{"id":9161,"date":"2014-10-29T03:55:05","date_gmt":"2014-10-29T10:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/?p=9161"},"modified":"2015-04-06T10:07:35","modified_gmt":"2015-04-06T17:07:35","slug":"tischbein-the-birder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/29\/tischbein-the-birder\/","title":{"rendered":"Tischbein the Birder"},"content":{"rendered":"

On October 29, 1786, Goethe arrived in Rome, where he was met by the painter Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein. The rest, as they say, is history: the two traveled Italy together, and their long friendship would be commemorated in Tischbein’s most famous painting, the most famous image of Goethe ever produced.<\/p>\n

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Tischbein, Goethe in der Campagna<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A century and a half later, Roger Tory Peterson posed for a portrait of his own — striking\u00a0a pose that I have always suspected\u00a0was modeled on Goethe’s.<\/p>\n

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Whether that connection is real or — just barely possibly conceivably — imagined, there is another, more easily demonstrated. For Tischbein, the creator of so many famous portraits and classicizing history paintings, was a lapsed birder.<\/p>\n

From Rome, the artist wrote<\/a> to Johann Heinrich Merck<\/p>\n

I was once a great amateur of birds and knew almost all the species, especially the native ones. In Holland I saw some very fine ones. I like birds very much; it seems to me that they occupy the same place in living nature as flowers in a nature morte. The bright, beautiful colors and the feathers in themselves are a beautiful\u00a0thing. I’ve seen some here I didn’t know before: a green bird that resembles a kingfisher but is a type of thrush; a blue thrush; and another little birdlet like a wren.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tischbein, who had etched some of the early plates<\/a>\u00a0for the\u00a0Nozeman\u00a0– Sepp\u00a0<\/a>Nederlandsche vogelen<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0even considered producing an illustrated guide to the birds of Rome:<\/p>\n

If I could be certain\u00a0that these birds were not already known, I would have them drawn and their life histories added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It didn’t happen. And maybe that’s just as well.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On October 29, 1786, Goethe arrived in Rome, where he was met by the painter Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein. The rest, as they say, is history: the two traveled Italy together, and their long friendship would be commemorated in Tischbein’s most famous painting, the most famous image of Goethe ever produced. A century and a … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Tischbein the Birder”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9161"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9161"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9921,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9161\/revisions\/9921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}