Johann Christian Reinhart

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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, of German romantic classical landscape painting.

A son of Deacon Peter Johann Reinhart, Johann Christian was born in Hof on 24th January 1761. His father, who came from an old family of craftsmen, died quite early in 1764, so Johann Christian and his brother Amandus were brought up by their mother.

Reinhart attended the Gymnasium, Hof's grammar school, from September 1768 to April 1778 where he was encouraged to draw by one of his teachers. 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, the Director of the Art Academy in Leipzig. In 1783 he moved to Dresden to further his studies. He concentrated more and more on landscape painting, at which he was more adept and which was to form the main body of his work as an artist.

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 in 1785. This friendship lasted all his life. From 1786 he spent three years in Meiningen (Thuringia) at the court of Duke Georg of Meinigen, one of the centres of classicism next to Jena and Weimar.

Reinhart's artistic career was divided between his early years in Germany and a career as a 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. His paintings, drawings and etchings, of which he made many prints, had brought him artistic recognition and financial success and he was, by then, able to support a family. In 1801 he married an Italian Anna Caffo and together they had three children.

In 1825, probably as a result of his acquaintanceship with King Ludwig I, who was a great admirer of the German-Roman classicist style, the Kingdom of Bavaria granted him a yearly pension. 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 Neue Pinakothek. On 1 November 1839 he was finally appointed “Königlich Bayerischer Hofmaler”, the official court painter, having already received other distinctions from German and Italian academies.

He died on 9 June 1847 in Rome and was buried in the Protestant cemetery. In 1963 the city of Rome honoured him with a memorial plaque on the house he died in.

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.^[1] He developed a new, more sensitive approach to landscape. Even though this emotional tendency contains element of the early romatic, Reinhart's way of painting is still immersed in the classical and is meticulous and detailed.

[edit] References

• Johann Christian Reinhart

[edit] External Links

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

Persondata
NAME	Reinhart, Johann Christian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	painter, engraver
DATE OF BIRTH	24 January 1761
PLACE OF BIRTH	Hof, Germany
DATE OF DEATH	9 June 1847
PLACE OF DEATH	Rome, Italy