Just someone who is interested and loves art. I am neither an artist nor art historian but I am fascinated with the interpretaion and symbolism used in paintings and love to read about the life of the artists and their subjects.
My featured artist today is a Dutch lady who became a great portrait painter but may be best remembered for another type of art which I will tell you about later.
Portrait of Lizzie Ansingh by Thérèse Schwartze (1895)
Maria Elisabeth Georgina Ansingh, better known as simply Lizzie Ansingh, was born on March 13th 1875 in the Dutch town of Utrecht. She was the eldest of three daughters of the pharmacist and amateur painter, Edzard Willem Ansingh and Clara Theresia Schwartze.
Johann Georg Schwartze self portrait (1869)
Her maternal grandfather was Johann Georg Schwartze a painter from Northern Netherlands who grew up in America and her aunt who was the portrait painter Thérèse Schwartze, and it was she who gave Lizzie her first drawing lessons. For many years during her childhood, due to her mother’s poor health, Lizzy lived with her aunt Thérèse and it was this aunt who encouraged her to paint and as French impressionism was the rage around that time, Thérèse introduced Lizzy to all sorts of impressionist painters of the time. Both of them also visited many museums and art exhibitions together, which further helped Lizzy gain a perspective on art.
Theresia Ansingh by Thérèse Schwartze
Lizzie’s youngest sister Theresia Ansingh was also a painter but did not take up art, using the non-de-plume Sorella, (meaning “sister”), until she was approaching the age of 50.
Housemates by Thérèse Schwartze (c.1919)
Around 1915, Thérèse Schwartze completed a group portrait of those living together in the Ansingh/Schwartze household. The setting is a room in their house in which a table is the only furniture on show. There are five people around the table. Sitting, with her hands on her lap, is Thérèse Schwartze’s sister the sculptor, Georgine Elisabeth Schwartze. Standing at the back, dressed in black with her hands crossed, is Lizzie Ansingh’s mother, Clara Theresia Ansingh-Schwartze. In the centre, seated at the table with an open book resting on two other books is Anton Gillis Cornelis van Duyl, the journalist and editor-in-chief of the Algemeen Handelsblad, the husband of Thérèse Schwartze. On the right of the group is Lizzie’s sister Thérèse Ansingh and on the far right, standing, leaning against her sister, Maria Elisabeth Georgina (‘Lizzy’) Ansingh.
Kunstenaars or Amsterdamse Joffers: Ritsema, Surie, Osieck, Ansingh, Van den Berg, Van Regteren-Altena en Bodenheim.
In 1894, when Lizzie was nineteen years old she enrolled at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (State Academy of Fine Arts) and studied Fine Art in a separate class for female students and this helped her to further develop her artistic skills. At the Academy, she also learned about human anatomy by studying Greek and Roman statues. Whilst studying at the Academy she and a number of fellow students, Marie van Regteren Altena, Suze Bisschop-Robertson, Coba Ritsema, Ans van den Berg, Jacoba Surie, Nelly Bodenheim, Betsy Westendorp-Osieck and Jo Bauer-Stumpff, formed a group in Amsterdam called Amsterdamse Joffers. This was a group of like-minded young Dutch female painters who would meet up regularly and share their artwork and more importantly support each other on their artistic journey. Many came from wealthy and artistic families and did not depend on painting for their livelihoods. Thérèse Schwartze would often act as a mentor/facilitator at their meetings. It became a major movement in Amsterdam and opened ways for many female painters to pursue art as a full-time profession. Lizzy Ansingh joined many other art associations such as Arti et Amicitiae, kunstvereniging Sint Lucas and Pulchri Studio. Lizzy Ansingh graduated from the art academy in 1897 and by this time Thérèse Schwartze had persuaded Lizzie to make painting a full-time career. This is what she actually did.
The Source of Life by Lizzie Ansingh
As I alluded to at the start of this blog, although Lizzy Ansingh, like her aunt, painted portraits, she will be remembered for being a painter of dolls. Thérèse Schwartze, her aunt encouraged this unusual interest. Lizzy purchased an antique dollhouse from 1740s and would spend hours arranging her dolls looking for inspiration for her paintings and would often buy pieces for furnishing the dollhouse.
