27 



SPARTIANUS JEU.ua. 



SPECKTER, OTTO. 



On his return to Sweden he repaired to the university of Upsal, and 

 there applied himself to the study of medicine, but more especially of 

 botany, in which science he bad the advantage of the instruction of 

 the celebrated Liunasus. Under the auspices of that distinguished 

 man, ho now published hia ' AracenitateB Academic/ which gave, 

 ample proof that his voyage to China had not been made in vain. 

 His scanty means presented an insurmountable obstacle to the 

 accomplishment of bis wishes, which would have led him to investigate 

 the natural productions of foreign countries. The kindness of bis 

 friend and relation Ekeberg at length procured for him an appoint- 

 ment which afforded him some prospect of being able to accomplish 

 his favourite project, and he left Gottenburg on January 10, 1772, in 

 order to become tutor to the children of M. Kerste, then resident at 

 False Bay, near the Cape of Good Hope. He reached the Cape 

 on April 30th, and soon after his arrival met his countryman Thun- 

 berg, whose zeal for botany had led him to visit those southern 

 regions. Although Sparrmann's time was much occupied by duties 

 in which he took no interest, he made some researches, which he 

 was planning to extend, when Captain Cook touched at the Cape 

 with the ships Resolution and Adventure. Messrs. Forster, natu- 

 ralists to the expedition, being desirous of obtaining an assistant, 

 gave him the offer of accompanying them, of which he gladly 

 availed himself, and having with them sailed round the world, he 

 returned to Africa, in March 1775, after an absence of twenty-eight 

 months. 



He now practised his profession at Cape Town for a few months, in 

 order to obtain the means for his projected journey into the interior 

 of Africa. During his voyage he obtained sixty ducats by trans- 

 lating a Swedish medical work into English, and with that money and 

 the fruits of a four months' practice, he started for the interior on 

 July 25, 1775, in company with a young man named Immelman, who 

 was born in Africa. He first visited Mossel Bay ; then striking more 

 into the heart of the country, he penetrated as far as the banks of 

 the Great Fish River ; and afterwards taking a direct northerly course 

 he advanced as far as 28 30' S. lat., and 350 leagues from the Cape. 

 On February 6, 1776, he turned southward, and occasionally varying 

 a little from his former track, reached Cape Town on the 15th of 

 April, laden with specimens of plants and animals. 



In the course of the same year he returned home, and found that 

 the degree of Doctor of Medicine had been conferred upon him during 

 his absence. He was next elected a member of the Academy of 

 Sciences at Stockholm ; and on the death of Baron Geer, the ento- 

 mologist, was appointed his successor in the office of conservator of 

 the museum. His love of enterprise tempted him from bis retreat to 

 join Wad*troem's projected expedition to the interior of Africa 

 [WADSTROEM, CARL BERKS]; but on its failure he returned from 

 Senegal, and continued at Stockholm till his death, on July 20th 1820. 



Sparrmann's reputation is founded chiefly on his travels, which have 

 been translated into English and several other European languages. 

 In them he appears as a persevering traveller, an able naturalist, and 

 a truth-telling narrator; and it is no small merit that the map 

 attached to his book is the first in which the coast from the Cape to 

 the Great Fish River is laid down with any degree of accuracy. The 

 younger Linnseus gave the name of Sparrmannia to species of plants 

 belonging to the order Tilicece of Jussieu. 

 SPARTIANUS ^LIUS. [AUGUSTA HISTORIA.] 

 Sr-ECKTER, ERWIN, was born in 1806, at Hamburg, where his 

 father, a native of Hanover, was settled as a merchant. During the 

 siege of Hamburg, in the winter of 1813-14, his parents took refuge 

 with their family in the house of the banker Dehn, in Altona, where 

 there was a good collection of pictures, and where Erwin made the 

 acquaintance of the painter Herterich, who was also living in the 

 banker's house, and had a studio there. In this studio, in which he 

 spent nearly all his time, Erwin Speckter acquired his first instruction 

 in art, and his natural taste rapidly developed itself. In 1818 his 

 father and the painter Herterich erected a lithographic press, the first 

 which was established in North Germany, and young Speckter made 

 gome attempts in portraits, and in drawings to illustrate the old 

 Reineke Fuchs, or Reynard the Fox. 



In 1822 Von Rumohr returned to Hamburg from his second visit 

 to Italy, and, being struck with admiration of the promising talents 

 of Speckter, urged him on in his career, and particularly advised him 

 to study the monuments of art in and about the neighbourhood. 

 This led to an artistic tour which he performed in 1823, with his 

 brother Otto and another artist friend, through Schleswig and the 

 neighbouring country. The chief objects of this journey were the 

 carved altar-piece of Hans Briigman at Schleswig (lithographed by 

 Bohndel) and the picture of Memling at Liibeck, the latter of which 

 Erwin and Otto Speckter published in lithography. These early 

 works gave Speckter's mind the peculiar bias which at that time 

 characterised the majority of the younger artists of Germany, and the 

 arrival of Overbeck'a picture of ' Christ's Entry into Jerusalem,' for 

 the Marien Kirche of Liibeck, confirmed this tendency, and for a 

 time enlisted Speckter among the young enthusiasts who appear to 

 be devoted to the restoration of the old German religious art, with 

 the addition of academical drawing. [OVERBECK.] Overbeck's picture 

 has been lithographed by Otto Speckter. At this time Speckter's 

 chief labours were indiscriminate studies from nature of every descrip- 



tion, and portraits : his first oil-picture was a view of the town-house 

 of Molln. His adoration of Overbeck's picture seems to have kept 

 bim by a species of awe from attempting such high subjects himself; 

 be was also always guided in his studies by Rumohr. 



