The New International Encyclopædia/Ramberg, Arthur

RAMBERG, räm′bĕrk, Arthur, Baron (1819-75). A German genre painter and illustrator, born in Vienna, son of Georg Heinrich von Ramberg (1786-1855, a distinguished general), and grand-nephew of Johann Heinrich Ramberg (1763-1840, Court painter at Hanover, illustrator, and etcher, whose drawings, of which the Leipzig Museum preserves an extensive collection, were exceedingly popular in his day). Ramberg received his first training at the School of Art in Prague from Franz Kadlik and others, then studied in Dresden (1844) under Julius Hübner, and passed through a subsequent formative stage under the influence of Schwind, whose romantic trend is apparent in the "Wedding Song" (after Goethe) and other works. His great coloristic talent was, however, most successfully displayed in some characteristic scenes from rural life, such as "Women of Dachau on Sunday" (1853), "Morning Devotion in the Mountains" (1855, New Pinakothek), "Walk with the Tutor" (1856), in little humorous episodes like "Hide and Seek," "After the Masked Ball" (1858), and in the idyllic "Meeting on the Lake" (1876), and "Invitation to Boating" (1879), all breathing an atmosphere of ideal beauty. The same refined sentiment and a rare delicacy of technique suggestive of the artist's thorough study of the Dutch masters, characterize the "Reading from Wieland" and the concertino in Terborch's manner "After Dinner" (1873, New Pinakothek). In 1860 Ramberg was appointed professor at the School of Art in Weimar, where he executed the historical painting "Court of Emperor Frederick II. at Palermo" (1866, Maximilianeum, Munich), collaborated with Pauwels in the decoration of the Luther room at the Wartburg, and painted the "Fairy Tale of the Frog King" (Weimar Museum). It was, however, as an illustrator of the German classics that he earned his greatest fame, notably with the drawings for Cotta's jubilee edition of Schiller's poems, those for the "Schiller and Goethe Galleries" (with Pecht), but above all with the cycles of grisailles to Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea and to Voss's Luise. In 1866 Ramberg became professor at the Munich Academy. Consult: Pecht, Deutsche Künstler, etc., iv. (Nördlingen, 1885), and Rosenberg, Geschichte der modernen Kunst, iii. (Leipzig, 1889).