Overbeck

by J. Beavington Atkinson

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See 'Lübeckische Blätter,' from 1839 to 1869, for sundry notices concerning this picture and other works. The Pietà is in oil on canvas, 10 feet wide and nearly as high; the top is arched; it is photographed. The pigments are in usual sound condition. A small picture accompanied this Pietà. It had been intended as a present to the brother, Judge Christian Gerhard Overbeck, but his death, in 1846, preventing the fulfilment of the purpose, it was sent to Lübeck as a gift to his son, the artist's nephew, Doctor and Senator Christian Theodore Overbeck, who died 1880. The representatives in Lübeck of this nephew are said to be in possession of sundry memorials of the illustrious uncle. Here in Lübeck I may mention a Madonna and Child, a circular composition 3 feet 2 inches in diameter, with the painter's monogram and the date 1853. The picture is a gem, exquisite for purity, tenderness, and beauty. Another Madonna and Child is in the Thorwaldsen Museum, Copenhagen.

[2] The Incredulity of St. Thomas is 10 feet high by 5 feet wide. It bears the painter's monogram and the date 1851. The figures are life‑size. The picture is in perfect preservation. The pigments, as usual, lie thin, showing through the rough tissues of the Roman canvas.

[3] See 'Geschichte der neuen Deutschen Kunst, von Ernst Förster.' Leipzig, Weigel, 1863.

[4] The Assumption of the Virgin is in oil on canvas; height about 18 feet, width 9 feet. Figures nearly life‑size. The scale is rather small for the magnitude of the architectural surroundings. The tone is that of an old picture, low and solemn. No positive colours are admitted. The pigments remain intact, without crack, blister, or change of colour. The picture was the joint gift of the Düsseldorf Kunst‑Verein and the Cologne Cathedral Chapter. The price paid was equal to about £1000 sterling. The cartoon was exhibited in 1876 in the National Gallery, Berlin.

[5] The cartoons of the Via Crucis were, in September 1880, in the Villa Germania, near Biebrich. They are in chalk or charcoal in outline on grey ground, tinted with sepia. Height, 1 foot 9 inches; breadth, 1 foot 5 inches. The water‑colour drawings of the same series were, in January, 1878, in the Camera di Udienza of the Vatican. Height, 2 feet 6 inches; width, 1 foot 8 inches; mounted on white, and massively framed. The walls and accessories of the Pope's apartment are of a crude colour and in bad taste. The feeble execution of these cartoons and water‑colour drawings betrays advancing age and declining power.

[6] The cartoons of The Seven Sacraments, after a labour of some eight years, were finished in 1861, and received high encomiums when exhibited in Brussels. They remained with Overbeck at the time of his death, together with many other artistic properties, the accumulation of a life. Some of these treasures have been sold by the family who entered into possession. The cartoons were offered for sale, but are still without a purchaser. Small tempera drawings of The Seven Sacraments were bought for the National Gallery, Berlin, in 1878. They are on canvas: measurement, 1 foot 8 inches by 1 foot 3 inches. These reductions were entrusted to scholars; the execution is poor; the master is responsible chiefly for revision. The pigments used vary; some are in warm sepia, others in cooler tones, and one, Penance, is fully coloured. The results technically are far from satisfactory. These Sacraments, including the predellas, friezes, and side borders, have been photographed in large and smaller sizes by Albert, Munich, and from the photographs August Gaber executed woodcuts, published with explanatory text penned by Overbeck. This text was also published as a separate pamphlet: Dresden, August Gaber; London, Dulau and Co. The hope above expressed that the cartoons might be further carried out was never realised.

[7] I was informed, in October, 1881, by August Gaber, that the wood engravings made by him of The Seven Sacraments had proved a financial failure, and that he had in the undertaking lost his all. The Bible of Schnorr, also rendered on wood by him, had, on the contrary succeeded. The reason assigned why the public did not care for The Seven Sacraments was, that the treatment is too strongly Catholic; and this can hardly be a prejudiced judgment, because it was pronounced by Herr Gaber, himself a Catholic.

[8] The picture is in tempera on canvas, and was put up on the ceiling of Pio Nono's sitting room in the Quirinal Palace. But when the King of Italy took possession, a new canvas with cupids and putti was stretched over it, and the Pope's sitting room is now turned into Prince Humbert's bedroom. This brutality might almost justify the good painter in his belief that Satan is now let loose upon earth. Yet the plea has not without reason been urged that the picture is a deliberate attack on the King's temporal power. The original cartoon was, in 1876, exhibited in the National Gallery, Berlin, and the same subject the artist repeated in an oil picture (10 feet by 8 feet), now in the Antwerp Museum. Overbeck had been made a "Membre effectif" of the Antwerp Academy in 1863, and the commission for this replica followed thereon. I am told on authority that in Antwerp "the work is considered very mediocre."