Carl Anton Joseph Rottmann (11 January 1797, in Handschuhsheim (today a part of

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; ; ) is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fifth-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with a population of about 163,000, of which roughly a quarter consists of studen ...

) – 7 July 1850, in

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

) was a German landscape painter and the most famous member of the Rottmann family of painters. Rottmann belonged to the circle of artists around King

Ludwig I of Bavaria Ludwig I or Louis I (; 25 August 1786 – 29 February 1868) was King of Bavaria from 1825 until the German revolutions of 1848–49, 1848 revolutions in the German states. When he was crown prince, he was involved in the Napoleonic Wars. As ki ...

, who commissioned large

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...

paintings exclusively from him. He is best known for mythical and heroising landscapes. The landscape painter belonged to his school.

Biography

Rottmann was born in Handschuhsheim (

) on 11 January 1797. There he received his first drawing lessons from his father, , who taught drawing at the university in Heidelberg. He formed himself chiefly through the study of nature and of great masterworks. In his first artistic period, he painted atmospheric phenomena. After gaining prominence with ''Heidelberg at Sunset'' (a water color), and ''Castle Eltz'', he settled in Munich in 1822 and devoted himself to Bavarian scenery. Here his second period began, and in 1824 he married Friedericke, the daughter of his uncle, Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell, who served as an attendant at court. Through this connection, he made the acquaintance of King

, who in 1826/27 sponsored his travels in Italy in order to widen his repertoire, which up to that point consisted solely of domestic, German, landscapes. In Italy, Rottmann made sketches for the 28 Italian landscapes in

fresco Fresco ( or frescoes) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting become ...

which he was commissioned to paint in the arcades of the Hofgarten at Munich. The cycle, completed in 1833, gave visual expression to Ludwig's alliance with Italy, and raised the genre of landscape painting to the height of history painting, the preferred mode of the King's other great commissions for monumental painting. The frescos unfortunately deteriorated under climatic influences. The cartoons for them are in the Darmstadt Gallery. In 1834 Rottmann traveled to

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

to prepare for a commission from Ludwig for a second cycle; one might mark here the beginning of his third period. At first also intended for the Hofgarten arcade, the 23 great landscapes were eventually installed in the newly built

Neue Pinakothek The Neue Pinakothek (, ''New Pinacotheca'') is an art museum in Munich, Germany. Its focus is European Art of the 18th and 19th centuries, and it is one of the most important museums of art of the nineteenth century in the world. Together with t ...

where they were given their own hall. Of his easel pictures, ''Ammer Lake'' and ''Marathon'' are in the National Gallery, Berlin; ''The Acropolis of Sikyon'' and ''Corfu'' in the Pinakothek, Munich; others in the Schack Gallery, Munich, and in Karlsruhe; and seven in the Leipzig Museum. Carl Rottmann died on 7 July 1850 in Munich, aged 53 of undisclosed causes. He is buried in the Alter Südfriedhof in Munich.

Works

* Frescoes with heroising landscapes in the arcade of the Munich Hofgarten (1830–1833) (today in the Munich Residenz Museum). * 23 Greek landscapes (1838–1850, today in the Neue Pinakothek, although a number were substantially damaged during World War II) in the ancient technique of encaustic.

Notes

References

* This work in turn cites: ** Pecht, ''Deutsche Künstler'', ii. (Nördlingen, 1879) ** Regnet, in Dohme, ''Kunst und Künstler'', iv. (Leipzig, 1885) *

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 Carl Rottmann (no. 69) {{DEFAULTSORT:Rottmann, Carl 1797 births 1850 deaths 19th-century German painters German male painters German landscape painters Artists from Heidelberg Painters from Baden-Württemberg Painters from Munich Burials at the Alter Südfriedhof 19th-century German male artists Artists from the Kingdom of Bavaria