Johann Wilhelm Preyer (July 19, 1803 – February 20, 1889) was a German

still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...

painter of the

Düsseldorf school of painting The Düsseldorf school of painting is a term referring to a group of painters who taught or studied at the Düsseldorf Academy (now the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf or Düsseldorf State Art Academy) during the 1830s and 1840s, when the A ...

Early life and education

Born in Rheydt, Germany, Johann Wilhelm Preyer grew up in the old town area of Eschweiler. His father was a merchant. He had a sister, Louise, and a brother Gustav, who was also a painter. Both he and his brother were very small-statured, and in his youth Preyer occasionally took advantage of this by dressing as a child to play pranks. Beginning in 1882, Preyer studied art at the

Düsseldorf Art Academy Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in th ...

with Peter von Cornelius and became a master student of Wilhelm von Schadow. He continued his studies in the Netherlands, Munich, northern Italy, and Switzerland between 1835 and 1843. He returned to Düsseldorf in 1844.

Art career

Preyer painted mainly still lifes of flowers and fruit, and is today considered one of best artists in the genre in the 19th century, known for his minute and careful detail work. He is also one of the earliest of the group now known as the

. Much of his work is in the United States, although there are representative works in the Berlin National Gallery and elsewhere in Germany. Preyer was one of the founding members of the Association of Düsseldorf Artists (1844). He occasionally took private students, one of whom was the American still life painter

Helen Searle Helen Searle (1834 - November 1884), also known under her married name of Helen Searle Pattison, was an American painter of still lifes who was stylistically associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting. Art career Searle was the daughte ...

Family

Around 1844, Preyer married Emilie Lachenwitz, the sister of painter Siegmund Lachenwitz. They had a daughter, also named Emilie, and a son, Paul, both of whom also became painters.

Honors

A road in Eschweiler, where Preyer grew up, was renamed Preyerstrasse in his honor in 1974. There is also a Preyerstrasse in his native town of Rheydt

References

Other sources

*Eschenbrücher, Ralf. ''Der Stillebenmaler Johann Wilhelm Preyer (1803–1889)''. Stadtarchiv, 1992. ISSN 0175-4793. *Weiss, Siegfried, and Hans Paffrath (eds.). ''Preyer: Johann Wilhelm 1803-1889 und Emilie 1849-1930: Mit den Werkverzeichnissen der Gemalde von Johann Wilm und Emilie Preyer''. Cologne: Wienand Verlag, 2009. . {{DEFAULTSORT:Preyer, Johann Wilhelm 1803 births 1889 deaths 19th-century German painters 19th-century German male artists German male painters Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alumni German still life painters Artists from North Rhine-Westphalia People from Eschweiler Düsseldorf school of painting