In 1825 he visited Munich, and placed himself under the direction 

 of Cornelius, who expressed great admiration for his ability; and, 

 after the completion of his cartoon of the ' Resurrection of Lazarus,' 

 allotted him one of the vaults or loggie in the corridor of the Pina- 

 kothek, which were to bo painted in fresco with incidents from the 

 lives of the greatest modern painters. Cornelius selected Fra Giovanni 

 da Fieaole for Speckter, as peculiarly suited to his taste. Speckter, 

 then about twenty-one years of age, received the commission with 

 exultation, but he did not live to execute it, for the Pinakothek was not 

 ready for the frescoes until many years after this date. [CORNELIUS.] 



In 1827 Speckter returned to Hamburg, chiefly to be in the vicinity 

 of the above-mentioned work by Overbeck, while he painted hia 

 picture of ' Christ and the Woman of Samaria ; ' but the deep impres- 

 sion made upon him by Overbeck's picture had a prejudicial effect 

 upon him, through his inordinate striving after abstract ideal repre- 

 sentation. His own dissatisfiiction with this work may be inferred 

 from his immediate but still gradual change of.manner; for in his 

 next work, the ' Women at the Tomb,' there is a far greater attention 

 to dramatic probability, and a more prominent part given to colour. 

 He painted at this time also several beautiful miniatures from sacred 

 subjects. In 1830 he appeared in entirely a new character in bis 

 arabesque and mythologic decorations of the house of the Syndicus 

 Sieveking near Hamburg. In September of this year, after the com- 

 pletion of these decorations, he set out by Berlin and Munich upon 

 his long-intended journey to Italy. The taste which had hitherto 

 possessed him, though it was gradually yielding to his own experience, 

 was finally subjected by the contemplation of the great Italian works 

 in the Museums of Berlin and Dresden, especially those of Fra Filippo 

 Lippi, Raflaelle, and the great Venetian masters. Speckter arrived in 

 Rome in January 1831, after a short stay at Venice, from which is 

 dated the, first of his very interesting series of Letters from Italy, 

 which, by the advice of Rumohr, were published some time after his 

 death. He remained in Italy, chiefly at Rome and Naples, until the 

 summer of 1834, when he was called to Hamburg to paint in fresco 

 the villa of Dr. Abendroth, then recently constructed by A. de 

 Chateauneuf. In Rome Speckter confined his labours almost exclu- 

 sively to studies, and these are in the general spirit of Italian art, and 

 quite in a different style from his early efforts. The only oil-paintings 

 he painted in Rome were two of Albano Women, in ideal characters, 

 and a large picture of Samson and Delilah, which was purchased by 

 Rumohr. 



In the spring of 1835, though suffering greatly from asthma, Speck- 

 ter commenced his frescoes ; he had in the interim completed three 

 of the principal cartoons : the subjects are from Grecian mythology, 

 and the figures are half the size of life. The three subjects were 1, 

 Minerva receiving the winged Pegasus from the Muses, and the Hippo- 

 crene fountain which sprung from the kick of the horse ; 2, the Graces, 

 in a grove of laurels, decorate the bow and quiver of Cupid, and offer 

 him a cup of ambrosial drink ; and 3, the Fates, lulled by the lyre of 

 Cupid, have ceased their labours, and recline on cushions ; the distance 

 is concealed by a curtain. The first of these designs, distinguished for 

 the exquisite beauty of its forms, was completed in fresco, and the 

 second was partly executed ; the third was not commenced. His weak 

 state forced Speckter to leave his work at the beginning of November, 

 and he died on the 23rd of that month in 1835, deeply lamented by 

 bis friends, and by none more than Rumohr, who wrote a short account 

 of the character of his genius, which is inserted in the biographical 

 notice of him which precedes his letters. These letters, published in 

 1846, under the title of 'Letters of a German Artist from Italy' 

 (' Briefe eines Deutschen Kiinstlersaus Italien '), 2 vols. 12mo, Leipzig, 

 1846, are full of interesting matter and reflections on art. Speckter's 

 whole career is a remarkable instance of the power of nature over con- 

 vention, where the love of art was real. The essential attractions of 

 art itself gradually drew him from an abstract conventional system, in 

 which art was only secondary to a peculiar sentiment independent of 

 it, to the art itself, and for its own sake. Speckter's transition from 

 convention to nature is not singular in the history of modem German 

 art. [LESSING.] 



* SPECKTER, OTTO, brother of Erwin, was born in Hamburg in 

 1807. Having adopted the profession of an artist, his studies were at 

 first pursued along with his brother, and the brothers went together to 

 Liibeck to study the picture of Memling, of which they published a 

 lithographic print. When Erwin was a devoted disciple of Overbeck, 

 Otto made an elaborate lithographic drawing of that artist's picture of 

 ' Christ's Entry into Jerusalem,' painted for the Marien Kirche at 

 Liibeck. Otto foMowed his brother in his admiration of the severe and 

 allegoric style of sacred art, then at the height of its vogue among the 

 younger painters of Germany ; but he subsequently gave free play to 

 his own inclinations, and struck out for himself a lower but pleasanter 

 and almost untrodden bye-path making the habits of animals the 

 special subject of his observations, and with his faithful pencil giving 

 many a quaint and naive delineation of them. These, by means of 

 the etching-needle and lithographic crayon, he largely multiplied, and 

 the name of Otto Speckter has everywhere become a favourite one with 