Flora by Lizzy Ansingh
Sadly, on the night of April 17th 1943, Lizzy’s Amsterdam studio, along with the doll-house, was severely damaged when a British bomber was shot down, destroying the Carlton Hotel and much of the Reguliersdwarsstraat alongside her studio. The fire which followed was the most devastating in Amsterdam since 1659. Fortunately Lizzie restored the dollhouse and is now part of the Museum Arnhem collection.
Child on a Carp by Lizzie Ansingh
A Doll wearing a Mantilla by Lizzie Ansingh
Lizzie wrote two children’s books, A Little Fruit Basket in 1927 and Aunt Tor has Her Birthday in 1950. She also collaborated with illustrator, Nelly Bodenhein, and published a booklet of illustrations with lines of verse. Her poetry was published in the literary magazine Maatstaf from 1956 to 1957.
Lizzy Ansingh on the occasion of her 80th birthday (13 March 1955) in her Amsterdam studio on Prinsengracht. Photo Ben van Meerendonk / AHF, IISH Collection, Amsterdam
Lizzie Ansingh never married. She died in Amsterdam on December 14th 1959 aged 84.
Information for this blog came from a number of sources including:
For many of my blogs recently, I have concentrated on nineteenth century artists as this is one of my favourite artistic era but I have always been fascinated by the artists who flourished during the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history which lasted from 1588, when the Dutch Republic was established until 1672, when the Rampjaar occurred. The Rampjaar, or Disaster Year, was the year of the outbreak of the Franco-Dutch War, when France invaded and nearly overran the Dutch Republic. It was the time of its peripheral conflict, the Third Anglo-Dutch War, and at the same time, it faced the threat of an English naval blockade in support of the French.
Portrait of a Family by Jacob Ochtervelt (1663)
The seventeenth century was a torrid time for the people of the Netherlands who had had to endure war with the old Spanish monarchist with their Catholic cultural traditions. It meant that Dutch art had to reinvent itself almost entirely, a task in which it was very largely successful. The painting of religious subjects of earlier days declined and a large prosperous new market for all kinds of secular subjects evolved. It was an era that saw genre paintings dominated by the likes of Vermeer, Gabriel Metsu, Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Jacob van Ruisdael and Jan Steen to mention but a few.
A Singing Violinist set within a niche (thought to be a self-portrait) by Jacob Ochtervelt (c.1670)
Today, my featured artist was a contemporary of these great Dutch painters who was also active during this period but was less well known. He is Jacob Ochtervelt, a Dutch Golden Age painter who was born in Rotterdam in late January 1634. He was the son and third child of of Lucas Hendricksz, who was employed as a bridgeman of the Roode Brugge, and Trintje Jans. He studied painting and lived in Haarlem from 1646 to 1655 apprenticed to the landscape painter Nicolaes Berchem along with fellow apprentice Pieter de Hooch, who became famous for his genre works of quiet domestic scenes and known for his kamergezichten or “room-views” with ladies and gentlemen in conversation. Ochtervelt moved back to Rotterdam in 1655 where he was a pupil of Ludolf de Jongh, who also taught Pieter de Hooch.
The Music Lesson by Jacob Ochtervelt (1670)
Jacob Ochtervelt married Dirkje Meesters in the Reformed Church of Rotterdam on December 14th 1655. Due to the lack of baptismal records of the church, it is thought that the couple apparently had no children. On January 7th 1657 the following year, however, on January 7, 1666, Ochtervelt was appointed one of two guardians of the orphaned children of his brother Jan. It was thought that Jan may have been a sailor; and according to records, he had died on a return voyage from the East Indies.
Singing Violinist by Jacob Ochtervelt (c.1666)
Ochtervelt depicted scenes which centred on the pleasures of the aristocratic life and leisure—men and women were portrayed reading and writing letters, eating and drinking, making music, and playing games. However, he also depicted the “them and us” perspective with his paintings focusing on the interactions between the upper and lower classes, and the setting for these works was often the threshold of an elegant townhouse. These were known as Voorhuis painting. Voorhuis, which translated means entrance hall or foyer and these paintings were a popular Dutch painting genre of the 17th century, which depicted a view from inside a wealthy house with affluent residents standing in the entrance hall and their interaction with the callers to the house. The foyer is lit up from the light emanating through the open front door bathing the area in light and colour. Ochtervelt was a master of this genre and compassionately depicted the people from the differing social classes.
