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| August von Kreling | |
|---|---|
| Name | August von Kreling |
| Birth date | 22 May 1818 |
| Birth place | Würzburg, Kingdom of Bavaria |
| Death date | 7 December 1876 |
| Death place | Nuremberg, Kingdom of Bavaria |
| Nationality | Bavarian |
| Occupation | Sculptor, Professor |
August von Kreling was a 19th-century Bavarian sculptor and academy director noted for public monuments, funerary sculpture, and neo-classical and neo-Renaissance sculpture in Germany and beyond. He worked in the artistic circles of Munich, Rome, and Nuremberg, producing works for civic institutions, royal patrons, and ecclesiastical commissions while shaping generations of sculptors through his academic posts. His oeuvre intersects with contemporaries and movements represented by figures such as Bertel Thorvaldsen, Antonio Canova, Friedrich Overbeck, Johann Gottfried Schadow, and institutions like the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich.
Born in Würzburg in 1818 during the reign of Ludwig I of Bavaria, he received early training in drawing and modeling in local workshops influenced by the regional traditions of Franconia and the legacy of sculptors such as Tilman Riemenschneider. Kreling moved to Munich to study at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, where pedagogy reflected the influence of Peter von Cornelius and the Nazarene circle including Friedrich Overbeck and Heinrich Maria von Hess. He later traveled to Rome, enrolling in the expatriate community frequented by Bertel Thorvaldsen and Antonio Canova admirers, and encountered archaeological sources at sites like the Colosseum and the Pantheon that informed his classical repertoire.
Kreling’s early public commissions in Bavaria aligned with the monumental programs promoted by Ludwig I of Bavaria and civic patrons in Munich and Nuremberg. He executed allegorical and portrait sculpture, funerary monuments, and equestrian groups combining neo-classical form with emergent historicist detail comparable to works by Christian Daniel Rauch and Johann Gottfried Schadow. Among notable works are civic statuary and relief cycles for municipal buildings in Nuremberg and commemorative monuments linked to figures and events memorialized in Bavaria and the broader German states. His sculptural idiom engaged visual dialogues with public monuments by Friedrich Drake, site-specific ensembles akin to projects in Berlin and Dresden, and ecclesiastical commissions resonant with designs seen in Rome and Florence. Kreling also produced portrait busts of cultural figures and patrons reminiscent of commemorative practices surrounding Beethoven and Goethe monuments of the 19th century.
Appointed director of the Nuremberg School of Arts and Crafts (later linked institutionally to municipal academies), Kreling led curricular reforms emphasizing modeling from life, orthogonal composition, and historical precedents drawn from Antiquity and Renaissance masters such as Donatello, Michelangelo, and Luca della Robbia. His pedagogy influenced students who later worked across the German lands and Austrian territories, intersecting with the careers of sculptors associated with the Prussian Academy of Arts, the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, and workshops in Munich. Kreling participated in juries, exhibitions at the Great Exhibition-era salons, and artistic debates that included critics and writers such as Jacob Burckhardt and Wolfgang von Goethe’s cultural legacy, thereby shaping taste in public sculpture and restoration practices.
During his career he received appointments and recognitions from Bavarian authorities and municipal bodies, echoing honors conferred upon contemporaries like Christian Daniel Rauch and Ludwig Schwanthaler. He was ennobled in the Bavarian system, linking him to orders and courtly patronage networks involving figures such as Maximilian II of Bavaria and institutional collaborations with the Bavarian State Collections. His directorship and public commissions placed him among recipients of civic medals and the kinds of municipal citations awarded in Nuremberg and Munich during the 19th century.
Kreling died in Nuremberg in 1876, leaving a corpus of public monuments, portraiture, and teaching influence that informed late 19th-century German sculpture and restoration approaches in Franconia and Bavaria. His work continued to be discussed in exhibition catalogues, municipal iconographic programs, and the inventories of collections such as the Germanisches Nationalmuseum and regional museums in Bavaria and Franconia. The lineage of his pupils and the placement of his sculptures in civic spaces link him to the broader narratives of monument culture alongside figures such as Karl von Piloty and Caspar David Friedrich in the historiography of 19th-century art.
Category:German sculptors Category:1818 births Category:1876 deaths