Karl Philipp Fohr (26 November 1795 – 29 June 1818), a brother ofDaniel Fohr, was a German painter, born atHeidelberg in 1795.
Fohr started his studies of painting withFriedrich Rottmann, and was largely self-taught. In 1810 he was discovered by the painter Georg Wilhelm Issel, who invited him toDarmstadt in 1811. There, his future biographerJohann Philipp Dieffenbach[1] introduced him to the grand-ducal court at Darmstadt and toPrincess Wilhelmine of Baden, who acted as a patron, placed small orders from him, and offered him later an annual salary. While hiking through theOdenwald and the valley of the riverNeckar, Fohr executed a serial of preliminary sketches to the watercolors for theSkizzenbuch der Neckargegend, which was finalized in the winter of 1813/14 and dedicated to Princess Wilhelmine, offering pittoresque views, historical and fairy-tale subjects of the region. In 1814, he was part of Princess Wilhelmine's convoy to her summer-resort to thespa town ofBaden-Baden. TheBadisches Skizzenbuch, commissioned by Princess Wilhelmine, was a result of his tours through theBlack Forest, containing pittoresque views e.g. ofKloster Lichtenthal, the burial place of theMargraves of Baden.[2][3][4]
It was with Princess Wilhelmine's thereupon granted scholarship that Fohr went toMunich to study at theAcademy of Fine Arts from July 1815 to May 1816.[5][6] There he became friends with fellow student Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl, from whom he learned the basics of oil-painting. In autumn 1815 he hiked throughTyrol toVenice. From May to October 1816 Fohr had a stop inHeidelberg where he came in contact to a circle of political engaged students.
When Fohr dropped out of the academy ofMunich to travel on foot to northern Italy, and arrived inRome in 1816,[7] he briefly joined the circles of theNazarenes and theDeutsch-Römer. In Rome, where Fohr increasingly developed his own style, he shared a studio with the landscape painterJoseph Anton Koch, whose heroic Italian landscapes influenced his own works. Like many of theNazarenes,Deutsch-Römer, Lukasbrüder (as a sub-group of the Nazarenes was calledLukasbund ), and other northern artists and writers in Rome, he frequented theCaffè Greco[8] – many of them twice a day or more: in 1817 for example, 82 German artists stayed in Rome, a record says.[9] By the end of the year 1817, Fohr started with single portrait drawings as preparation for his renowned group portrait of the artists in Rome at theCaffè Greco, which belongs to his most important works and is one of the most important contributions to the romantic cult of friendship,[10] which arose around 1800. First approach in developing the group portrait were, asWilhelm Schlink has widely discussed, two designs of the composition in its entirety (Frankfurt am Main,Städel Museum).[11] Single portrait studies followed (lots of them inHeidelberg,Kurpfälzisches Museum), among them portraits of fellow artists likePeter Cornelius,Johann Friedrich Overbeck,Theodor Rehbenitz,Philipp Veit,[12] the copperplate engraver and draftsmanCarl Johann Barth,[13] or the architect Johannes Buck,[14] but also the admired landscape painter and teacherJoseph Anton Koch, the landscape painterMartin von Rohden, the architectKaspar Waldmann, the poet and writerFriedrich Rückert, and not least Fohr himself.[15] Although Fohr obviously intended to depict the crowd of artists that gathered in the Caffé Greco, the design should not – with respect to the cult of friendship mentioned above – be considered as a snap-shot or a realistic impression. Fohr was actually more a landscape painter than a portraitist.[16] Whatever the intention of the group portrait was, maybe a copper engraving to be sold to friends and colleagues,[17] the project was stopped by Fohr's tragic death. On 29 June 1818 Fohr drowned whilst bathing in the riverTiber with his friendsCarl Johann Barth,Johann Anton Ramboux, and Samuel Amsler. To raise funds for a monument in his memory, they created aprint after a drawing of Fohr by Barth. Samuel Amsler produced the print, as Barth was too distressed to make the print himself. Fohr is buried in theProtestant Cemetery in Rome.
Despite his premature death Fohr left an impressive oeuvre (see catalogue raisonnée),[18] which includes around 800 drawings, watercolors, and prints, but only seven paintings, predominantly preserved inFrankfurt am Main,Städel Museum,[19] and inDarmstadtHessisches Landesmuseum,.[20][21][22]
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This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Bryan, Michael (1886)."Fohr, Karl Philipp". In Graves, Robert Edmund (ed.).Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (A–K). Vol. I (3rd ed.). London: George Bell & Sons.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Media related toKarl Philipp Fohr at Wikimedia Commons
