Wilhelm Hecht

Wilhelm Hecht was a German wood engraver and etcher.

Biography

Hecht was born in Ansbach, Bavaria. He studied the art of wood engraving with the printmaker Döring in Nuremberg from 1857 to 1859, continued his education in larger studios in Leipzig, Berlin and Stuttgart, and in 1868 opened his own studio in Munich. In 1885 he was called to Vienna to head the newly founded xylographic department of the k.u.k. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei. At the same time, he was made professor for wood engraving at the School for Applied Arts, now the Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien. He retired to Graz, then to Munich, and in 1912 to Linz, where he died.
Hecht applied his talent and skills particularly to copy-engraving. He was assigned by the Society for Reproducing Art in Vienna to execute several woodcuts of paintings in the Schack Gallery in Munich, leading him to devote his talents to etching, which thereafter became the almost sole focus of his artistic production.
He completed etchings of works by Schwind, Böcklin, Lenbach, Rottmann, Schleich, van Dyck und Jan van Schorel – works of art in their own right - and produced two original etchings. He also demonstrated exceptional skills in composition techniques. Hecht made wood engravings for
Grimms' Fairy Tales, Goethe's Faust, Schiller's Song of the Bell and for Heinrich von Kleist's The Broken Jug.

Literature

Eva-Maria Hanebutt-Benz: Studien zum deutschen Holzstich im 19. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt a. M.: Buchhändler-Vereinigung 1984, Sp. 1060, 1202f. Hecht, Wilhelm. In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, 4th edn., p. 264. Verlag des Bibliographischen Instituts, Leipzig/Wien 1885–1892 Hecht, Wilhelm. In: Hans Vollmer : Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Vol 16, p. 200: Hansen–Heubach. E. A. Seemann, Leipzig 1923