BAMBERGER, Fritz
Fritz (Friedrich) Bamberger was born into a family of musicians on 17 October 1814 in Würzburg, an episcopal city and the principal metropolis in that region of Germany. He received his earliest training at the Berlin Academy in 1828 with Johann Gottfried Schadow, and immediately afterwards in the studio of the marine painter Wilhelm Krause. In 1830 he moved to Kassel where he studied with Georg Primavesi, a court painter who principally executed decorative schemes. By 1832 Bamberger was already in Munich where he met Carl Rottmann (1797–1850) whose work was a decisive influence on him. Rottmann was then working on a cycle of 28 frescoes of views of Italy commissioned by Ludwig I of Baveria for his Munich palace. Rottmann’s landscape style would become Bamberger’s model from this point onwards. With the aim of painting views of the Rhineland and the Main basin he moved to Frankfurt in 1835. The following year he made a trip to the north coast of France and to England, painting on his return one of the first canvases which would bring him fame: The Battlefield of Hastings with a View of the Sea. Bamberger would use the sketches which he made in Normandy and England as the basis for other marine paintings, which was to be his favourite genre.
Having completed his military service between 1837 and 1840 in Würzburg and before moving to Munich in the mid 1840s, Bamberger made his first trip to Spain, accompanied by Karl du Fay, a Frankfurt businessman who was interested in the arts. He would make three further trips to the Iberian peninsula, which Anja Gebauer has recently dated to 1849–50, 1857 and 1868. Bamberger was represented in the Frankfurter Kunstverein exhibition in 1851 by a painting with a Spanish subject: View of Gibraltar. Critics pointed out the merit of the painting and recognised the influence of Carl Rottmann, with whose work and that of Carl Blechen the painting certainly showed clear affinities.
The regions of Spain visited by Bamberger were principally Castile, Andalusia and Valencia. In his 1857 trip he was accompanied by his wife and spent most of his time in the Madrid region. He made contact with the Spanish court, probably while it was at the royal summer residence at La Granja, from where we have sketches made by Bamberger in August. The artist became drawing master to the Infanta Amalia Felipe Pilar, cousin of Queen Isabel II of Spain. The Infanta had been married since 1856 to the younger son of Louis I of Bavaria, Adalbert. Bamberger had the task of delivering a painting by the Infanta made as a gift for Isabel II. The dynastic relationship between the royal houses of Baveria and Spain would explain the greater presence of south German artists in Spain. The Neue Pinakotek in Munich has a painting signed by the Infanta Amalia Felipe Pilar in 1858, entitled Bridge over the Tagus at Toledo. The choice of subject was undoubtedly Bamberger’s.
Among Bamberger’s most beloved themes were the coasts of Cadiz and Malaga, the Albufera of Valencia, the Sierra Nevada and of course Gibraltar. He also painted views of Madrid, Segovia, Cuenca and Toledo. He regularly exhibited his paintings of Spanish subjects, some of which passed into the royal collections of Bavaria and Württemberg. However, his most important patron was the Graf von Schack in Munich. Adolf Friedrich Graf von Schack (1815–1894), writer, translator and patron of art took a strong interest in Bamberger’s Spanish landscapes. He himself studied the language, literature and art of Spain, as well as Arabic, Persian and other Oriental languages. His most important scholarly book dates from 1845, entitled Geschichte der dramatischen Literatur und Kunst in Spanien (History of Dramatic Literature and Art in Spain). Schack acquired seven paintings by Bamberger for his important collection, famous for its works by Böcklin, Feuerbach, Spitzweg and other 19th-century German painters, which can now be seen in the Schackgalerie. Bamberger’s canvases were views of Toledo, Gibraltar, Granada and other places in the south of Spain. The first of them, the view of Toledo, was bought in 1861. The paintings View of the Sierra Nevada and The Surroundings of Granada, which was also in the Schack collection, were the last to be bought by the Graf, probably after 1868. In his book Meine Gemäldesammlung (My Picture Collection) the Graf refers several times and in tones of great praise to Bamberger.
The artist made his last visit to Spain in the spring of 1868, a trip which was financed by the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg. There he coincided with Schack, who in turn was accompanied in Madrid by the young artists Franz Lenbach and Ernst von Liphart who were copying various works by Spanish artists in the Prado for the Graf. We know of no other trip to Spain by Bamberger after 1868. Artists travelled to Spain or other countries for a variety of reasons: commissions for paintings, contracts with foreign courts, to study, to accompany others, etc. Bamberger was an artist who went to Spain on numerous occasions for the pleasure of getting to know the country and for the attraction which he felt for its landscapes, to the point where it became the leading subject within his oeuvre. The artist died in 1873 in Neuenhain near Bad Soden.
J A.
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