The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 82, July 1978 - April, 1979 Page: 151
496 p. : ill. (some col.), ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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German Artist on the Pedernales
Friedrich Richard Petri, the youngest of six children, was born in the
medieval town of Dresden, Saxony, in the summer of 1824. His father,
Heinrich, was a master shoemaker who had married a well-to-do shoe-
maker's daughter, and the family lived in comfortable circumstances.
Richard showed an artistic inclination and at the age of fourteen entered
the Akademie der Bildenden Kiinste in Dresden. An apt pupil, he won
six awards in his eleven years there, and he was ultimately offered a
scholarship to study in Italy, which included the further honor of re-
turning to the academy as an instructor. He did not accept the offer,
apparently because of ill health.5
While at the academy Petri formed a close friendship with an older
student, Karl Friedrich Hermann Lungkwitz. As the oldest son in a
family of five children, Hermann had been expected to enter his father's
business; but he refused to do so. Instead, he became a self-taught
painter. Only after he inherited some money from an uncle was the
young man able to attend the art academy. Apparently he was a student
only for a year or two, however.6
The decade of the 184os was a stimulating time to be a student at the
academy: artists had turned away from the old Neoclassicism and were
searching and experimenting with new ways of expressing themselves.
In a broad sense this Romantic movement had turned inward, focusing
on the artist's subjective response to and interpretation of the world.
And the Dresden academy had drawn to it some of the foremost painters
in Germany. One of its influential teachers was Julius Hiibner, and
Petri was honored by being taken as one of his studio students. Hiibner
had been trained by Wilhelm von Schadow, one of the "Nazarenes."
Aesthetically, the Nazarenes had aspired to a revival of medieval Ger-
man religious art, although they became best known for wall paintings,
fresh landscapes, and perceptive portraits.7
The reclusive, introverted, intensely religious landscape painter, Cas-
par David Friedrich, also had been at the academy, but was incapaci-
tated by the time Petri became a student. His influence was still strong,
however, and one of Friedrich's friends, Johan Christian Clausen Dahl,
taught at the academy. Another follower of Friedrich and an instructor
5Meyers, "Lives and Works," 16-17, 22-25.
Ibid., 2-5, 16.
7A. J. F. Zieglschmid, "Petri and Lungkwitz, Pioneer Artists in Texas," The American-
German Review, IX (Oct., 1942), 4. On German Romanticism see Frederick Antal, Classi-
cism and Romantcism (New York, 1966); Marcel Brion, Romantic Art (London, 1960);
Ulrich Finke, German Painting: From Romanticim to Expressionism (Boulder, 1974).151
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 82, July 1978 - April, 1979, periodical, 1978/1979; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101206/m1/187/: accessed May 4, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.