After 1790 Dannecker lived, with the exception of a few short intervals, wholly at Stutgardt; three of these intervals were occasioned -by a visit to Paris, to view the works of art collected together by Napoleon ; by a visit to Zurich to model tho bust of Lavater; and by another to Vienna, iu the time of the congress in 1815, to model the bust of 3letternich. He was professor of sculpture, and director of the School of Art, at Stutgardt; and inspector of the Royal Gallery of Ludwigsburg. He was offered iu 1808 the professorship of sculpture in tbo Academy of Munich, which he decliued. Ho died on the 8th of December 1841.
Dannecker's works are chiefly executed in the round; there are few bas-reliefs by him, but those few are excellent : n predilection also for representing the female figure is a characteristic of his taste. He was likewise excellent in portraiture ; he had a strong perception of indi viduality of character, and great facility in expressing it. His works however, during the course of his long career, evince the prevalence of a various taste in design in three different periods. At first his works were not marked by any particular originality of thought or excellence of design, but were conceived and executed in the spirit of such works as be had access to in Wilrtemberg or at Paris, and were in the taste of the French schooL In Rome other styles were revealed to him, both in the works of Canova and iu the antique, and his own works in a few years were characterised by a strong expression of the ideal, especially in the female form. The following works aro eminently dis tinguiohed in this respect:-Illourning Friendship,' executed in 1SO4 for the monument raised by Frederio, king of WUrtemberg, to his minister, Count Zeppelin, at Ludwigsburg; the 'Ariulne reclining on a Leopard,' in the garden of M. Bethmenn at Frankfurt; and 'Cupid and Psyche' in the royal villa of ltosenstein near Stutgardt. Hie later work. were morn ideal in character than in form, and his object was to personify religious resignation. Of these his figures of Christ, John
the Baptist, and Faith, are the most celebrated. His male figures however are offemluato, and in his Christ, meekness, more peculiarly a female quality, is the predominant sentiment.
Dannecker's greatest excellence was in his busts; he has left many interesting mouuments in this branch of art, and foremost among thorn are the small and colossal busts of Schiller ; the busts of Lavater, Oluck, the kings Frederic and William of Wiirtemberg, and other members of the royal family, and the medallions of Haug and Jung Stilling.
Dannecker ranks as one of the best of the modern sculptors, and his great merit seems to consist in a proper perception and representation of the finer and more gentle qualities of the soul, and of the more delicate characteristics of the human frame. His forms are true to nature, but uniform in character; and the sphere of his art is very circumscribed. Danneckor cover attempted, or at lewdt never accom plished, the representation of manly vigour or robust masculine beauty; in the female figure however he was natural, graceful, and unaffected ; but iu Ws draperies he was frequently untrue. Instead of the natural and elegant folds which loose draperies' assume on the human figure, ho gave way to the conventional affectation of allowing the exact form of the body beneath the draperies, as if they were wet, and adhered to it; producing an effect by no means beautiful, and, except when blown by tho wind, unnatural ; and in this case the parts not attached to the body must show a corresponding action.
An accouut of the life and works of Dannecker was published at Hamburg in 1841, with 25 lithographic prints of his principal works, from drawings by his pupil Wagner, likewise s. celebrated sculptor. There is also a notice of Dannecker in the first and second numbers of the linnsfblefe for 1842.