Hagen, August Matthias

He was born into the family of the small tenant-milling mill Ernst Andreas Hagen and Christina Dorothea Bush. The early childhood of the future artist was held at his father's mill. From the age of 6 he began to study carpentry. In 1802, at the age of eight, he was sent to a private, closed school in Wenden (Cesis) , where he first discovered a penchant for drawing. There at school, during an epidemic that claimed the lives of several of his comrades, he became seriously ill, but managed to recover, though with a decrease in vision. The latter circumstance required a long treatment and was reflected in further creativity. The situation was aggravated by the fact that once by mistake Hagen instilled a solution of nitric acid into his left eye. After a corneal burn, a thorn remained, which only increased over the years.

At the end of 1809, his father, making sure that his son was not without talent, decided to give him to study art craft. On the recommendation of Baron von Budberg, in one of the estates of which the Hagen family continued to live all these years, the teenager was accepted in June 1810 as an apprentice and apprentice to the Auberg painting workshop in Derpt. As it turned out very soon, the owner was not going to teach him, but only used as free labor. Without telling his father anything, Hagen left the workshop and for some time interrupted by casual earnings. Only in January 1811 did the father learn about the problems of his son and managed to identify him at the Drawing School at the University of Dorpat. One of the first Estonian national artists, a representative of the Dresden School of Painting, Karl August Senff ^{[1] [2] [3]} supervised the school and taught painting and graphics in it. Very soon, Hagen became one of his most outstanding students. Hagen himself later considered the years of study with Zenff the happiest years of his life.

The outbreak of war with Napoleon forced to interrupt classes at the Drawing School. Hagen even intended to join the militia, but when the French corps entered Livonia and went to Riga, his father urgently summoned his son to his place. On the estate of Baron Budberg von Kegeln, they were waiting for the possible appearance of the French, but apart from short-term raids, nothing terrible happened. In early spring of 1813, Hagen received a letter from his teacher Zenff with an invitation to continue classes and in May returned to Derpt .

In 1820, the 26-year-old Hagen, on the advice of his teacher, decided to go on a trip to Europe. The details of his four-year wanderings Hagen wrote down in detail in his diaries, which are now kept in the family of descendants of his eldest daughter. He traveled all the way from Travemünde , where he arrived by boat, to Italy and back on foot. Staying in cities, he sometimes took long breaks, visiting art galleries, getting to know famous painters. So, in Dresden, he managed to reduce his acquaintance with the Danish artist and sculptor Bertel Torvaldsen and the famous German poet, playwright and translator Johann Ludwig Thick . He developed his own technique for such acquaintances. First he visited art shops, where he found out the addresses of the authors of the paintings he liked. Then he went to get to know them, and although he did not always meet with a warm welcome, but if he was lucky, Hagen did not lag behind his “victim”, literally forcing artists to share the secrets of his skill.

Over the years of wanderings, Hagen made a huge number of sketches and sketches. He was especially struck by the Swiss Alps, with whom he fell in love once and for all. The theme of mountains in his work has become almost the main one. In Passau, Hagen met his love, with which he eventually returned to his native Derpt.

Almost the most fruitful years of his work followed. He traveled a lot in the Baltic States, Finland, visited the Caucasus, where he never parted with an easel. Hagen's eldest daughter, Julia, inherited a passion for painting, and he studied it with special zeal.

In 1837, an exhibition of Hagen was held in St. Petersburg, after which the Imperial Academy of Arts awarded him the honorary title of " free artist ". In St. Petersburg, Hagen met the poet Vasily Zhukovsky , who greatly appreciated his work, and thanks to which, many landscapes of Hagen began to be acquired in their private collections by metropolitan aristocrats.

In 1838, after the death of his teacher Zenff, Hagen led the Drawing School at the University of Dorpat . His students were artists esteemed today in Estonia - Friedrich Sigismund Stern, Voldemar Friedrich Krueger, Herman Eduard Hartmann. Gradually, the vision problems that haunted Hagen from a young age reached such an extent that they began to seriously interfere with his work. Blinded in one eye, in 1851, Hagen was forced to leave the Drawing School. He also tried to regain his sight when, taking advantage of the opportunity, he went with his daughter for three years to Italy , where young Julia improved in painting, but everything was in vain. Upon reaching 60 years, Hagen finally left the profession.

Still full of strength, he found the courage to learn a new craft. Remains of vision allowed him to become a photographer, and a true professional in his field. In Dorpat, he quickly gained a reputation as one of the best masters, and his small salon became almost the most popular. The archive of the University of Tartu today still contains many pictures taken by the old artist.

Augustus Matthias Hagen died in Dorpat in 1878 at the age of 84 and was buried in the Raadi necropolis ( Vanana Jaani cemetery), section P12, location 58 ^[4] .

After the artist’s death, it turned out that most of his works are in private collections throughout Europe. Several paintings are kept in museums in Estonia. Two landscapes of Hagen: "Mountains" ^[5] and "Sea Bay" ^[6] can be seen in the hall of German art of the State Hermitage Museum .

• wife: Johanna ur von Paumgarten (1802 - 1885).
• son: Karl August Hagen (Hagen) (1823 - after 1886) - pharmacist, pharmacy owner in Old Bykhov , Mogilev province;
  • grandson: Alexander Karlovich Gagen (1864 - 1938) - manager of the Hunter's Castle estate Count A. V. Stenbock-Fermor ^[7] in the village of Lakhta near St. Petersburg ;
    • great-grandson: Nikolai Alexandrovich Hagen (1895 - 1969) - Soviet military leader, lieutenant general ;
• daughter: Julia Hagen-Schwartz (1824 - 1902) - artist, first woman - member of the Imperial Academy of Arts ;
• daughter: Gotta Berta Augustin von Kerber (1832 - 1912) - wife of Professor Bernhard Augustovich von Kerber ;
  • grandson: Ludwig Berngardovich Kerber (1863 - 1919) - Vice Admiral of the Russian Imperial Fleet ;
    • great-grandchildren: Victor L. Corvin-Kerber (1894 - 1970), Leonid L. Kerber (1903 - 1993) and Boris L. Kerber (1907 - 1978) - aircraft designers.

• Kopytov G.A. Kerbery. Surname code. XIV — XXI centuries first book // ed. "Petersburg - XXI century." 2013
• ZHZL (FROM LIVONIA WITH LOVE Part 1 - AUGUST MATTIAS HAGEN.)
• August Matthias Hagen
• Epp Preem Sechs deutschbaltische Künster. August Mattias Hagen (1794-1878). Reisetagebucher des Künstlers aus den 1820-1821 Jahren // 2008 Kuus baltisaksa kunstnikku;
• Epp Preem August Mattias Hagen. Kunstnikku reisipäevikud (1794-1878) .// Tallinn, 2011.
• August Matthias Hagen Anfang einer Lebensgeschichte. 1857.