Ludwig Rullmann

File:Ludwig Rullmann - between 1780 and 1785.jpg

Self-portrait of Ludwig Rullmann (c. 1780/1785)

Ludwig Rullmann (1765 – c. 1822) was a German painter, engraver and lithographer.

Biography

Rullmann's ancestors came to Bremen from Göttingen, where his father, Jacob Ferdinand Rullmann (1774–1828), received civil rights in 1763 and worked as a shoemaker and as a church servant at Bremen Cathedral. His younger sister was the poetess and writer Elise Reindahl.

He attended the Latin School in Bremen, where he presumably received his first training in drawing.

His artistic talent was already evident at a young age, as his youthful self-portrait from the years between 1780 and 1785 suggests. Probably at that time he came into contact with the Society Museum in Bremen and was given the opportunity to use the collection of the art cabinet there for study purposes.

From 1788, Rullmann studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts with the help of a scholarship financed by Eltermann Kulenkamp and the aldermen Deneken and Iken. He practiced portrait drawing in particular with Anton Graff. In 1794, he returned to Bremen, where, according to the Bremischen Handlungs-Addreß-Calender, he worked as a "drawing master and engraver" and lived on the Domsheide.

In the following years he worked as a drawing teacher and portrait painter. Above all, he portrayed people from Bremen society. He also created numerous paintings. In 1801, he was a participant in the prize competition for fine artists in Weimar and had a brief correspondence with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Around 1804, he came into contact with the physician, writer and Goethe friend Nikolaus Meyer, for whose drama Kalloterpe he made illustrations.

After the death of his wife Elise, Rullmann went to Paris in 1805 or 1806; why he decided to take this step at the age of 40 and with a secure income is not known. According to Wilhelm Hurm, he worked in the studio of Jacques-Louis David — Napoleon's court painter, among others. From his time in Paris, various lithographs of actresses and actors for the magazine Carrier du Spectacle as well as a series of pictures on the Fualdès Affair, a judicial case that caused a great stir in France in 1817/18, are preserved.

From 1822, Rullmann's life is unknown, as no more works or news of him are preserved; he probably died in Paris.

The Archives of Paris holds in the files of the restored civil status a card indicating the death of a certain Louis Rullmann in Paris in the former 4th district on April 8, 1823.

After death, the National Archives in Paris kept an inventory "of Amadieu-Louis Rullmann, painter, living on rue de l'Arbre Sec, No. 46," made on July 12, 1823, study XVIII.

Most of his surviving œuvre is preserved in the Kunsthalle Bremen.

References

• Röver-Kann, Anne (2000). "Ludwig Rullmann. Idylle – Revolution – Restauration". In: Jörn Christiansen, ed., Kunst und Bürgerglanz in Bremen. Bremen: Hauschild Verlag, pp. 180–99.