The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Lessing, Karl Friedrich

LESSING, Karl Friedrich, kärl frēd′rĭh, German painter, grand-nephew of G. E. Lessing (q.v.): b. Wartenberg, Silesia, 15 Feb. 1808; d. Karlsruhe, Baden, 5 June 1880. He was sent about 1822 to the architectural school of Berlin, to fit himself for an architect. After a severe struggle between duty and inclination, he yielded to his artistic inclinations and by the production of his ‘Churchyard with Gravestones and Ruins’ (1825) fixed his profession irrevocably. This picture produced a strong impression, and for a year or two the artist devoted himself to landscape; but coming under the influence of Schadow, established himself in Düsseldorf, and studied historical painting with enthusiasm and success. ‘The Court Yard of the Convent — a Snow Scene,’ is perhaps the most striking of all his landscapes. ‘The Tyrant Ezzelin in Captivity refusing the Exhortations of the Monks’ (1838), was his first important historical picture in the new style. It was followed by ‘Huss before the Council of Constance’ (1842), the ‘Seizure of Pope Pascal II,’ the ‘Martyrdom of Huss’ (1850), now in New York, and many others, under the influence of which the school of Düsseldorf divested itself of the strictly catholic spirit by which it was previously characterized, and adopted a bolder and more dramatic manner, and a greater freedom in the choice of subjects. Lessing, however, is distinguished from his associates by depth of thought, energy of expression, and vivid dramatic conception, at the same time that his pictures exhibit the hardness of outline and defective coloring peculiar to the Düsseldorf school. Consult Jordan, ‘Ausstellung der Werke Karl Friedrich Lessings’ (1880).