Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich (Weimar 1712-1774 Dresden)
Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich (Weimar 1712-1774 Dresden)

The Flight into Egypt

Details
Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich (Weimar 1712-1774 Dresden)
The Flight into Egypt
oil on canvas
25 ¾ x 21 3/8 in. (65.4 x 54.4 cm.)
(2)sold together with the engraving by C.W.E.Dietrich
Provenance
Counts von Goëss, Austria, from the 18th century until 2008.
Engraved
C.W.E. Dietrich

Lot Essay

Born in Weimar, Dietrich studied first with his father Johann Georg Dietrich in his native town. At the age of thirteen he was sent to continue his studies with one of the leading German landscape painters Johann Alexander Thiele (1685-1752). Thiele was to introduce the young prodigy to one of the leading patrons of the period, Friedrich-Augustus I, Elector of Saxony (1670-1733). Dietrich travelled widely in Germany and almost certainly in the Netherlands where he was to encounter the works of Rembrandt and his school. Upon his return to Dresden he was appointed court painter to Friedrich-Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland (1696-1763) in 1741. The Elector encouraged the artist to continue his studies and commissioned the young man to travel to Rome and Venice in 1743. The impact on Dietrich was enormous. His assiduous studies enabled him to imitate and elaborate the works of such disparate artists from Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and Sebastiano Ricci to Salvator Rosa and Annibale Carracci, from Rembrandt to Titian. The source of the present composition is probably a composition by Annibale Carracci, whose works he would have been able to study on his sojourn to Italy. Dietrich treated this subject on several occasions, a smaller variant is among his eight canvases preserved in the Hermitage, St Petersburg, but the present lot most closely relates to the composition in the Museum der Bildenden Künste, Liepzig. Although the more delicate and finer painting in our work appears to suggest an earlier date than the other two versions.

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