John lewis krimmel biography template

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Krimmel was born Johann Ludwig Krimmel in Ebingen in the southern German duchy of Württemberg.

View All Works. As a young man he worked as a commercial clerk and spent some time in England, where he may have learned to paint in watercolors. In , Krimmel immigrated to Philadelphia to join his older brother in business. About this time, he learned to paint miniature portraits from Alexander Rider active — , a German artist with whom he had traveled from Europe.

Around , Krimmel also began drawing and painting domestic genre scenes, set in typical contemporary interiors, as well as images of street life and events in his adopted city. His compositions, character types, and subjects were influenced by the popular paintings of Scottish artist David Wilkie — , seventeenth-century Dutch genre works, and contemporary German genre painting, circulated in the United States in the form of reproductive prints.

His exterior scenes sometimes portray specific events as they happened in his adopted city, from catastrophes to celebrations, with a focus on the reactions of ordinary bystanders. His moralizing domestic scenes, however, are typically set in old-fashioned interiors that suggest rural life. However, his scenes of American life, virtually unprecedented, found little favor among collectors, whose patronage of native artists was then limited to portraiture.

In , he returned to Europe for two years, traveling through Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. On his return to Philadelphia, he began to realize a modest success as several of his genre scenes were published as prints. Powered by eMuseum.