Juliana Wilhelmina Bause: Löhrs Garten in Leipzig

As an in between posting on a rainy day (it is) and somewhat outside the general interest of this Blog today I share my research on this delicate washed pen and ink drawing by Juliana Wilhelmina Bause (1768-1837) I've recently discovered.

She is mostly remembered by a series of highly regarded copper plate engravings and although described in textbooks and lexicons, I’ve not been able to find them in the Internet. My guess Juliana choose the island designed and constructed in the newly commissioned English gardens (no longer existing) of her husbands city-palace in Leipzig. Anyway, what follows is what I was able to find about the artist on a rainy day, her family, life and her circles in Leipzig.

 Park, greenhouses and plan of Löhrs gardens.  

Her father Johann Heinrich Bause (Halle 03-01-1738 – 05-01-1814 Leipzig) was an important and highly regarded German copper engraver and professor in the Leipzig Academy.  

He was the son of Christian Gotlieb Bause (Halle 1696-1745) and Sophia Elisabeth Dryander (Halle 1705-1761). He is best known for his portraits of writers, poets, nobility and kings often after original paintings by painter to the Royal Court Anton Graff (1736-1813) (above, Bause by Graff) whom he’d met while working in Augsburg in 1759 with engraver Johann Jacob Haid (1704-1767) (below)

Bause always followed closely Graffs original paintings and although he was mainly self-taught and self-instructed took Johann Georg Wille (1715-1808), a royal to the king engraver working in Paris, as his example following his instructions transmitted through their correspondence (works by Wille below).

A printed catalogue of Bause's work appeared in Leipzig in 1786. He married in 1763 Henriette Charlotte Brünner (1742-1818) and they had two very beautiful and talented daughters. Friederike Charlotte (1766-1785), a pianist and musical talent, sadly died at the age of 21. Carl Philip Emanuel Bach (1714-1788) thought highly of her piano and glass harmonica playing skills and so did (Johann Wolfgang von) Goethe (1749-1832) who was a friend of the Bause family and  wrote about her extremely good looks.

 Sisters Friederike and Juliana Bause.

Her younger sister, the talented Juliana Wilhelmina Bause (1768-1837) married banker Karl Eberhard Löhr (1763-1813) and like her father she became an engraver and painter but only for her own amusement. Known and highly valued are the 8 landscape etchings by her hand after Kobell (prob. Franz 1749-1822), Johann Sebastian Bach Jr. 1748-1778, his father Carl Emanuel Bach and his grandfather Johann Sebastian Sr. ) and Both (prob. Andries Dirksz. 1608-1650) published in 1791.

Johann Sebastian Bach Jr. 

Recently widowed and forced to leave her house in 1813, ordered by French General Jean Toussaint Arrighi Casanova (1778-1853), a relative of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821). Casanova fought in the battle of Leipzig (16/19 october 1813, the “Völkerschlacht”) where the armies of Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sweden clashed and Napoleon and the French (with Polish, Italian and German) armies were defeated. 

Taking care of her father she moved with him to Weimar where he died a year later leaving her his vast collections of engravings. His last work was a s portrait of his son in law Karl Eberhard Löhr.

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Karl Eberhard Löhr was the son of banker Eberhard Heinrich Löhr (1725-1798) in Leipzig who’d made a fortune during the 7 year war (1756-1763). 

With this newly gained wealth in 1771 he had transformed a swampy marsh, inherited from his wife’s  Rahel Charlotte Barthel’s (1739-1803) father, just outside the old city into lustrous English gardens, a pond, huge greenhouses and an island: “Löhrs Garten” later “Keils Garten”, a Promenade  (“Tröndlring”) and a Palace as his house. Rich as a royal Karl Eberhard had build a huge collection of paintings. 

Karl-Eberhard and Juliana's daughter Juliane Henriette Löhr married Johann Georg Keil (1781-1857) a poet, scolar and intellectual who managed the estate, bequest and immense collections of his wifes’ two grand-fathers. They returned to the house in 1830 but the family sold it in 1889 when it was transformed in Hotel Fürstenhaus, existing to this day.

All pictures borrowed freely from the internet for friendly, educational and non commercial use only.