Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich
German, 1712 - 1774
German painter and etcher. He received his first training from his father, Johann Georg Dietrich (1684–1752), a court painter at Weimar, and was sent to Dresden at the age of 13 to study under the landscape painter Johann Alexander Thiele (1685–1752). In 1728 they travelled to Arnstadt to paint landscapes for stage sets. In 1730 Thiele presented his pupil to Frederick-Augustus I, Elector of Saxony, as a prodigy; Frederick-Augustus appointed him court painter and entrusted him to his minister Heinrich, Graf von Brühl, for whom he worked on some decorative paintings. From 1732 he used the name ‘Dietricy’ to sign his paintings. He travelled in Germany from 1734 and may have visited the Netherlands, the source of his artistic inspiration. He returned from his travels in 1741 and was appointed court painter to Frederick-Augustus II, Elector of Saxony, who sent him to Italy in 1743 to study. He visited Venice and Rome but returned to Dresden in 1744. In 1748 he was appointed Inspector of the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden, which had recently become more influential because of important purchases from Italy. The following period saw Dietrich at the height of his success, and his works were in demand all over Europe.
Dietrich was an eclectic painter, mastering the styles of all the 17th- and 18th-century schools, although his preference was for Dutch Italianate painters and the Dutch Little Masters. He was also considerably influenced by Rembrandt, Rubens and Jordaens, and by Watteau (e.g. in his Gathering in the Park; Karlsruhe, Staatl. Ksthalle), Titian, Sebastiano Ricci and Rosa. His success lay in his ability to reproduce the painting style of his models with subtlety, while retaining his own stylistic individuality. His landscapes and paintings after Rembrandt were particularly admired. Dietrich’s work is frequently dismissed as lacking creativity, but his eclecticism can be understood in response to 18th-century art theorists’ requirements concerning selection and imitation.
Dietrich spent the Seven Years War (1756–63) in Freiberg and Meissen. In 1763 he was appointed professor of landscape painting at the newly founded Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Dresden, and in the same year he became Director of the Kunstschule at the porcelain manufactory in Meissen, a post he held until 1770. He was a prolific painter—his oeuvre consists of c. 2000 paintings—and a skilled etcher. He had two sisters, Maria Dorothea Dietrich (1719–92), a landscape painter, and Rahel Rosina Dietrich (1720–70), who painted porcelain in Meissen and Berlin.
Petra Schniewind-Michel. "Dietrich, Christian Wilhelm Ernst." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T022707 (accessed April 27, 2012).
Person TypeIndividual
