CARL MARIA NICOLAUS HUMMEL (1821-1907)

LUSCIOUS VEGETATION IN THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA
Watercolour
37.5 x 47 cm
 
 
 
 
Carl Hummel was the son of the Austrian composer and conductor Johann Nepomuk Hummel and his opera singer wife Elisabeth Röckel. He studied under the auspices of the German landscape artist Friedrich Preller the Elder, at the Royal Free Drawing School in Weimar, and was enrolled at the school from the age of twelve to twenty. 
 
Upon completion of his studies, Hummel spent several years travelling on sketching tours of England, Norway, and the Tyrol (the latter occasionally with his old teacher Preller).  Between 1842 and 1844 Hummel was in Italy, spending long periods in Rome, Capri and Sicily. Following his marriage in 1845 he returned to Italy and Switzerland, but by the following year had settled in his native city of Weimar. There, in 1860, he was appointed a professor at the newly-established Grand-Ducal Saxon Art School, and from this time onwards he confined his travels to Germany.
 
The majority of Hummel’s pictures (in watercolour on the whole) are Tyrolean and Italian views, and a retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Castle Museum in Weimar in 1905, two years before his death. Much of the contents of Hummel’s studio remained with his descendants in Weimar until 1993.