RKD STUDIES

A curious representative of the romantic Holland-mania is George Heinrich Hergenröder (1736- 1799), who was active in Offenbach and Frankfurt. His spelunks and caves in the style of Abraham van Cuylenborch, Rombout van Troyen and such-like masters must have been well known in their time [1-4]. Valley landscapes from the vicinity of Frankfurt are modelled on the pattern of Christian. Georg Schütz, which in no way means that they were modern pictures.¹

The landscapes of Christian Georg Schütz I (1708-1791)² follow a well-known and proven model to wit: they are direct continuations of Herman Saftleven’s Rhine landscapes [5-7] (ill. 92). ‘Schütz, who in the way of Saftleven, painstakingly revised the Rhine areas ’, Goethe remarked, much to the point. From Hüsgen we learn, that Schütz got to know and admire the paintings by Saftleven in the cabinet of Heinrich Jakob Baron von Häckel (c. 1682-1760).³

Von Gwinner was of the opinion that his works, though not so fine, surpass their models ‘by a greater freedom, force and warmth of the brush’; one should not form too negative a view of him based on the many works falsely attributed to the artist. We can easily admit that the ‘real’ Schütz paintings are very pretty representations of the Rhine area, and that he enriched the compositions of Saftleven’s models with a certain admixture of German romanticism. Schütz also painted landscapes with ruins in the manner of Frederik de Moucheron and his followers [8-9]; the night effects of Aert van der Neer are also echoed [10]. The Goethe Museum in Frankfurt retains a view of this city by him. The landscape itself with a forest lake in the foreground could have been lifted without alteration from a Ruisdael painting [11].

5
Christian Georg Schütz (I)
River landscape at morning light
Frankfurt am Main, Städel Museum, inv./cat.nr. 596

His eldest son, Franz Schütz (1751-1781), who seems to have painted very little, continued his father’s painting in the Saftleven and Both-Moucheron style [12-13], at least until 1777, in which year the patron from Basel, Johann Rudolf Burckhardt (1750-1813) brought him over to Switzerland to have him work in the Alps and Upper Italy. The second son, Johann Georg Schütz (1755-1813) pursued another direction; he occupied himself with the works by Rubens in Düsseldorf and during a stay in Rome he studied classical art [14]. Finally we have to mention Christian Georg Schütz II (‘the cousin’, 1758-1823), who imitated the Italianate Dutch masters and furthermore painted topographically correct Rhine views [15], which do not strictly adhere to the Saftleven parameters any longer.

To the followers of the Schütz family, Von Gwinner counts Johann Jacob Moevius (1767-1836) [21], Franz Hochecker (1730-1782)⁴ [16-17] and Peter Kessler (1771-1845), while Karl Franz Kraul (1754-1796) is said to have studied and copied especially the landscapes of Jacob van Ruisdael [18-20].

To this trend in Frankfurt landscape painting, more names could be added, especially when we might also include somewhat Flemish oriented masters like Johann Andreas Herrlein (1723-1796) [22-24].

Let us call to mind one more time, that the younger members of the Roos family, like Johann Melchior Roos and Joseph Roos, kept up the tradition of ‘their house’ in Frankfurt and therefore perpetuated the Dutch-romantic cattle piece until well into the 18th century. But they were by no means the only ones. Johann Nikolaus Lentzner (1711-1749), whose wallpaper factory passed, by inheritance, to the above-mentioned Nothnagel, and Friedrich Wilhelm Ducrée (1719-1760) [25-26] are nowadays little known painters who worked in the style of Johann Heinrich Roos and Nicolaes Berchem.⁵

22
Johann Andreas Herrlein
Hilly forest with ramblers in evening shine

Von Gwinner especially praised the landscapes of Friedrich Wilhelm Hirt (1721-1772) [27-28], who also was in the service of Duke Anton Ulrich of Sachsen-Meiningen (1687-1763).⁶ Johann Gottlieb Prestel (1739-1808) reproduced some of his drawings, which confirm Von Gwinner’s judgement [29-30].⁷ The animals in particular are captured very well and seen ‘in a Dutch way’, so that we may confidently assume that Schütz and others frequently availed themselves of his talents as a painter of staffage [31]. The engravers from Frankfurt like the Prestels, Jeremias Paul Schweyer (1754-1813) and Johann Kaspar Friedrich Neubauer (1798-1851) had a considerable share in the dispersal of Dutch art.

To let the representatives of another direction have their say, let us consider Johann Georg Pforr (1745-1798), who seems to have had the nickname ‘the German Wouwerman’ [32-34].⁸ He spent his first years in Kassel, where he became friends with Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein. Von Gwinner contested the idea that we count Pforr among the imitators of Wouwerman, as ‘his only example was nature’.⁹ In a way we have to agree with him. Though one clearly notices the reminiscences of Aelbert Cuyp and Phlips Wouwerman in his paintings of horses, he succeeded in achieving a picture with a personal view.¹⁰ Johann Friedrich Morgenstern (1777-1844), a pupil of Klengel, painted panorama landscapes, which do not transcend the topographical representation [35].

27
Friedrich Wilhelm Hirt
Arcadian landscape with shepherds and cattle at the bank of a river, dated 1767
The Hague, art dealer Hoogsteder & Hoogsteder

28
Friedrich Wilhelm Hirt
Forest landscape with travellers, dated 1750
Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, inv./cat.nr. 1741