Overview
Joseph Anton Koch learned to love nature at a young age, helping his father tend the family's small herd of sheep. From then on, nature inspired his artistic work. He drew wherever he could, on rocks with coal from the shepherd's fire or by carving tree bark.
Soon the young shepherd's skills were noticed. At 15, he came to the attention of the Bishop of Augsburg, who had come to the remote mountain village for his confirmation. Through him, Koch was able to secure an education first in Swabia, then as a seminarian in Dillingen, then in a sculpture workshop in Augsburg, and finally, at the prestigious military academy Hohen Carlsschule in Stuttgart, where he spent six years.
Revolution broke out in Paris in 1789 and fueled many revolutionary minds across Europe, including that of Joseph Anton Koch. In 1791, Koch joined the Jacobins in Strasbourg then in Basel. Nevertheless, politics did not satisfy him. For almost three years he traveled indiscriminately through the Swiss Alps, drawing hundreds of landscape pictures and sketches that he would later use in Rome as models for oil paintings. Finally, equipped with a scholarship from his English patron George Frederick Nott, he crossed the Alps on foot to Italy. In the spring of 1795, he reached Rome. Here, he integrated himself into the artistic circle of the “German Romans.” He studied under the Neoclassical painter Asmus Jacob Carstens, from whom he learned to master the depiction of the human figure and work in oil paint. The picturesque landscape of the “Campagna Romana” around Rome became his source of artistic inspiration for the next 30 years, as he pioneered the Heroic Landscapes genre, which heightened the grandeur and structural clarity of classical Italian landscapes in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain.
Around 1810, Joseph Anton Koch encountered a new group of German artists emerging in Rome as “the Nazarenes.” These young painters, most of whom had only recently come to Rome, chose Koch as their mentor. He gave artists such as Overbeck, Pforr, Schadow, Schnorr von Carolsfeld and Führich an orientation to Rome and artistic inspiration.
In 1812, in protest of the French occupation of Rome, he left Italy for Vienna with his wife Cassandra and their first-born child. However, he found the climate miserable and the environment narrow-minded. Even more, he sought solace in his work, painting prolifically for three years; some of his most beautiful Italian landscapes were created in Vienna.
In 1815 Koch returned to Rome, where his presence and personality had considerable influence among the younger generation of German artists, and his new approach had widespread influence on visiting landscape painters. In 1825, at the age of 57, Koch turned to fresco painting. His reputation as an illustrator of Dante inspired the Marchese Massimo to commission him to paint frescoes depicting scenes of hell and purgatory in the Cassino Massimo.
The Bavarian prince and later King Ludwig I who frequently visited Rome, supported him, and bought his pictures. Nonetheless, Koch's last years were spent in great poverty, forcing Koch to work until close to the end of his life. Just a few months before his death, Koch received a generous annual allowance from the Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I. He died in Rome, where he was buried in Vatican City at the cemetery beside St Peter’s Basilica.
“In landscape painting, Koch is the founder; he taught how to give the earth’s forms determination, character and body.”
(Excerpts from: Joseph Anton Koch, Otto von Lutterotti, May 1944)