A Nurse and a Child in an Elegant Foyeby Jacob Ochtervelt (1663)
An example of Ochtervelt’s Voorhuis paintings was his 1663 work entitled A Nurse and a Child in an Elegant Foyer, which is in the National Gallery of London collection. It is a depiction of a young boy presumed to be about three years old. He wears his hair in long curls and is dressed in a freshly ironed white dress. It was common for boys until the age of around seven before they started wearing breeches. The young boys hand is outstretched offering money to a family of beggars who have called at his home. The housemaid gently holds her charge’s hand while in the background we see the child’s parents looking on through the open doorway. They beam with pride at their son’s generosity, something they have instilled in him, a virtue taught in the home and of great importance to the Dutch. Outside we see a beggar boy as he sets his foot gingerly on the hall floor as he waits to receive a coin. His mother holds a nursing infant to her breast as she covertly observes her son receiving the money. Ochtervelt skilfully contrasts the two classes of people, the privileged world of the aristocratic family with the insecurities of the life of the poor. He has achieved that by differentiating the dark, ragged clothing of the beggars with the grand marble hallway and the radiant attire of those who live in the impressive townhouse.
Street Musicians at the Door by Jacob Ochtervelt (1665)
A similar depiction can be seen in Ochtervelt’s 1665 painting entitled Street Musicians at the Door which can be seen at the St Louis Art Museum. The setting is similar to the previous painting – the foyer of an upper-class Dutch home. In the mid-ground we see the lady of the house and to the right, the housemaid wearing her pinafore holding the hand of a very young, very excited child dressed in a blue gown as she opens the front door of the house. On the outside we see two dishevelled street musicians who are going from house to house trying to elicit money and who would play some music once they had been paid. There is a moral to this depiction. It is about the child’s mother teaching her child to give coins to the hard working musicians. There is an obvious contrast between the wealthy occupants of the house who are dressed in bright reds and blues, and the musicians, standing outside, begging for money, dressed in shades of murky brown. Through the open doorway we get a perspective view of city buildings culminating in a church.
Bettelmusikanten (Begging Musicians) by Jacob Ochtervelt (c.1665)
A very similar scenario can be seen in Ochtervelt’s painting entitled Bettelmusikanten, which translated means “Begging Musicians”. The setting is once again the entrance area or foyer of a wealthy home. To the left stands a young woman and through the open front door we look into the nighttime darkness and see two musicians who have been going from house to house begging for money as recompense for playing a tune. They are about to enter the voorhuis with its marble-tiled hallway. The woman is holding on to a toddler with both hands who in turn is unaware of the musicians at the door but is concentrating all his efforts on attracting the dog’s attention by waving the yellow ribbons of his dress. Another child on the right bedecked in red satin dress with an expensive lace collar looks mesmerised by the sight of the musicians in the doorway and is already proffering money to recompense the musicians for their tunes.
The Regents of the Leper House, by Jacob Ochtervelt (1674)
The last record of Ochtervelt living in Rotterdam was in 1672, the Ramplaar year. He and his wife were recorded on July 10th 1672 as being a witness at the baptism of the daughter of Jan Meesters and Marya de Jong in a Rotterdam church. There is clear evidence that Ochtervelt and his wife moved to Amsterdam where he was to spend the remainder of his life. It is generally thought that the reason for the move was that Ochtervelt believed that he would find more patrons and receive more lucrative commissions in Amsterdam. Soon he was proved right when in that year he received his largest commission: a group portrait of the Regents of the Amsterdam Leper House. The painting which is now on loan to the Rijksmuseum from the City of Amsterdam. The painting depicts the four regents of the Leprozenhuis, Anthonie de Haes, Gilles Hens, dr. Bonavendura van Dortmont and Isaac Hudde.
