Johann Christian Reinhart (24 January 1761 – 9 June 1847) was a German painter and engraver. He was one of the founders, along with Joseph Anton Koch

Joseph Anton Koch

Joseph Anton Koch was an Austrian painter of the German Romantic movement.-Biography:The Tyrolese painter was born in Elbigenalp. He started life tending cattle. Through the recommendation of Bishop Umgelder , he received academic training in the Karlsschule Stuttgart, a strict military academy...

, of German romantic classical landscape painting.

Biography

Reinhart was born in Hof, Bavaria, and attended the gymnasium

Gymnasium (school)

A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...

 in Hof where he was encouraged to draw by one of his teachers. His artistic career was divided between his early years in Germany and a career as a professional artist in Italy.

Early years in Germany

Following in his father's footsteps, Johann Christian started to study theology but turned more and more to art. He studied under Adam Friedrich Oeser

Adam Friedrich Oeser

Adam Friedrich Oeser was a German etcher, painter and sculptor.- Biography :Oeser worked and studied in Pressburg and Vienna at the Vienna Academy...

 in Leipzig. In 1783 he moved to Dresden where he furthered his studies under Johann Christian Klengel who taught him chiefly after the Dutch masters. On the death of his mother in 1784, he spent a short time in Hof before returning to Dresden. He struck up a friendship with Friedrich Schiller

Friedrich Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...

 in 1785.

Professional artist in Italy

In 1789, supported by the hereditary Prince of Coburg-Gotha, he got a grant from the Margrave of Ansbach-Bayreuth, and, aged 28, he left Dresden and moved to Rome. The grant continued until 1791/92 when the Margravate of Ansbach-Bayreuth became part of Prussia. Reinhart came under the influence of the classicist German painters Asmus Jacob Carstens

Asmus Jacob Carstens

Asmus Jacob Carstens was a Danish-German painter.-Biography:He was born in Sanct Jürgen near Schleswig to a miller. He had a youthful passion for painting, but was placed in a mercantile house...

 and Koch and became a conspicuous exponent of the historic landscape. He devoted himself more particularly to landscape painting and to aquatint engraving. His paintings, drawings and etchings, of which he made many prints, brought him artistic recognition and financial success and he was eventually able to support a family. In 1801, he married an Italian Anna Caffo and together they had three children.

In 1829 he was asked by the future King Ludwig I of Bavaria to paint the view of Rome to the north, the south, the east and the west of the royal villa, high up on the Pincio. The paintings that resulted measure roughly 67 by 106 inches apiece and show a remarkable steadiness of hand and eye. These works are now housed in the Neue Pinakothek.

Assessment

Reinhart's originality lay not so much in radical inventions but rather in new combinations of known styles, themes, and patterns. By skillfully merging these with a noble theme, Reinhart revitalised the heroic landscape.

He developed a new, more sensitive approach to landscape. Even though this emotional tendency contains element of the early romantic, Reinhart's way of painting is still immersed in the classical and is meticulous and detailed.

Works

His best work is represented by the “Eight Historic Landscapes” (1825), in the Palazzo Massimi, Rome, and “Four Views from Villa Malta,” in tempera, painted for King Ludwig I of Bavaria. The New Pinakothek in Munich contains “Four Views Near Rome” (two dated 1836, 1846), the Leipzig Museum a “Wood on Seashore in a Storm” (1824) and “Landscape with Psyche” (1829), the Städel Institute, Frankfurt, a landscape with “Cain and Abel,” and the Cologne Museum a “View from Tivoli.” To a collection of 72 etchings of prospects in Italy, published conjointly with Dies and Mechan under the title Malerisch radirte Prospecte aus Italien (1792–98) Reinhart contributed 24 plates. Besides these he etched many other Italian landscapes, and 38 animal studies, in all 170 plates.

External links

• Works by Johann Christian Reinhart at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa