The Shadow and the Flame

Born in Munich, Germany, in 1814, August Schleich entered a world where the precision of the engraver was a family tradition. As the son of Johann Karl Schleich, a copper engraver and inspector at the k. topographischen Bureau, his early years were steeped in the technical rigors of line and light. He was part of a lineage of craftsmen, including his brothers Karl and Adrian, all of whom navigated the intricate demands of printmaking and visual representation. His formal training at the Königliche Akademie der Künste in Munich provided the foundation for a career that would eventually find its most singular expression in the study of animals.

Schleich’s fascination lay in the character of the creature, whether it was a living subject or one that had already met its end. He possessed a keen ability to capture the specific essence of a beast through form and expression. His work often focused on the anatomy and the quiet dignity of his subjects, moving between the delicate touch of watercolor and the weight of oil painting. He was a man of many methods, never content to rely on a single way of seeing the world.

Technique and Innovation

While his contemporaries often adhered to traditional oils, Schleich sought out the transformative power of soot and light. He became particularly noted for his development of Rauchbilder, or smoke pictures. This was a process born of chance and refined by a disciplined hand. By holding a plate or paper over a candle flame, he allowed a layer of soot to accumulate, creating a dark, velvety field. He then used a tool to scrape away the darkness, revealing highlights and subtle gradations of tone, much like the mezzotinto technique. To ensure these ephemeral works survived the passage of time, he sealed them with a layer of varnish.

His technical curiosity extended into several other specialized realms:

• Lithography and Etching: He utilized these methods to reproduce his studies of hunting animals and dogs.
• Galvanography: He contributed imagery to the early plates of this process, which had been invented by Franz von Kobell in 1842.
• Woodcuts: He provided detailed drawings for xylography, particularly of animal heads.

This experimentation was not merely for novelty. It was a search for a way to render the nuances of texture and the soft transitions of light that define the living form. Even when he attempted to produce large-scale cycles of life-sized animal paintings using watercolor and oil, the results were met with a mixed reception, suggesting a temperament better suited to the intimate precision of his smoke drawings than the grand scale of traditional academic painting.

The Munich Years

The later years of Schleich's life saw a gradual cooling of public interest. The very intensity and specificity that defined his smoke pictures perhaps made them difficult for the broader market to embrace as the decades progressed. He remained in Munich, the city of his birth and his training, until his death on December 26, 1865. He left behind a body of work that remains a testament to a specific moment in Bavarian art, where the boundaries between printmaking, scientific observation, and fine art were constantly being tested by the flame and the soot.