Obituary of the Painter Johann Josef Karl Henrici (Conclusion)

Appendix.

Obituary. 3/3

(Conclusion.)

However, as many circumstances had combined to make him a fortunate mortal, so hard and sad was his lot in the last period, which occupied roughly a third of his long life. The majority of his many children had died in early youth; one of his eldest sons had indeed reached young adulthood, having made good progress in drawing and painting and showing, as the father often praised in him, an excellent talent and inclination for the field of architecture; yet he ran away from his paternal home, and indeed, as was commonly said in Botzen, because of the excessive harshness with which he was treated by his father, became a private soldier in an imperial regiment, and died not long after in a military hospital. After the year 1790, H. still had two children, an unhappily married daughter who soon died childless, and a son who already painted very well, having in the year 1796, around his eighteenth year, moved by the contemporary history of his fatherland and by patriotism, designed and executed in oil with much applause two larger pieces depicting battles of the Tyroleans against the French. When the enemy advanced toward Botzen and beyond in March 1797, the young man retreated into the mountains with the defenders of the country, where, struck by a typhus fever, he likewise died. His parents, despite their rich marital blessing, suddenly found themselves entirely childless, and how deeply this pained them needs no description. For some time they sought to comfort themselves with the thought that their aforementioned elder son, who had run away from home, might still be alive, as they refused to accept the news of his death as completely reliable, and they made great, though futile, efforts to learn something more of his life.

At about the same time, Henrici, who, as a result of one of his several eccentricities, had gone for a walk at midday on a bright summer day, found himself completely blind in one eye upon returning home. From that time on, the vision in his second eye also steadily declined, so that he was soon no longer able to paint and was forced to leave his final piece, a St. Mary Magdalene, unfinished. Within a few years he was entirely blind in the second eye as well. To this was added the fact that the already small circle of his friends soon dissolved completely, as some had died and others had been transferred elsewhere. One cannot be surprised that with all these misfortunes his disposition grew ever darker; he became highly morose and almost misanthropic. It is remarkable that he showed himself overcome by a kind of hatred toward his artistic works. He expressed great joy when the hall ceiling painted by him in fresco at the shooting range in Botzen fell down, and he frequently declared that he would contribute a considerable sum if his fresco in the chapel of the parish church in Botzen were whitewashed over and the chapel repainted by another artist; he tore up his drawings and cut his own portrait, well painted by himself, to pieces. He gave away most of his considerable stock of paintings, partly his own, partly originals or copies by foreign masters, as well as his copper engravings, and it seemed important to him to rid himself as quickly as possible of everything that could remind him of his art. It was very natural, however, that he sold his real estate, which he could no longer properly oversee.

As long as his good wife lived, his fate was greatly eased by her. She always remained at his side, read the newspapers and other things to him, and led him to church and on walks. But he survived her by more than fourteen years, and he was then restricted merely to the services of a faithful maid who endured all his whims, provided all his care, and, since he had become almost completely lame in the final years of his life, dragged him rather than led him to church and on short walks. The poor man spent more than a quarter of a century in blindness and had, as it were, outlived himself; he had become almost forgotten and unknown even in Botzen itself, for during this time the town had largely been populated by a new generation. He died on October 27, 1823, in the 87th year of his age. He left behind an estate of about 9,000 guilders in so-called Reich currency, including roughly two and a half thousand guilders in cash, and he died intestate, although he had no known legal heir. It had been expected that he would generously remember his maidservant Maria Remp (she deserves to be mentioned), who had faithfully served him continuously for over 42 years for a small wage; but this did not happen, and it is said that he angrily ordered his confessor, who reminded him of this, to be silent about it. One would have to be angry with the old man for this, were it not entirely reasonable to assume that this behavior of his is to be ascribed solely to a mental weakness arising from old age and his many sufferings.