Johann Wilhelm Preyer
1803 Rheydt – 1889 Düsseldorf
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Short information about the artist
Today Johann Wilhelm Preyer is considered to be the most important German still life painter and the best painting technician of the Düsseldorf School.
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More information about the artist
Today Johann Wilhelm Preyer is considered to be the most important German still life painter and the best painting technician of the Düsseldorf School.
Education
A nine-year training at the Düsseldorf Academy was the basis for his brilliant painting culture. However, it leaves open the question of how Preyer was able to find still life painting, apparently without preconditions, which did not exist as a pictorial theme in the Rhineland around 1820.
Painting
The iconography of the extinct Dutch still-life tradition of the 17th and 18th centuries was certainly familiar to Preyer from illustrations and museum visits. In his own works, he inevitably took over elements of his predecessors, but translated their Baroque staging into the imagery of his own time. On the complicated games of thought of the Baroque period, such as the allegorical meaning in the representation of symbols of transience and the otherworld, Preyer renounced in favor of the unimaginable joy of the picturesque Bravourstück.
Trips
After the sensational sales of his still lifes from his first work phase between 1828-34, it pushes the young still life painter Johann Wilhelm Preyer out of the narrow city of Dusseldorf and away from the Academy of Fine Arts, where the director Wilhelm von Schadow still does not pay attention to his painting. In 1835, Preyer traveled to Holland to study the Dutch still life painting of the Golden Age in museums. In 1837 he and his brother moved to Munich. In 1840, Preyer set out on a trip to Italy, during which numerous drawings and studies of southern fruits were produced.
Big Achievements
Returning to Munich, Preyer begins work on larger formats. Now the still life painter found a clear language of form and technical mastery, which let him playfully master the most elaborate compositions. Preyer has arrived here at the height of his artistic talents. His paintings competed with the Dutch models of the Baroque period. Contemporary art critics have repeatedly tried to put into words the phenomenon of Preyer’s still lifes: “His works are unsurpassed,” writes Friedrich von Boetticher at the end of the 19th century – and this assessment is still valid today.
Literature
In our specialist literature we offer the catalog raisonné “Preyer. Mit den Werkverzeichnissen der Gemälde von Johann Wilhelm und Emilie Preyer” for sale.