Lazarus and the Dog
It is thought that the original painting was slightly larger than this version judged by the way the depiction of the dog in the foreground is almost cut off. On the wall in the background is painted Apollo, and to the right above the door is the Poor Lazarus, just like the lepers “full of ulcers”, whose wounds are licked by a dog as told in the Bible (Luke 16: 19-21):
“…There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores…”
An Interior with a Lady giving Alms to Beggars by Jacob Ochtervelt
Documents from the Burial Register of the Nieuwezijds Chapel in Amsterdam show that Jacob Ochtervelt died in April 1682, aged 58 and his name was entered in the Burial Register of the Nieuwezijds Chapel in Amsterdam on May 1, 1682 which stated that at the time of his death he had been living at the Schapenmarkt near the Amsterdam Mint. His wife Dirkje was not left a wealthy widow and following her husband’s death she moved back to Rotterdam and died in February 1710 and was buried at the Dutch Reformed Church of Rotterdam.
Information for this blog came mainly from the following websites:
My story today about an artist is a sad one. It is a tale of rags to riches and back to rags. My featured artist is George Edward Handel Lucas who because of artistic ability at a very young age was labelled by some as an artistic genius.
E G Handel Lucas self portrait painted on is 26th birthday (1887)
It all began at No.87 Church Street in Croydon on May 4th 1861 when George Edward Handel Lucas was born. He was the fifth child. His father, Edwin Newton Lucas, was a tailor and men’s outfitter by trade and had his shop on London Road. In 1875 the shop closed and his father ran his business from home. His father’s love of classical music, especially the works of George Frederick Handel led to his son’s middle name. This love of music led to his father’s second job, as for two evenings a week, he gave singing lessons at is house, in order to boost his income.
Autumn and Winter by EG Handel Lucas (1879)
Despite his business and his music tuition the large family found it difficult to make ends meet. In 1868, Handel Lucas was enrolled at Whitgift Middle School, which at that time provided education from the age of seven to fourteen for sons of the poor of the parish. Handel Lucas loved drawing and painting from an early age and at the age of fourteen he exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists. He was the youngest person to have ever achieved that. Lucas left full-time schooling at the age of fourteen. He set himself up in a studio in a lean-to at his family’s Church Street home and could now finally concentrate on his art.
A Bird’s Nest and Flowers on a Mossy Bank by EG Handel Lucas (1879)
Handel Lucas’ favoured art genre was floral painting and still life. He would spend hours on his depiction of the minutiae of the flowers. Slowly his work became known and from the money he accumulated from their sale he would fund his artistic training. Lucas studied life drawing in the evenings at Heatherley School of Fine Art and for a short time studied at the St John’s Wood Art School.
Roses from the Vicerage (1877)
In 1877, eighteen-year-old Lucas completed his painting entitled Roses from the Vicarage and he submitted it to the Royal Academy annual exhibition where it was sold on the opening day. The price realised was £30 which is the equivalent of £4500 in today’s money. Three years later, in December 1880, a reviewer wrote, in relation to the work that Lucas had exhibited at the Royal Academy:
“…I am not surprised to find that the critics are praising the works of that young artist, Mr. E. G. H. Lucas. I was certain when his `Roses’ was in the Royal Academy three years ago… that time was only needed for him to come to the front…”
Smarting from a Hard Hit by EG Handel Lucas
Lucas’ artistic output was small due to the time it took him to complete a painting. His attention to detail was such that his completed works rarely took less than six months to complete and in many cases, very much longer. He exhibited his work regularly from 1879 to 1891 at the Royal Academy annual exhibitions and often his work was positioned “on the line”, a rare privilege for an “outsider”. His work received many complimentary reviews in the press with one art critic stating:
“…Mr Handel Lucas… possesses in a more marked degree than any still life painter I have met with, that genius which a great writer has informed us is an infinite capacity for taking pains..”
“While the Cat’s Away the Mice will Play” by EG Handel Lucas (1881)
Soon he and his artwork became well known. Although his still life floral works took him so long to complete they sold well, he decided to concentrate on figurative painting. Although this was an idea which would increase his output he also knew there was still a demand for his floral paintings and such commissions brought in the money and were far more popular in comparison to his figurative works. It was all about supply and demand.
