The artist family must not have been highly respected in Stuttgart alone. The father "court gilder", the older brother Victor painter for the ducal court, responsible among other things for theater decorations, ceiling and wall paintings, sculptor, professor at the newly founded university in Stuttgart. His nephew Carl Alexander became one of the most famous German architects of the 19th century.
Hundreds of pictures of Nicolaus Innocentius Wilhelm Clemens Heideloff still exist. However, his life is known only in narrow facts. Born in Stuttgart in 1761, Heideloff attended the Hohe Karlsschule, a military academy and elite school notorious for its drill - incidentally, like Friedrich Schiller, for whom the Karlsschule was a traumatic experience. Nicolaus is trained as an engraver and etcher, working under his brother for the duke, turning some of his brother's designs into etchings and engravings, including hunting scenes and celebrations. Until then, everything goes "normally" with Nicolaus.
In 1784 he is sent to Paris for further training, where he remains until the outbreak of the French Revolution, which upsets everything, including his life. He flees to London, where he joins forces with another German immigrant, the jack-of-all-trades Rudolph Ackermann: entrepreneur, inventor, publisher, lithographer. Presumably, the enterprising Ackermann introduces Nicolaus, a gifted etcher and engraver, to a fairly new market: Fashion magazines. Women's magazines reach a high circulation of up to 2,000 copies in the 18th century and target the wealthy and educated middle class. Nicolaus publishes a monthly fashion magazine from 1794 to 1803 that includes elaborate colored copper engravings, aquatints, and etchings: The Gallery of Fashion. It circulated in only 450 copies, but even Queen Charlotte is said to have been among its subscribers. The Gallery of Fashion is the most exclusive and famous fashion magazine of the Regency, an era roughly from 1795 to 1820. Regency fashion presents itself - inspired by the ancient toga - with romantic simple, sober white "Jane Austen dresses" with high waists. Heideloff reproduces in the Gallery of Fashion everything that was fashionable: from morning dress to sumptuous evening wear to mourning clothes, because many women had to spend a considerable period of their lives mourning for close and distant relatives - but to do so fashionably, please. The accessories that set the style for the Regency, such as purses, muffs, hoods, jewelry, the entire outfit up to the hairstyle are illustrated and discussed on the opposite page. Why did this fashion magazine end in 1803? Nicolaus Heideloff also sets historical scenes, battles, the British Navy with all its glorious ships or caricatures for Rudolph Ackermann during his time in London until 1814, often as hand-colored etchings.
How is it that in 1815 he becomes director of the Royal Picture Gallery, now the Mauritshuis, in The Hague and lives there until his death in 1837? He made copies of works of art in the Picture Gallery, some of which are preserved as drawings, others as etchings and engravings. A small note tells in 2020 that the Mauritzhuis gave the Dutch Institute of Art History (RKD) 90 drawings by Nicolaus Heideloff and 164 original prints.
The artist family must not have been highly respected in Stuttgart alone. The father "court gilder", the older brother Victor painter for the ducal court, responsible among other things for theater decorations, ceiling and wall paintings, sculptor, professor at the newly founded university in Stuttgart. His nephew Carl Alexander became one of the most famous German architects of the 19th century.
Hundreds of pictures of Nicolaus Innocentius Wilhelm Clemens Heideloff still exist. However, his life is known only in narrow facts. Born in Stuttgart in 1761, Heideloff attended the Hohe Karlsschule, a military academy and elite school notorious for its drill - incidentally, like Friedrich Schiller, for whom the Karlsschule was a traumatic experience. Nicolaus is trained as an engraver and etcher, working under his brother for the duke, turning some of his brother's designs into etchings and engravings, including hunting scenes and celebrations. Until then, everything goes "normally" with Nicolaus.
In 1784 he is sent to Paris for further training, where he remains until the outbreak of the French Revolution, which upsets everything, including his life. He flees to London, where he joins forces with another German immigrant, the jack-of-all-trades Rudolph Ackermann: entrepreneur, inventor, publisher, lithographer. Presumably, the enterprising Ackermann introduces Nicolaus, a gifted etcher and engraver, to a fairly new market: Fashion magazines. Women's magazines reach a high circulation of up to 2,000 copies in the 18th century and target the wealthy and educated middle class. Nicolaus publishes a monthly fashion magazine from 1794 to 1803 that includes elaborate colored copper engravings, aquatints, and etchings: The Gallery of Fashion. It circulated in only 450 copies, but even Queen Charlotte is said to have been among its subscribers. The Gallery of Fashion is the most exclusive and famous fashion magazine of the Regency, an era roughly from 1795 to 1820. Regency fashion presents itself - inspired by the ancient toga - with romantic simple, sober white "Jane Austen dresses" with high waists. Heideloff reproduces in the Gallery of Fashion everything that was fashionable: from morning dress to sumptuous evening wear to mourning clothes, because many women had to spend a considerable period of their lives mourning for close and distant relatives - but to do so fashionably, please. The accessories that set the style for the Regency, such as purses, muffs, hoods, jewelry, the entire outfit up to the hairstyle are illustrated and discussed on the opposite page. Why did this fashion magazine end in 1803? Nicolaus Heideloff also sets historical scenes, battles, the British Navy with all its glorious ships or caricatures for Rudolph Ackermann during his time in London until 1814, often as hand-colored etchings.
How is it that in 1815 he becomes director of the Royal Picture Gallery, now the Mauritshuis, in The Hague and lives there until his death in 1837? He made copies of works of art in the Picture Gallery, some of which are preserved as drawings, others as etchings and engravings. A small note tells in 2020 that the Mauritzhuis gave the Dutch Institute of Art History (RKD) 90 drawings by Nicolaus Heideloff and 164 original prints.
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