- Museum number
- 1984,0225.3.1-24
- Title
- Series: Les Argonautes (The Argonauts)
- Description
-
Bound portfolio of illustrations to the Argonauts; 2 pages of letterpress, 24 line engravings and a title sheet showing the artist in profile to right; after drawings by Carstens. 1799
Engraving
- Production date
- 1799
- Dimensions
-
Height: 281 millimetres
-
Width: 422 millimetres (sheet size)
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Text from Antony Griffiths and Frances Carey, 'German Printmaking in the Age of Goethe, BM 1994, no. 99 :
Despite its modest format, this series is of great significance in that it links Koch and the extraordinary figure of Asmus Jacob Carstens (1754-98). Carstens came from Schleswig, and his uncompromising character made him a perpetual outsider. By sheer force of personality, he got himself attached to the Copenhagen Academy, and later appointed to a teaching position at the Berlin Academy. But as soon as he was given some money and leave of absence to go to Rome, he threw in his job, and stayed there, living in great poverty while dying of consumption. He never painted, but made huge drawings of allegorical or classical subjects, which he exhibited in Batoni's old studio in Rome in 1795. These had an immense impact on those who saw them; this event was later sometimes claimed to be the foundation of the new German art.
Carsten bequeathed his entire studio to his friend, the critic Fernow, who sold it to the Duke in Weimar in 1804, with the result that almost all his work is now to be found there. But he had previously sold to Koch a set of twenty-four drawings of the story of the Argonauts, which Carstens had made on his sickbed, and intended for engraving. Koch proceeded to do this himself at his own expense as an act of piety towards his old friend, whom he said had "taught him to shake off the dust of academic stupidity". He sold copies himself, and his letters of 1799 to Frauenholz reveal the problems he had, and the shortage and expense of materials in French-occupied Rome. Koch, perhaps with help from Fernow, wrote the four pages of text that explain the subjects of each plate. The title page is known in three states: the first gives the republican date of An VII; the second (shown here) replaces this with the conventional date An MDCCXCIX; while the third has the address of the publisher Tommaso Piroli (see 1873,0809.131-143), to whom Koch sold the plates at some time between 1807 and 1810 (see Marcus Neuwirth, 'J A Koch - A J Carstens Die Argonauten', Graz 1989, a study not available to us).
After finishing the work, Koch gave the drawings to the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorwaldsen (1768-1844), who had also met Carstens after his arrival in Rome in 1797. They are now in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, and confirm Koch's statement that he had in some places completed, gone over or added landscapes to the drawings before engraving them (Lutterotti Z436a). According to Fernow, Carstens had intended the drawings to have shading added when engraved, and he accused Koch of making them look more like Flaxman, a charge that Koch strongly denied.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1994/5 Sept-Jan, BM, 'German Printmaking in the Age of Goethe, no. 99.
- Associated titles
Associated Title: The Argonauts
- Acquisition date
- 1984
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1984,0225.3.1-24
