The Crocker Art Museum has one of the finest and earliest German
drawings collections in the United States. Featuring artists such
as Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner, Anton Raphael Mengs and Johann
Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, The Splendor of Germany examines the
major developments in German draughtsmanship over the course of the
eighteenth century. Published to coincide with the collection's
150th anniversary. In the 21st century, the collecting and study of
18th-century German drawings has become a major focus for American
museums. One of the finest collections of them, however, has been
in California for 150 years. The superb drawings at the Crocker Art
Museum, from a Baroque altarpiece design by Johann Georg Bergmuller
to a Neoclassical mythology by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein,
provide a panorama of German draughtsmen and draughtsmanship
throughout the century. Many of the drawings are remarkable for
their modernity. A self-portrait by Johann Gottlieb Prestel
bypasses convention to achieve a direct, unmediated likeness.
Well-placed slashes with brush and black ink define the features
below his peruke outlined in black chalk. Other drawings
encapsulate specific developments and styles, such as Johann
Wolfgang Baumgartner's Lazarus and the Rich Man, which shows the
florid dynamism of the Augsburg Rococo. A full range of
eighteenth-century German artists are represented here, from the
satirizing moralists Johann Elias Ridinger and Daniel Chodowiecki
to the Classicist and friend of the art theorist Johann Joachim
Winkelmann, Anton Raphael Mengs. Landscape artists are especially
well represented, such as the key figure Johann Georg Wille,
printmaker to the French king Louis XV, and generations of artists
he taught and influenced all the way to the early Romantic
landscapists. The exhibition and catalogue gather together a
variety of dynamic and sensitive portraits, charming scenes of
daily life, and often humorous moralizing subjects, as well as
narratives, both religious and mythological, from the late Baroque
to Neoclassicism. In the realm of landscape, the depth of the
collection allows the exhibition to trace schools and influences-in
addition to Wille's mentioned above-even in families such as that
of Prestel, whose wife and daughter were both landscapists. It also
allows it to demonstrate the great variety of works by single
artists such as Christoph Nathe, represented by four landscapes in
four different genres including a splendid scene near Goerlitz.
Some artists, in fact, work in several genres as in the case of
Johann Christian Klengel, whose works include the scene of a family
by candlelight, a farmstead landscape, and a sketchbook that he
carried through the countryside to record picturesque views. This
is a rare opportunity for the public and for drawings enthusiasts.
Two-thirds of the drawings in the exhibition have not been shown
before; most of the exceptions have not been seen since 1989.
Because of the drawings' 150-year history of limited exposure, the
state of preservation of the collection is exceptional, as is the
condition of the new acquisitions included in the exhibition.
General
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