim the robbed art works.

29
Friedrich Georg Weitsch
Portrait of Pascha Johann Friedrich Weitsch (1723-1803), the artist's father, dated 1797
Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, inv./cat.nr. GG 634

In the case of the landscapist and genre painter Johann Heinrich Ramberg (1763-1840) from Hannover, one doesn’t suspect imitation of Dutch masters. It is true-blue bourgeois German art. Why then, out of the blue, he painted a soldier’s scene after Pieter de Bloot, remains an open question [31].¹²