Christian Edward Boettcher
Biography
Christian Edward Boettcher was born at Imgenbroich, Germany in 1818. He trained initially as a Lithographer at Stuttgart and remained in Stuttgart for a number of years.
In 1844 he moved to Dusseldorf where he studied with two important and influential artists who were to affect his style and subject matter.
The first of these was Ferdinand Theodor Hildebrandt one of the foremost exponents of the German Realist School and there after with Hildebrandt’s own Master Freidrich Wilhelm von Schadow one of the leading lights of the Nazarenes Group who were influenced by their studies in Rome, painted mainly religious pictures eventually becoming Principal of the Dusseldorf Academy.
Boettcher executed a number of large genre scenes often associated with seasonal pastimes, particularly of the grape harvest in the Rhine-ish region which he knew well and loved.
However his handling of paint and the construction of the compositions and light effects owes its origin to the ‘Nazarene’. He was a celebrated portrait painter and miniaturist but it is in his realist genre scenes such as the present example where he excelled and discovered his enthusiastic audience.
He himself became professor at the Dusseldorf Academy in 1872 and died in the same city in 1889 aged 71.
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