Albert Christoph Dies (1755-1822)
A self taught artist in landscape painting and printmaking as well as an adept to unique italian scenery.
The artist as autodidact
The biography of the artist Albert Christoph Dies can only be written on basis of few known dates. Born in Hanover in 1755, the artist is always considered an autodidact who trained himself by copying respected landscape artists, especially Claude Lorrain (1600-1682) and the contemporary Jakob Philipp Hackert (1737-1807). However, his independently designed training in these drawings differed little from the teachings of other 18th century artists - with the exception that he lacked the guiding hand of a master. Carlo Schmid speaks at least of the proximity to an unknown painter in Hanover, who had apparently given this first instructions. It remains to be speculated whether this has helped him to develop his artistic activity more freely or whether, rather, it has tied him more strongly to the baroque and classicist models and distinguished him as a gifted copyist in style.
From 1775 on Dies stayed in Rome. After a hike through Germany and Switzerland, the artist decided to go to Italy and live in Rome for a few years and even found a family there. He hired himself to sell copies of Hackert's popular landscapes, which he offered at reasonable prices and which he could sell to less fortunate travellers. He has also coloured engravings for the great graphic manufacturers of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Louis Ducros and Giovanni Volpato in Rome. Even Johann Wolfgang von Goethe reports about this activity in his travel report Italian Journey, in which he praises the artist's skill in painting a drawing by the poet.
A short exposure to graphic art
A large commission was awarded to the artist when he was appointed in 1792 by Johann Christian Reinhart and the Nürnberg publisher Johann Friedrich Frauenholz to the project of the graphic series of the Mahlerisch radirten Prospecte von Italien. Of the 72 pages with landscapes and so far unnoticed sights and natural spectacles in the Campagna Romana, Dies, who like the two other artists had little experience in the art of printmaking, was to create 24 views. However, his work was strongly criticized by the publisher in a letter addressed to Reinhart from 1792. He threw him "[…]hasty treatment that spreads a certain unpleasant roughness over the whole, a negligently worked air and lack of posture, whereby the greatest charm of the landscape is lost [...](Carlo Schmid 1998, p. 168).
Schmid recognizes that the points of criticism can also be classified as subjective displeasure, which in this case cannot even be attributed to the artist's autodidactic training. Reinhart, the spokesman of the three artists in correspondence with the publisher, defended the views of Dies. However, even in Dies‘ attempts to comply with the requests of Frauenholz, who wanted to have the depictions provided with explanatory texts, a rejection can be recognized. The texts written by Dies - in all other cases without the knowledge of the two other artists, who deliberately wanted to dispense with explanatory descriptions - were displeasing to the publisher not least because they had apparently been written superficially and without taking into account the latest specialist literature. Nevertheless, Frauenholz also published some of Albert Christoph Dies‘ etchings independently from the Mahlerisch radirten Prospecte until the latter relinquished the technique of printmaking with his graduation from the project around 1794.
Since 1793, Rome was the scene of anti-French riots that ultimately led to Napoleon Bonaparte's Italian campaign and the conquest of Rome by French revolutionary troops in 1798. Worried by the political turmoil, Dies and his wife left Rome in May 1796 to move to Vienna via Salzburg. He finally settled in Vienna in 1797 and was soon appointed gallery director of the noble house Esterházy. Attacked by health, he spent the last years of his life in Vienna and at times also became a writer, writing the biography of the composer Joseph Haydn and publishing it in 1810 with the title Biographische Nachrichten von Joseph Haydn. At the age of 67 Albert Christoph Dies died in Vienna on December 29, 1822.
Benedikt Ockenfels
Recommended reading
- H. W. Fichter Kunsthandel (Hrsg.): Spaziergänge in Italien (Gedruckte Kunst), Frankfurt am Main 1994
- Carlo F. Schmid: Naturansichten und Ideallandschaften. Die Landschaftsgraphik von Johann Christian Reinhart und seinem Umkreis, Berlin 1998
- Staatliche Museen Kassel (Hrsg.): Mit Pinsel Feder und Stift. Meisterzeichnungen der Graphischen Sammlung, Kassel u.a. 2000
