Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow

Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow
Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow by Carl Christian Vogel von Vogelstein (1821) Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow by Carl Christian Vogel von Vogelstein (1821)
Born	7 September 1789 Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia
Died	19 March 1862 (aged 72) Düsseldorf, Kingdom of Prussia, German Confederation
Known for	painting

Friedrich Wilhelm von Schadow (7 September 1789 – 19 March 1862) was a German Romantic painter.

Biography

He was born in Berlin, the second son of the sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow, who gave him his first lessons in drawing. He then turned to painting, and was instructed by Weitsch.

In 1806-7 Schadow served as a soldier. In 1810 he traveled with his elder brother Rudolph to Rome where he became one of the leading painters of the Nazarene movement. Following the example of Johann Friedrich Overbeck and others, Schadow, originally a Lutheran, joined the Roman Catholic Church, and held that an artist must believe and live out the truths he essays to paint. The sequel showed that Schadow was qualified to shine more as a teacher and mentor than as a painter. As an author, he is best known for his lecture, Ueber den Einfluss des Christentums auf die bildende Kunst (About The Influence of Christianity On The Visual Arts) (Düsseldorf, 1843), and the biographical sketches, Der moderne Vasari (Berlin, 1854).

In Rome, Schadow was given one of his first major commissions when the Prussian Consul-General, General Jakob Salomon Bartholdy, befriended the young painter, and asked him and three young compatriots (Peter von Cornelius, Johann Friedrich Overbeck and Philipp Veit) to decorate in fresco a room in his house on the Pincian Hill. The overall theme selected was the story of Joseph and his brethren, and two scenes, the Bloody Coat and Joseph in Prison, were conferred on Schadow. In 1819, Schadow was appointed professor in the prestigious Berlin Academy of the Arts, and his ability and thorough training gained many devoted disciples.

It was during this period that Schadow developed his paintings for churches. In 1826 he was made director of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf which he reoriented towards the production of Christian art, though he began a major dispute with one of its professors, Heinrich Christoph Kolbe, ending in the latter leaving the Academy in 1832. In 1837, Schadow selected, at request, those of his students best qualified to decorate the chapel of St Apollinaris on the Rhine with frescoes. When finished, they were acclaimed as the fullest and purest manifestation of the spiritual side of the Düsseldorf school. One of his famous students, Heinrich Mucke, carried on the liturgical art with emphasis both in painting and frescoes. The painting of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, considered one of his masterworks, was commissioned in 1842. Now in the Städel Museum, this large and important picture, while carefully considered and rendered, lacks the power of some of his other works.

Schadow's fame rests less on his own artistic creations than on the school he formed. In Düsseldorf a reaction set in against the spiritual and sacerdotal style he had established and, in 1859, the party of naturalism, after a severe struggle, drove Director Schadow from his chair. He died at Düsseldorf in 1862, and a monument was erected in the square which bears his name at a jubilee held to commemorate his directorate.

The Düsseldorf School that Schadow directed became internationally renowned, attracting such American painters as George Caleb Bingham, Eastman Johnson, Worthington Whittredge, Richard Caton Woodville, William Stanley Haseltine, James M. Hart, and William Morris Hunt and producing the German emigre Emmanuel Leutze.

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Painter, b. at Berlin, 1789; d. at Düsseldorf, 1862. He was the son of the sculptor, Johann Gottfried Schadow of Berlin. The year after Cornelius left Düsseldorf, Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow took his place as director of the Düsseldorf Academy of Painting. He had been with Cornelius at Rome among those who gathered around Overbeck, and while at Rome had become a Catholic. In 1819 he was appointed professor in the Academy of Berlin. He was a capable and popular teacher, and a large number of pupils followed him to Düsseldorf, where he went in 1826 and where he had great success. He was more in harmony with the artists of the Rhine than his predecessors at Düsseldorf had been. He laid stress on realism, colour, and a sober moderation, all based upon a through technic, whereby his school gained many friends at home and abroad. After the founding of the Art Association in 1829 the graceful, animated pictures of the Düsseldorf school, which appealed either to Christian devotion or everyday taste, and were greatly admired by the friends of the school, found acceptance in all directions. Schadow did not at first take up the ideal fresco, as did the masters at Munich, but devoted himself to oil-painting; nor did he attempt great historical subjects, but the more modest forms of art. In addition to devotional pictures, Schadow and his pupils gave their attention to portraits, landscape, and genre pictures. His principles differed from those of Cornelius, without his advancing, however, to those maintained today. In his opinion, the value of a picture rested upon form, colour, and poetic conception. The pupil must first learn to draw, especially after plaster copies of antiques, and not until after this was he to learn to draw from nature, and to make studies of drapery and colour after old paintings. After the pupil had been thoroughly grounded he was not to neglect drawing from nature or the model, at first under the strict supervision of a teacher, and then later to work independently.

Schadow held fast to the principle of the Romantic school, that more weight should be placed upon the conception than the form. He had much skill in arousing interest both is his pupils and the general public. For his own work he chose religious painting and some of his paintings of this kind fully meet the aims of art and of edification; among these are "Ascension of the Virgin", the "Wise and Foolish Virgins". Other good pictures are "Christ on the Mount of Olives", "Christ with the Disciples at Emmaus", the "Pietà", the "Queen of Heaven", the "Blessed Virgin as Intercessor". Among his best creations also are: the "Four Evangelists", and "Paradise", "Purgatory", and "Hell". During his lifetime his portraits, for example those of brother artists, were greatly admired. It should, however, be remarked that Schadow, notwithstanding his study from nature, never fully overcame the weakness of the Romantic school, and although he was three times in Italy, where he studied the masters, he exhibited less original force than a graceful talent. Regularity and logic are natural to him rather than depth of content in the drawing and colour. Immermann, at a later date, when he had abandoned Romanticism, judged harshly the characteristics impressed by Schadow upon the Düsseldorf school. These criticisms, however, generally overlook the fact that Schadow's religious feeling, which remained as an inheritance to the Düsseldorf school, maintained the claims of art while meeting the justified demands of life and popular taste, and, finally, that the self-contained emphasis placed upon realism deserved the undoubted success it obtained. It was natural than in the course of time other elements also made themselves felt in the school, but these were only in part the signs of an advance. Schadow was also an author, although not one of preeminent importance. He laid down his opinions concerning training in art in several treatises and in a novel called "Der moderne Vasari" (Berlin, 1854). He resigned his position of the academy after thirty-three years' service. His pupils were distinguished by the honourable positions they received. His portrait by Bendemann is in the Düsseldorf Academy.

HUBNER, Schadow und seine Schuler (Bonn, 1869); RACZYNSKI, Histoire de l'art moderne en Allemagne (Paris, 1836); Ger. tr. HAGER (Berlin, 1836); WIEGEMANN, Die konigliche Akademie in Düsseldorf und die Düsseldorfer Schule (Düsseldorf, 1856).

Further reading

• Hübner, Schadow und seine Schule (Bonn, 1869)

External links

• German masters of the nineteenth century: paintings and drawings from the Federal Republic of Germany, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow (no. 74-75)