Carl Rottmann

Carl Rottmann (January 11 1797 in Handschuhsheim – July 7 1850, Munich) was a German landscape painter and the most famous member of the Rottmann family of painters.

Rottmann belonged to the circle of artists around the Ludwig I of Bavaria, who commissioned large landscape paintings exclusively from him. He is best known for mythical and heroising landscapes.

The landscape painter Karl Lindemann-Frommel belonged to his school.

Biography

Carl Anton Joseph Rottmann was born in Handschuhsheim (today a part of Heidelberg) on January 11 1797. There he received his first drawing lessons from his father, Friedrich Rottmann, who taught drawing at the university in Heidelberg. In his first artistic period he painted atmospheric phenomena. In 1821 he moved to Munich, where his second period began, and in 1824 he married Friedericke, the daughter of his uncle, Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell, who served as an attendant at court.

This connection cleared the way for an acquaintance with King Ludwig, who in 1826/27 sponsored his travels in Italy in order to widen his repertoire, which up to that point consisted solely of domestic, German, landscapes. Upon his return he received from King Ludwig I a commission for a monumental cycle of Italian landscapes in the arcade of the Munich Hofgarten. The cycle, completed in 1833 in fresco, gave visual expression to Ludwig’s alliance with Italy, and raised the genre of landscape painting to the height of history painting, the preferred mode of the King’s other great commissions for monumental painting.

In 1834 Rottmann received from the king a commission for a second cycle, this time dedicated to the landscape of Greece; one might mark here the beginning of his third period. At first also intended for the Hofgarten arcade, the 23 great landscapes were eventually installed in the newly-built Neue Pinakothek, where they were given their own hall.

Carl Rottmann died on July 7 1850 in Munich, aged 53 of undisclosed causes.

Works

- Frescoes with heroising landscapes in the arcade of the Munich Hofgarten (1830-33) (today in the Munich Residenz Museum).

- 23 Greek landscapes (1838-50, today in the Neue Pinakothek, although a number were substantially destroyed during World War II) in the ancient technique of encaustic.