🖌️🎨Gustav Adolf Gippius (1792-1856)

 

🖌️🎨 Gustav Adolf Gippius (1792-1856) - Baltic-German portrait artist and lithographer, Nazarene.

Nazarenes, or Nazarenes (German: Nazarener), officially: The Union of St. Luke is a creative association of German and Austrian artists of the romantic movement of the early 19th century, who sought to revive the aesthetics and artistic style of the masters of the Middle Ages and the early Italian Renaissance.
The artist's father, Thomas Gippius, was an evangelical chaplain. Gustav lost his mother early and was sent to a boarding school in Reval.
From 1810 to 1812 he studied drawing at the local religious school with Karl Sigismund Walter, a famous artist from Dresden. There he became a lifelong friend with Otto Friedrich Ignatius (1794-1824), another aspiring artist and son of the school's founder.
Friends helped Gippius organize an exhibition, which brought him enough money to study in Prague. He then studied copper engraving at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna from 1813 to 1815.
In 1816, with a friend, Johann Lebrecht Eggink, he traveled to Salzburg, Munich, Venice and Florence.
They arrived in Rome in the spring of 1817, where they lived for two years and entered the society of artists of the Nazarene movement. He met Johann Friedrich Overbeck, who became his good friend.
During this period, Gustav created numerous portraits; in particular one portrait of Beethoven, which is now in Beethoven's house in Bonn.
Stopped in Switzerland before returning home.
In 1820 he married Ignatius's sister, Friederike (1798-1886). Two of their sons, Otto and Karl, became architects.
When Ignatius died in 1824, he left a large fresco in the church at Tsarskoye Selo unfinished. Gippius completed it in 1825. This helped bring attention to his work by Georg von Engelhardt. He worked as an art teacher and published several teaching aids.
He returned to Estonia in 1849 and settled in Reval, where he continued to paint portraits, including a series of women in traditional costumes.
Gustav Adolf Gippius died in 1856 and was buried in Hageri, near his birthplace.

Sources: artwork, Artnet, wikipedia.org.