Obituary of the Painter Karl Henrici (Part 1)

Appendix.

Obituary. 1/2

In the autumn of the past year, the painter Karl Henrici died at Botzen, an artist whose works are seen in great numbers in the churches and even more so in the private houses of Tyrol, and whose artistic talents certainly deserved that more detailed news of him be preserved.

He was born in Schweidnitz in Silesia on 25 January 1737. His father, Johann Henrici, a good portrait painter, was his first teacher in drawing and painting; however, it does not seem to have been his intention to raise this son specifically for art, for he was sent to the local Jesuit gymnasium, which he completed with outstanding progress.

During the years of his childhood, his native town had passed from Austrian to Prussian rule, and at the beginning of his youth, the Seven Years' War was approaching. The Prussian army was reinforced, and Karl H. was already designated for conscription into the artillery service. His father, who in his younger years had served as a field trumpeter in the Austrian army and still harboured the greatest attachment to the House of Austria, could not bear the thought of his son fighting against Austria; he said he would rather see him dead than in a Prussian uniform. The young man was forced to flee secretly across the border into Bohemia, barely supported with money by his father. And indeed, from that time on, he was almost as if dead to his father. He never returned to his homeland and only rarely, on very good occasions, dared to send news of himself to his father.

He worked at first for a longer period with a theatre painter in Prague; however, the course of the broken-out war made him believe he was no longer safe in Bohemia. He went to Vienna, where he tried in vain to find employment with Paul Troger and Michael Angelus Unterberger, and then to Grätz, Laibach and Agram, where he worked for some time with various painters. Later, feeling the need for further training, he went via Trieste to Venice, where he stayed for a longer period, diligently viewing and studying the masterpieces of the painters of the Venetian school in churches, palaces, and galleries, and earning his living on the side by painting miniature portraits. He later complained often that he had greatly weakened his eyes at that time from so much miniature painting. He then moved on to the Venetian Terraferma, visited several towns there with the same intention and occupation, and finally came to Tyrol and as far as Botzen. Here he found a good reception with the painter Mathias Twinger, a man exceptionally skilled in copying, with whom he remained employed for nearly two years, whereupon the magistrate of the city admitted him as a painter and inhabitant of Botzen, and he married Twinger's daughter M. Rosa.

Having thus achieved independence, he considered whether he could persist in his art with as much honour as profit, and he could not conceal from himself that he still lacked a more thorough study. Therefore, already married, he went for nearly a year to the school of the then famous Karl Cignaroli in Verona, and later once more for about the same length of time to that of the likewise highly respected Veronese painter Boscorati. In the sequel, he spoke especially of the latter, and of the love and sympathy with which he had taken charge of his training, with great respect and gratitude.

He then painted in Botzen with ever-increasing acclaim, and was almost continuously fully occupied. He was very industrious, and at the same time painted with extraordinary speed, so that his friends sometimes jokingly called him Luca fa presto, after an Italian painter known from Vasari for his great speed. Through these qualities he secured a good income, although he set very modest prices for his paintings, and it was precisely these low prices that meant he almost never lacked orders for new paintings, even from other countries. I remember among other things that he painted an ordered altarpiece for a church in Croatia.

He undertook almost every kind of painting; only landscapes I have seen almost none by him. On the other hand, there are many portraits, in which he was accused, however, that especially those of younger persons flattered too much, to the detriment of the main quality of a portrait, the accurate likeness. In general, his pictures all have a peculiar liveliness, with much that is pleasing and attractive, a certain grace, and, one might say, something galant, to which the colouring, bordering on the manner of Cignaroli, contributes much. This way of painting had become so second nature to him that one really wants to find at times too little seriousness in his paintings of serious subjects. That is why his conversation pieces, masquerades and the like, of which he painted many, are perhaps those of his works that deserve the highest appreciation. It cannot be denied that upon closer inspection one encounters some drawing errors in his works, which is to be attributed to the lack of more solid instruction in his early youth. But precisely in pieces of the kind we have just mentioned, the pleasing nature of the whole makes one gladly overlook such individual errors. (To be continued.)