In 1895, Lucas married Clare Mary Stunell and they went on to have two daughters, Elsie Cecil Lucas born in 1899 and Marie Newton Lucas in 1900. These new additions added pressure on the family finances and the time he spent looking after his wife and children resulted on his output being as little as only two or three major paintings a year, and this in turn meant that their family income fell.
The artwork of Lucas with all its great attention to detail was adored by English art lovers in the last decade of the 1800s but at the beginning of the twentieth century the genre began to fall out of favour with the British public’s interest switching to Impressionism. Sales of Lucas’ work dwindled.
The Pears Annual
One light at the end of the tunnel for Lucas at this time was that the Pears Soap Company wanted to buy some of his paintings which they sought to incorporate in their well-liked annuals. Eventually they bought three of his paintings.
The Cause of Many Troubles by EG Handel Lucas (1903)
His painting entitled The Cause of Many Troubles was bought by Pears in 1903 and was published in 1906. It depicts such things as playing cards, dice, a tombola, a picture of a racehorse and a flagon of beer. All items reminded us of gambling and the imbibing of alcohol and the perils of such pastimes. A further reminder of what these “hobbies” could lead to was the pistol affixed to the wall, which some mired in gambling debts, believed was the only way out. The Pears Soap Company paid Lucas £106 for the painting (around £15,000 in today’s money). It was an extraordinary amount.
Some of Life’s Pleasuresby EG Handel Lucas (c.1908)
The second painting the Pears Soap Company bought from Lucas was one entitled Of Such is the Kingdom of Heaven and they paid him another substantial amount, £150 and yet it was never used in their publications. The third of Lucas’ works they bought was his painting, Some of Life’s Pleasures and it could well have been the antidote for his The Cause of Many Troubles painting for this was all about harmless and fulfilling pastimes such as painting, reading and playing a musical instrument. This painting appeared in the Pears Annual in 1909. The company bought it for £81 a considerably lesser amount that the previous two purchases had achieved. Lucas had no recourse but to accept this lower amount as he was desperate to clear his debts.
View from Pompeii over the Gulf of Naples to Capri. by EG Handel Lucas (1888)
Lucas became desperate with worry with regards his mounting debts and lack of sales. In 1908, it just became too much for him and he suffered a nervous breakdown. To reduce costs the family left Croydon and moved to Brighton. It was here that Lucas and two local photographers set up a new photographic project and started a company called The Handeltype Syndicate Company and Lucas filed a patent for their new photographic process. Sadly for Lucas, after twelve months, their company failed and the three men, together with friends and family who had financially backed them, lost all their money.
Foes in the Guise of Friends by EG Handel Lucas (1913)
Another of Lucas’ paintings which advocated temperance and warned of the perils of drinking was his 1913 painting entitled Foes in the Guise of Friends. The painting’s title says it all. It was this painting that had not been completed and was unsold and had been used as a bargaining tool by Lucas with his landlady who had been demanding money for the rent. He had no money, the landlady didnt want the painting and the family were evicted.
Haymaking by EG Handel Lucas
Finally, Lucas found work in the south London district of Streatham where he and his family went to live. His friend asked him to design Christmas cards for his Christmas card business. Lucas never lost his love of photography and a printing process called Handelchrome which he invented. It involved transferring a photograph onto glass and painting it from behind and he intended to use this technique as an aid for his portrait work. Sadly, this invention like many of Lucas’ ideas came to nought and he struggled to match his income and his expenditure.
Two Vases of Flowers by EG Handel Lucas
In the 1920s Lucas completed a number of paintings but he was unable to achieve prices for them that he had done thirty years earlier.
The Stolen Nest by EG Handel Lucas (1927)
He did however have one success when he was commissioned to provide a number of paintings which were then used as illustrations for the Brooke Bond Tea calendar, one of which was entitled The Stolen Nest which was published in the 1929 calendar. It is set on the banks of the River Wandle, a right-bank tributary of the River Thames in south London.
