ROTTMANN, Carl

German painter. He was taught by his father the university drawing master Friedrich Rottmann (1768-1816); among his fellow students were Carl Philipp Fohr and Ernst Fries. In 1815 Rottmann painted a large watercolourGLOSSARYPigment ground in gum, usually gum arabic, and applied with brush and water to a painting surface, usually paper; the term also denotes a work of art executed in this medium. The pigment is ordinarily transparent but can be made opaque by mixing with a whiting and in this form is known as body colour, or gouache; it can also be mixed with casein, a phosphoprotein of milk. Watercolour compares in range and variety with any other painting method. Transparent watercolour allows for a freshness and luminosity in its washes and for a deft calligraphic brushwork that makes it a most alluring medium. There is one basic difference between transparent watercolour and all other heavy painting mediums - its transparency. The oil painter can paint one opaque colour over another until he has achieved his desired result. The whites are created with opaque white. The watercolourist's approach is the opposite. In essence, instead of building up he leaves out. The white paper creates the whites. The darkest accents may be placed on the paper with the pigment as it comes out of the tube or with very little water mixed with it. Otherwise the colours are diluted with water. The more water in the wash, the more the paper affects the colours; for example, vermilion, a warm red, will gradually turn into a cool pink as it is thinned with more water. The dry-brush technique - the use of the brush containing pigment but little water, dragged over the rough surface of the paper - creates various granular effects similar to those of crayon drawing. Whole compositions can be made in this way. This technique also may be used over dull washes to enliven them., Heidelberg Castle at Sunset (Heidelberg, Kurpfälzisches Museum). The idealistic forms and romantic lighting are derived from the Scottish painter George Augustus Wallis (1770-1847) who stayed in Heidelberg from 1812 to 1816 on his return from Rome where he had been friendly with Joseph Anton Koch.

Rottmann's first picture in oils was derived from two famous paintings in the collection of the Boisserée family, the Pearl of Brabant by Dieric Bouts the Elder or the Younger and the Seven Joys of the Virgin by Hans Memling (now both Munich, Alte Pinakothek). Such a synthesis of two different sets of images was to typify much of Rottmann's later work. At around the same time Rottmann painted his idealized view of Eltz Fortress (destroyed). However, his most beautiful early work in oils is Heidelberg Castle at Sunset with Crescent Moon (c. 1820; Heidelberg, Kurpfälzisches Museum). This work already contains many individual motifs that are important in interpreting the content of Rottmann's later work.

King Ludwig I of Bavaria gave Rottmann several major commissions. Two series are important: the one known as the Italian cycle, painted in 1833-38 from journeys undertaken in 1826-27, and the Greece cycle, which was intended for the arcades in the Hofgarten in Munich and was to be entirely in the antiqueGLOSSARYthe classical age of Greece and Rome began with the Greek migrations of the 2nd millennium BC, and ended in the West in 476 AD with the deposition of the Roman emperor Romulus Augustulus (c. 475 AD); in the East it ended in 529 AD when the Platonic Academy was closed by Justinian (482 - 565 AD). style. Originally there were to be 38 paintings, but finally 23 were executed, all in the encaustic technique.