10 June 2008 in the Hall of Twelve Columns of the New Hermitage an exhibition was opened which features 63 graphic works by the painter and sketcher Heinrich Theodor Wehle from the Sorb Museum and the Municipal Museum in Bautsen, Kunsthalle in Hamburg and private collections from Dessau and Erfurt.

The work of Theordor Wehle (1778-1805) demonstrates the creatuve influence of two artists – Claude Lorrain, a French painter and creator of idyllic landscapes, and Jacob van Ruisdael, a Dutch master, who depicted on his canvases the full drama of natural occurrences.

The Calcographical Society in Dessau played an important role in Heinrich Theodor Wehle’s life; it commissioned Wehle to sketch the outskirts of the city. In 1800-1801 two series of paintings were published under the titles of The Depths of the Forest and Park Views.

In 1801 at the invitation of Count August Shuazel-Guffe, the director of the St. Petersburg Academy of Painting, Wehle arrived in St. Petersburg. In the winter of 1801-1802 the artist spent his time in the court of Emperor Alexander I.

In his capacity as a topographer and cartographer Wehle participated in the Russian geological expedition to Georgia and became the first western European master to sketch views from the Caucasus in 1802 and 1803. In 1803 the expedition arrived in Armenia whence the artist returned to his homeland, traveling through Italy. In 1805 Wehle died at the age of 26.

Heinrich Theodor Wehle belongs to that extremely important group of prophets of German romanticism. The artist’s great gift was appreciated by his famous contemporary, the great German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who observed that: “being granted the talent to hope, he had been happily granted an artistic view of the world”.

The exhibition and the publication of a catalogue is part of a joint project between the State Hermitage Museum, the Sorb Museum and the Municipal Museum in Bautzen, the Sorb National Foundation in Bautzen under the auspices of the minister-president for Saxony, Professor George Milbradt.

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Vladimir Matveyev, Deputy Director of the State Hermitage Museum, Exhibitions and Development, Tomasz Nawka, Director of the Sorb Museum, Bautzen, and Christian Schramm, Burgomaster of Bautzen, at the opening of the exhibition

Tomasz Nawka, Director of the Sorb Museum, Bautsen

At the exhibition

The exhibition catalogue

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