Thursday, November 2, 2017

Danube School Landscapes by Augustin Hirschvogel

attributed to Augustin Hirschvogel
Landscape with monastery in wooded valley
1536
drawing
British Museum
-extensive-commentary

attributed to Augustin Hirschvogel
Landscape with water-mill and other buildings with hills in the background
ca. 1540
drawing
British Museum

Augustin Hirschvogel (1503-1553) - Son of the leading glass-painter in Nuremberg, Velt Hirschvogel (1461-1525) who worked after designs by Dürer and Hans von Kulmbach. Augustin Hirschvogel worked with his father until the latter's death, after which he established his own workshop producing glassware in the Venetian style. From August 1536 until c. 1540 he was active in Lalbach (Llubljana), for some of the time as a maiolica painter, and established his reputation as a cartographer, the profession for which he was best known in his own day. This work included a map of the Turkish borders made in 1539 for the Nuremberg council, and a number of commissions for the Emperor Charles V. He settled in Vienna in 1544, where he pioneered the use of triangulation in maps of Vienna, made for the defence of the city after the Turkish siege there in 1543, which were completed in 1545. His most impressive artistic achievement was around 300 etchings, executed between 1543 and 1553. The majority were made for book illustrations, but he also produced ornament prints and a notable group of thirty-five landscape etchings, which reveal the influence of Albrecht Altdorfer and Wolf Huber. Together with Hans Lautensack (1524-1564/65), Hirschvogel developed Altdorfer's innovations in landscape etching. These two artists were responsible for broadening the sphere of influence of Altdorfer's style, as their landscape prints were produced in larger numbers than those of Altdorfer."

 curator's notes from the British Museum

"In his fundamental essay on landscape painting, M.J. Friedländer devoted some pages to the emergence of this type of 'specialist'  the artist who no longer carries out varied commissions from individual patrons but works for a market of anonymous consumers, in the hope that his wares will find favour with the public."

 E.H. Gombrich, from The Renaissance Theory of Art and the Rise of Landscape, first published in 1950, reprinted in the author's essay collection Norm and Form (London: Phaidon Press, 1966)

Augustin Hirschvogel
Duck-shooting in a landscape
1545
etching
British Museum

Augustin Hirschvogel
River landscape with two buildings connected by a bridge
1545
etching
British Museum

Augustin Hirschvogel
Landscape with four trees and a church
1545
etching
British Museum

Augustin Hirschvogel
Landscape with brook and ruins
1545
etching
British Museum

Augustin Hirschvogel
Seascape with Jonah and the whale
1546
etching
British Museum

Augustin Hirschvogel
River landscape with village
1546
etching
British Museum

Augustin Hirschvogel
River landscape with large tree
1546
etching
British Museum

Augustin Hirschvogel
Landscape with lake with sailing vessels and a castle on a rock
1546
etching
British Museum

Augustin Hirschvogel
View of Passau
1546
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Augustin Hirschvogel
River landscape with a chapel on a hill
1549
etching
British Museum

Augustin Hirschvogel
Landscape with lake
1549
etching
British Museum

Augustin Hirschvogel
Landscape with lake and a castle on a rock, with another castle in the distance
before 1553
etching
British Museum