JOSEPH ANTON KOCH (1768-1839)
Grindelwald (1,034 m 3,392 ft)
Switzerland
In Grindelwald Glacier, 1823, oil on canvas, National Museum in Wroclaw
The spot
Grindelwald (1,034 m 3,392 ft) designates a valley, a village and a municipality in the Interlaken-Oberhasli administrative district in the canton of Berne in Switzerland. In addition to the village of Grindelwald, the municipality also includes the settlements of Alpiglen, Burglauenen, Grund, Itramen, Mühlebach, Schwendi, Tschingelberg and Wargistal. Three major swiss peaks overlooking Grindelwald: the Eiger (3,970 m - 13, 020ft), the Mettenberg (3,104m -10,184ft), the Wetterhorn (3,692m - 12, 133ft).
The painter
Joseph Anton Koch was an Austrian (Tyrol) painter of Neoclassicism and later the German Romantic movement; he is perhaps the most significant neoclassical landscape painter.
He received academic training in the Karlsschule Stuttgart, a strict military academy. In 1791, he ran away, and traveled through France and Switzerland. He arrived in Rome in 1795. Koch was close to the painter Asmus Jacob Carstens and carried on Carstens' "heroic" art, at first in a literal manner.
After 1800, Koch developed as a landscape painter. In Rome, he espoused a new type of "heroic" landscape, revising the classical compositions of Poussin and Lorrain with a more rugged, mountainous scenery. In 1812, forced through inadequate income from his work, or in protest of the French invasion, he went to Vienna, where he worked prolifically. He stayed in Vienna until 1815. During this period, he incorporated more non-classical themes in his work. In Vienna, he was influenced by Friedrich Schlegel and enthusiasts of old German art. In response, his style became harsher. When returning to Rome, Koch became a conspicuous figure in the German artists' colony there. He painted, among other works, the four frescoes in the Dante Room of the Villa Massimi (1824–29). He wrote Moderne Kunstchronik oder die rumfordische Suppe gekocht und geschrieben von J. A. Koch (Stuttgart, 1834) which was directed humorously against unjustifiable criticism and false connoisseurship. Koch's last years were spent in great poverty. He died in Rome,where he was buried in the Teutonic Cemetery, located next to St. Peter's Basilica within Vatican City. He etched 20 Italian landscapes and a large sheet representing The Oath of the French at Millesimo; 14 pages after Dante, adding later another 30 pages (published Vicenza, 1904), and 36 pages after Ossian.
He contributed American landscape scenes to the works of Alexander von Humboldt (1805).