Weirotter, Franz Edmund (Innsbruck 1730 – Vienna 1771). In the Villa Adriana at Frascati. Detail of the ruin with peasants resting in front of it. Etching. Inscribed: F. E. Weirotter fecit / 3. 17.1 x 11.8 cm.
Nagler 6, 3. – Inscribed by old hand in brown ink “In villa Adriani – Frascati”. – Sheet 3 of the 18-sheet “Third Suite of Regions and Fragments of Old Buildings”, dedicated to Prince Albert, prince in Poland and Lithuania as well as duke of Saxony, Teschen etc. – Small wormhole in the center of the subject.
With Weirotter the landscape etching experienced a fine culmination and in 1766 Schmutzer, then director of the Vienna Academy, recommended Maria Theresa the appointment to the academy of the still young artist to take over the landscape subject there. According to Schmutzer’s report for the empress the artist in his mid-thirties made
“ with his etched landscapes
which were bought readily in England , the Netherlands , and Germany
4-5000 fl. annually ”.
The suggestion was accepted immediately by the Privy Council, because Weirotter otherwise “already would have a call to Saxony in hands”. But at his much too early death “his complete artistic bequest found no market in Vienna; it left to Paris. Connoisseurs and friends of his sheets
had to pay dearly for impressions of single sheets …
As etcher Weirotter counts to the most eminent artists … ”
(ADB XLI [1896], 520 f.),
having “developed a truly astonishing activity on both the fields assigned to him (in Vienna), the landscape drawing and the etching,
and given impetuses influencing still today ”
(Thieme-Becker XXXV [1942], 309, quoting Carl von Lützow).
His whole ability is reflected by the works after own invention as here. His admiration with the contemporaries follows from letters by and to Wille as the German Pope of Art residing in Paris. So Winckelmann on occasion of Weirotter’s stay in Rome “Mister Weirotter has made me … a present of own works,
which I reckon among the best of the kind
… This young artist will be a credit to his native country”. And in glance backward at the preceded Paris period of training with Wille (1759/63) this to Hagedorn in Dresden “He is so completed with drawing that his drawings look far more effortless then his paintings”. And as collector the Leipsic banker Gottfried Winckler “I have no doubt, that Mr.
Weirotter will deliver to us many beautiful after the Italian journey ”.
Quoted after Decultot and others as editors, Wille Correspondence, Tübingen 1999, pp. 314, 316, 318, each from 1764.
“ Weirotter – so Gerson, (Spread and Aftereffect of the Dutch Painting of the 17th Century, 2nd ed., 1983, p. 338 – worked also after P. Molijn, Jan van Goyen, Aert van der Neer – and Dietricy.
His own inventions are correspondingly Dutch . ”
Offer no. 15,063 / EUR 118. (c. US$ 159.) + shipping
„ Ganz herzlichen Dank für Ihre netten Wünsche und die sehr interessante Lektüre (Wild + Hund 23/2008), über die ich mich sehr gefreut habe. Mein Glückwunsch zu diesem schönen Artikel über Ihr Ridinger Wirken und die damit verbundene und verdiente Anerkennung. An meiner ‚Ridinger – Sammlung‘ erfreue ich mich stets aufs Neue. Schon deshalb war die Anschaffung des Pompadour Bandes (1998) ein guter Kauf … Mit besten Grüßen, Ihr … “
(Herr O. v. L., 5. Januar 2009)