The Drawing Site: Heinrich Schwemminger (Vienna 1803-1884) and Ferdinand Schubert (Vienna 1824-1853)

Heinrich Schwemminger (Vienna 1803-1884)

Studies for Scenes from the Nibelungenlied

Various media and sizes

I am pleased to offer these drawings from an album of Nazarene and Biedermeier drawings and watercolors, most probably compiled by the Viennese artist Heinrich Schwemminger as a memento of his long career. All sheets are listed below with their present location. Those with Michael Miller Fine Arts are available for purchase. Please inquire for prices.

Heinrich Schwemminger, born into a family of decorative artists, established a reputation as a painter of portraits and narrative scenes. He studied in Vienna (at the Akademie der bildenden Künste) and in Munich. In 1837 he went to Rome on a government stipend and remained there until 1842. After that he became a Kurator at the Vienna Academy and, in 1861, a professor. While he never became as famous as his collegue Josef Führich, his artistic development followed similar lines. The early work of both artists showed the influence of their Nazarene models, Overbeck, Koch, Cornelius, and Scheffer von Leonardshoff. Führich retained his allegiance to the style of the early nineteenth century, but Schwemminger’s optical propensities led him more towards realism. In this way he became a typical and outstanding proponent of the Biedermeier style in Vienna.

A friend of Moritz von Schwind and a relation by marriage of Franz Schubert, Schwemminger was a fixture in the artistic world of mid-century Vienna. His drawings in the album represent the typical Nazarene and Biedermeier thematic material which occupied him: illustrations of German legend (The Nibelungenlied: fol. 11v, 12r, 27v B) and poetry [Schiller’s Die Kraniche des Ibykus (fol. 14v, 15v, 18r), and Uhland’s Des Sänger’s Fluch (23r A&B). The numerous drawings from his stay in Rome show many of the principle preoccupations of the resident German artists: studies of Italian peasants and their costumes, copies of masterworks of the Italian Renaissance, academic studies of models in poses inspired by Renaissance models, etc.

Ferdinand Schubert (Vienna, 1824-1853), the nephew of both the composer and Schwemminger, became a painter and a student of his uncle. He accompanied Schwemminger to Rome, where the two collaborated on a monumental commission for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts, an eight foot tall oil of David and Goliath. The album contains several drawings by both artists for the painting. The album also includes a sensitive study by Ferdinand for his oil illustrating Goethe's Der Fischer, (fol. 27v) now in the Kunsthaus Zürich. His uncle Franz had previously set the poem to music.

Bibliography: Ursula Mayr-Harting, "Three Drawings by Heinrich Schwemminger (1803-1884), "The Ashmolean, 31, Christmas 1996, pp. 13ff.

Several of these drawings are now in major museum collections in Great Britain and the United States, among the the Ashmolean Museum, the British Museum, the Milwaukee Museum of Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Cummer Museum in Jacksonville, Florida.