Rediscovered: Painter Kirner: A World of Hundred Sketches

Two old people are sitting across the corner on a bench that leads around a simple tiled stove. The woman, in the foreground and somewhat in the light, is sewing, the man is wearing an apron but is putting his fists on the bench and looking skeptically out of the picture. While his wife agrees to be painted, his face asks what it's all about and whether someone isn't wasting oil paint and canvas. He could ask him that, after all the painter Johann Baptist Kirner is his son, the youngest of seven children of the shoemaker from Furtwangen in the Black Forest and his wife. His brother Lukas, who was twelve years his senior, had already become a painter, and his education at the Royal Higher Art School in Augsburg had actually overtaxed the circumstances of the large shoemaker.When Johann Baptist, born in 1806, also wanted to study painting in Augsburg in 1822 after an apprenticeship as a carriage painter and varnisher, he wrote in a request to the Grand Duke of Baden, the parents said no at first, "out of great concern, they can mine from their own means do not deny education. But they gave in to my wish and supported me for two years" in Augsburg and another year in Munich: "I've exhausted my parents because of this".But they gave in to my wish and supported me for two years" in Augsburg and another year in Munich: "I've exhausted my parents because of this".But they gave in to my wish and supported me for two years" in Augsburg and another year in Munich: "I've exhausted my parents because of this".

Tilman Spreckelsen

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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The picture that shows them in their living room proves that the parents actually supported a great talent in their youngest child.

The date of its creation, 1864, is spooky. At that time, the parents had been dead for almost thirty years, and the brother Lukas was no longer alive either.

The father's skeptical look meets the painting son across the border of the grave.

When Kirner was appointed court painter to the Baden court in 1839, after long, unsettled years, his parents did not live to see him.

Two exhibitions in the Augustinian Museum in Freiburg are being staged to give the painter, who had been completely forgotten after his death in 1866, a stage again.

The fact that the result is so generous is not only due to the two corresponding locations, which, in addition to the completed works, also present numerous drafts, copies and adaptations, but first and foremost to the acquisition of almost 700 sheets with preliminary stages that offer a unique view of the artist's working method enable.

Extensive preliminary studies for a single picture

This is done with the example of the painting “A hunting party in the grand ducal wildlife park near Karlsruhe, 1842”. In keeping with the title, the large-format picture shows a group of men gathered around a boar, a fox and a few hares that have just been killed. But the exhibition shows more: the picture is flanked on both sides by a large number of drafts in different stages of perfection, the individual participants in the company as well as drafts for the composition of the picture, drawn, colored, in pencil and oil paints, the most magnificent of all the Boar lying flat, its carefully painted coat beautifully radiating both life barely past and beginning decay.

Kirner was friends with Franz Xaver Winterhalter, the successful painter of royalty, to whom a beautiful exhibition was dedicated in the same place six years ago. Both painters lived together in Italy for a while, and you can see from his pictures how much Kirner's development benefited from the experience south of the Alps. Sketches from this period have also survived, the beauty of which can often stand alongside the finished pictures, because Kirner – for example in an enchanting draft for “Young Italian Woman with Turtle” from 1834 – all cuteness gives way to the dissecting, precision-striving gaze . The sketches for the picture "Shepherd and Street Boy" from 1844 are considerably more radical when it comes to the pain of the boy who has just been injured,and Kirner shows much more courage to be ugly in the studies than in the finished works. Most impressive, however, is the area in the "House of the Graphic Collection in the Augustinian Museum", the second location of the exhibition, in which the various drafts for the picture of an arriving train painted in 1858 are collected. Kirner, one believes, can do everything, tries everything, creates a completely independent, excitingly dynamic pen drawing of the subject as well as a perfectly calm oil sketch. And just as it is long overdue to acknowledge Kirner's modernity in his designs, a look at his work also shows how the expectations of the public can cause a painter to take a step back aesthetically when it comes to the finished picture.Most impressive, however, is the area in the "House of the Graphic Collection in the Augustinian Museum", the second location of the exhibition, in which the various drafts for the picture of an arriving train painted in 1858 are collected. Kirner, one believes, can do everything, tries everything, creates a completely independent, excitingly dynamic pen drawing of the subject as well as a perfectly calm oil sketch. And just as it is long overdue to acknowledge Kirner's modernity in his designs, a look at his work also shows how the expectations of the public can cause a painter to take a step back aesthetically when it comes to the finished picture.Most impressive, however, is the area in the "House of the Graphic Collection in the Augustinian Museum", the second location of the exhibition, in which the various drafts for the picture of an arriving train painted in 1858 are collected. Kirner, one believes, can do everything, tries everything, creates a completely independent, excitingly dynamic pen drawing of the subject as well as a perfectly calm oil sketch. And just as it is long overdue to acknowledge Kirner's modernity in his designs, a look at his work also shows how the expectations of the public can cause a painter to take a step back aesthetically when it comes to the finished picture.in which the various drafts for the 1858 painted picture of an arriving train are collected. Kirner, one believes, can do everything, tries everything, creates a completely independent, excitingly dynamic pen drawing of the subject as well as a perfectly calm oil sketch. And just as it is long overdue to acknowledge Kirner's modernity in his designs, a look at his work also shows how the expectations of the public can cause a painter to take a step back aesthetically when it comes to the finished picture.in which the various drafts for the 1858 painted picture of an arriving train are collected. Kirner, one believes, can do everything, tries everything, creates a completely independent, excitingly dynamic pen drawing of the subject as well as a perfectly calm oil sketch. And just as it is long overdue to acknowledge Kirner's modernity in his designs, a look at his work also shows how the expectations of the public can cause a painter to take a step back aesthetically when it comes to the finished picture.Acknowledging Kirner's modernity in his designs, a look at his work also shows how the expectations of the public can cause a painter to take a step back aesthetically when it comes to the finished picture.Acknowledging Kirner's modernity in his designs, a look at his work also shows how the expectations of the public can cause a painter to take a step back aesthetically when it comes to the finished picture.

Johann Baptist Kirner.

narrated life.

Augustinian Museum Freiburg;

until March 27th.

House of the Graphic Collection;

until 30 January.

The joint catalog costs 34.95 euros.