John Lewis Krimmel’s Christmas Sketches

By Tyler Johnson, Winterthur’s Assistant Manager of Estate Tour Programs

The Winterthur Library is home to more than a million objects, books, and ephemera. Contained within this vast treasure trove are seven sketchbooks in watercolor, pencil, and pen and ink kept by German-born genre artist John Lewis Krimmel (1786–1821). The son of a confectioner in Württemberg, Krimmel emigrated to the United States in 1809 and began painting portraits, street scenes, and miniatures.

Krimmel’s paintings and sketchbooks are filled with his observations of daily American life and have been used in many interpretations across the museum’s history. Winterthur owns three of his paintings, The Quilting Frolic, Self-Portrait of John Lewis Krimmel with Susannah Krimmel and Her Children, and Election Day in Philadelphia. These works could each have their own blog post as they inspire many conversation points and discussion topics.

Special to the Yuletide season, one of Krimmel’s sketchbooks contains some of the earliest known depictions of Christmas trees in American art. His two Christmas Eve watercolor sketches show a multi-generational family gathered around tabletop trees (two trees in the first sketch, one in the second). Drawn between 1812 and 1820, they feature broadleaf evergreens, perhaps holly bushes, decorated with springerle cookies. The table holds plates filled with cookies and paper cornucopias stuffed with tiny treats which were left for the children by the Belsnickel, a Germanic gift giver, as their Christmas gifts.

Until the mid-1800s, Christmas trees in America were usually placed on tabletops. As in Krimmel’s sketches, the edible ornaments doubled as gifts, making the tree a one-day wonder. The trees were decorated in secret to surprise the children, who immediately devoured the goodies when they spotted them on Christmas Eve. Around the time of the American Civil War, people started combining gifts on the Christmas tree with purely decorative ornaments, heralding its transformation into an icon of the season.

Krimmel’s two Christmas Eve sketches are similar in scope but have some variations, especially with the young child and dog interactions. The first sketch features two small Christmas trees flanking a tiny house, while the second features one larger, taller tree, with many of the family members positioned differently. Each shows Krimmel’s penchant for capturing a special moment in time.

There are many early holiday traditions, and for people of Pennsylvania German descent, John Lewis Krimmel’s sketches display a staple of their holiday practices—a tabletop tree decorated with ornaments made of traditional sweets for an edible extravaganza. And family members of all ages enjoying the season and each other’s company in a delightfully festive setting.

For more information about John Lewis Krimmel, look for the book John Lewis Krimmel: Genre Artist of the Early Republic by Dr. Annelise Harding.