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Franz Edmund Weirotter (1733-1771)
Artist: Franz Edmund Weirotter
Title: Suite de Paysages
Description: Rural backyard with a round tower; group of four figures in front of the entrance to the tower; old woman with a walking stick to right.
Text from Antony Griffiths & Frances Carey, 'German Printmaking in the Age of Goethe', BM 1994, no.4 :
This set of twelve etchings (see 1854,1020.1066), all of which show picturesque rustic buildings in varying stages of decay, is dedicated to Weirotter's mentor and supporter in Paris, J. G. Wille. When Weirotter arrived in Paris Wille was his first acquaintance: "he knew no French and his purse was empty; but I helped him in all manners of ways, for he was a born painter, and as he had adopted landscape, I lent him a number of drawings that I had made from nature for him to copy, and he succeeded wonderfully; and after that he drew himself from nature according to my advice with great enthusiasm" (18 October 1763). Wille took his pupils on sketching expeditions every summer, and himself made sets of landscape etchings from the 1740s onwards that are the immediate prototype for Weirotter's prints. Mariette thought they showed "plenty of taste but perhaps too many mannerisms". They evidently depend both on seventh-century Dutch art and French rococo landscape painting: one set of 'Months' is after Peter Molyn, and another is dedicated to François Boucher.
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