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Philipp Otto Runge




, Hamburg ]]

Phillip Otto Runge ( 1777 - 1810 ) was a Romantic German painter and draughtsman. Although he made a late start to his career and died young, he ranks second only to Friedrich among German Romantic painters.


LIFE AND WORK

Born within a family of shipbuilders, Runge, after the reading of poet Tieck, decided to pursue an artistic career.
Runge studied under Jens Juel at the Copenhagen Academy ( 1799 - 1801 ), then moved to Dresden , where he knew Caspar David Friedrich . In 1803 he settled in Hamburg . Runge was of a mystical, Pantheistic turn of mind, and in his work he tried to express notions of the Harmony of the universe through symbolism of colour, form, and numbers.He also wrote poetry and to this end he planned a series of four Painting s called ''The Times of the Day'', designed to be seen in a special building and viewed to the accompaniment of Music and Poetry .This concept was common romantic artistics trying to achieve "total art", or a fusion between all forms of art.
He painted two versions of ''Morning'' (Kunsthalle, Hamburg), but the others did not advance beyond drawings. Runge was also one of the best German Portraitist s of his period; several examples are in Hamburg. His style was rigid, sharp, and intense, at times almost Naive . In 1810, after researching colour for several years and corresponding with Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe , he published ''Die Farbenkugel'' ''(The Colour Sphere)'', in which he describes a three-dimensional Schematic for organizing all conceivable colors according to hue, brightness, and saturation.
Runge died, due to tuberculosis, in Hamburg.