Johann Franz ERMELS

Reilkirch 1621/41 - Nuremberg 1693

Biography

A landscape painter and etcher, Johann Franz (sometimes Johann Franciscus) Ermels grew up in Cologne and trained with the history painter Johann Hülsmann. He travelled to Holland, where he came under the influence of the painter Jan Both and other Italianate Dutch artists. From 1660 onwards he lived in Nuremberg, where he was among the circle of artists around Joachim von Sandrart after the latter settled there in 1674. Although he may not have travelled to Italy himself, Ermels introduced the manner of the Dutch Italianate artists to Germany. In later years he collaborated with Wilhlem van Bemmel, painting figures in the latter’s landscapes. Several large and highly finished drawings of classical and mythological landscapes by Ermels are in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. Other landscape drawings by the artist are today in the collections of the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Braunschweig, the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Orléans, the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, the Louvre in Paris, the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, the Albertina in Vienna, and elsewhere.