Travelling images: lithographs as mediators of European art history in Estonia around 1820

• In Event: Images as Markers of Identity and History

Abstract

The presentation examines art history in Estonia at the beginning of the 19th century from the perspective of travelling images, as exemplified by the new print medium – lithograph. Art history and broader cultural sphere in the Baltic Provinces were then dominated by Baltic Germans, some of whom had local roots while others came from Germany to work in the Baltics. Such was the story of Carl Sigismund Walther (1783–1866) from Dresden who was invited by the playwright August von Kotzebue (1761–1819) to work as a home tutor. Walther became an important figure in local art life who not only taught drawing, but also worked as a prolific portraitist and creator of altar paintings. Moreover, in 1818 he established a lithography printing shop in Tallinn – the first of its kind in the Russian Empire. Walther and his colleagues like Gustav Adolf Hippius (1792–1856) were subsequently active in reproducing parts of well-known artworks such as those by Guido Reni or Raphael. Walther’s activities that brought this new print medium to the region enable to look deeper in an artistic network that was thus created, highlight its role in the local visual culture and ask how it enabled to create and spread knowledge about European art history in pictures.

Short Bio

Liisa-Helena Lumberg-Paramonova is a PhD student at the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture in Estonian Academy of Arts. This paper presents a part of her PhD studies that focus on Baltic art and art historiography in terms of knowledge production, taking into account the institutional, written and pictorial layer of knowledge production and the intertwined character of rational and emotional-romantic endeavours of the period. Her previous contributions to the field include articles such as ““Pro-Raphaelites”: The Classical Ideal in Religious Art and the Agency of Artworks in Estonia from 1810 to 1840” (2023)(MDPI Arts, 12 (190). DOI: 10.3390/arts12050190) and “The World on Your Pencil Tip. Baltic German Artists’ Travel Materials as Mediators of Knowledge in the Context of Travelling in the Enlightenment” (2020)(Journal für Kultur und Geschichte der Deutschen im östlichen Europa (JKGE) / Journal for Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe, 1, 29−50. DOI: 10.1515/9783110671827-004).

Author

• Liisa-Helena Lumberg-Paramonova, Estonian Academy of Arts