ERNST

See also:

• ERNST RIETSCHEL

RIETSCHEL  , FRIEDRICH AUGUST (1804-1861), German sculptor, was born at Pulsnitz in Saxony . At an early age he became an art student at Dresden, and subsequently a pupil of Rauch in Berlin . He there gained an art studentship, and studied in Rome in 1827-28 . After returning to Saxony he soon brought himself into notice by a colossal statue of Frederick Augustus, king of Saxony; was elected a member of the academy of Dresden, and thenceforth became one of the chief sculptors of his country . In 1832 he was elected to the Dresden professorship of sculpture, and had many foreign orders of merit conferred on him by the governments of different countries . He died at Dresden in 1861.325 Rietschel's style was very varied; he produced works imbued with much religious feeling, and to some extent he occupied the same place as a sculptor that Overbeck did in painting . Other important works by him were purely classical in style . He was specially famed for his portrait figures of eminent men, treated with much idealism and dramatic vigour; among the latter class his chief works were colossal statues of Goethe and Schiller for tin' town of Weimar, of Weber for Dresden and of Lessing for Brunswick . He also designed the memorial statue of Luther for Worms, but died before he could carry it out . The principal among Rietschel's religious pieces of sculpture are the well-known Christ-Angel, and a life-sized Pieta, executed for the king of Prussia . He also worked a great deal in rilievo, and produced many graceful pieces, especially a fine series of bas-reliefs representing Night and Morning, Noon and Twilight, designed with much poetical feeling and imagination . For a good biography of Rietschel and account of his works see Appermann, Ernst Rietschel (Leipzig, 1863) .

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