Heinrich Lauenstein, großes Familienportrait, 1881

Heinrich Lauenstein
Hüddessum 1835 - 1910 Düsseldorf
Family portrait of a Düsseldorf manufacturer family, 1881
Oil on canvas
Dated lower right, inscribed on the back
90x130cm
127x167cm

good, age-related condition

authenticity is guaranteed in writing

Heinrich Ferdinand Lauenstein, Johanne Lauenstein's illegitimate son, grew up in the Hogesmühle house, which was owned by the Hüddessum miller Lauenstein. After completing the village elementary school, Lauenstein apprenticed as a decorative painter in Hildesheim before he came to the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1859 - supported by a scholarship from King George V of Hanover. He initially studied there with Heinrich Mücke, Andreas and Karl Müller, Karl Ferdinand Sohn and Rudolf Wiegmann. In June 1863 he entered the class of historical and genre painting, where he became a student of Eduard Bendemann and, from autumn 1867, of Ernst Deger. While he was still training, Lauenstein became an assistant teacher in the elementary class in the fall of 1864, which he led from 1881. His numerous students later included well-known painters such as Heinrich Nauen and Max Clarenbach. from 1897 until his death, Lauenstein worked as a professor of religious history painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. In 1893 his wife Emilie, née Peters, who was twenty years his junior and had married Lauenstein in 1874, died. The couple had several children. The husband of the second daughter Ottilie (* 1877) was the insurance manager Johannes Nordhoff, father of Heinrich Nordhoff, who later became CEO of Volkswagen AG.
Since 1873/74, Heinrich Lauenstein was a member of the Malkasten artists' association and also of the association for the dissemination of religious images.
Heinrich Lauenstein was decisively influenced by the Düsseldorf Nazarenes. Under the influence of his teacher Ernst Deger, he continued religious history painting, which had already become obsolete by the 1860s, in the next generation. He assisted the Düsseldorf Nazarene Andreas Müller with the wall paintings for the art museum in Sigmaringen Castle, the ancestral home of the Princes of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, which opened in 1867. 26 portraits of painters and sculptors from the Middle Ages were installed in the upper wall zone. Lauenstein also made several altarpieces, especially for churches in Düsseldorf and the Rhineland. His strictly composed biblical motifs, some with a neo-Gothic inspired gold background, are in the Nazarene tradition of the Schadow school transmitted by Deger. Lauenstein became popular through idyllic, genre-like religious scenes that reveal Bendemann's influence. Pictures that he painted on behalf of the German-American businessman John D. Lankenau (1817–1901) from Philadelphia are considered to be among his most important creations.
In addition to the sacred works, Lauenstein's portraits and portraits of children are known.

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