Portrait of Jesse Ward by EG Lucas (1927)
One of his best portraits was of the founder of The Croydon Advertiser, Jesse Ward.
In 1936, Lucas received the devastating news that his wife had been knocked down and injured in a road traffic accident. He suffered a fatal heart attack and died on April 4th 1936, aged 74.
I will end this blog about Edward George Handel Lucas with the words of an art critic in the 1890s when he described Lucas’ art as:
“…When the present and succeeding generations have passed away, this little gem of the painter’s art will survive to prove that one man in Croydon, at least, knew how to paint, and could unite patent toil with Heaven Born genius…”
The majority of information for this blog came from an article written by David Morgan for the Inside Croydon website in December 2023.
The Mantram “Namumyohorengekyo” Appears to Nichiren in the Waves near Sumida on the Way to Exile on Sado Island. One of the ten Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s Sketches of the Life of the Great Priest series.
Nichiren continued his journey into forced exile on Sado Island with a sea voyage from the mainland to the island. During the sea voyage across the Sea of Japan his boat is hit by a storm, said to have been conjured up by Susanoo-no-Mikoto, a kami associated with the sea and storms, which was likely to capsize the boat.
Nichiren casts a spell the first line of the Lotus Sutra, “Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō (Devotion to the Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutraas seen written on the waves.
Nichiren’s crew were terrified fearing death but Nichiren remained steadfast and cast a spell on the raging sea by reciting the first line of the Lotus Sutra, “Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō (Devotion to the Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutra) and these words appear on the waves. The words are a pledge, an expression of resolve, to embrace and demonstrate our Buddha nature. It is a promise to ourselves that one will never acquiesce in the face of problems and that one will overcome sorrow and pain. The sea immediately became calm. You will notice that depiction of the curling wave resembles Hokusai’s great 1831 print entitled The Great Wave off Kanagawa.
It was a similar wave depictions Utagawa Kuniyoshi used in his 1847 series entitled Tametomo s ten heroic deeds as seen above.
In the Snow at Tsukahara, Sado Island. One of the ten Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s Sketches of the Life of the Great Priest series.
The sixth print in the series is looked upon as the greatest example of Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s work and depicts the exiled monk, Nichiren, in his red robes, climbing, by himself, up a hill covered in snow. He had been earlier exiled by the regent Hojo Tokimune for his outspoken views on mainstream Buddhism and taken to Sado Island where he was abandoned in a cemetery with only a makeshift shelter to protect him from the elements in the midst of a harsh winter. An icy wind whips through his loose garments. He struggles to ascend, and his bare legs are ankle-deep in the snow. Utagawa uses a snowstorm to represent the cold reality the exile is facing. Behind him and to his right the houses in the village are visible.
Bunpô sansui gafu (Album of Landscapes by Bunpô) 1824.
It is believed that Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s landscape was influenced by the Japanese artist Kawamura Bunpō, and was based on a design from his book, Bunpō sansui gafu (A Book of Drawings of Landscapes by Bunpō). The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York which has this print in its collection refers to it as a “masterpiece of ukiyo-e printmaking prints”. They describe it as a particular masterpiece of ukiyo-e printmaking as it creates a perfect resonance between pictorial and emotional presentation. The severe snowstorm symbolizes the hardships Nichiren underwent during his exile. The monk demonstrates his strength of spirit by persevering in his uphill struggle.
Claude Monet was an avid collector of Japanese prints and it is thought that some of his snowy winter landscapes were influenced by Japanese woodcut prints. When he died, Monet left behind 231 Japanese prints decorating his house at Giverny, one of which was Utagawa Kuniyoshi’sprint, In the Snow at Tsukahara, Sado Island.
The Rock Settling a Religious Dispute at Ōmuro Mountain on the Twenty-eighth Day of the Fifth Month of 1274. One of the ten Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s Sketches of the Life of the Great Priest series.
The setting for the seventh print of the series is in Komuroyama. We see Nichiren has managed to suspend in the air a large rock which has been hurled towards him by a member of the Yamabushi, a Japanese mountain ascetic hermit. This action by Nichiren was achieved by the sheer will of his spiritual power. A different versions of the story exists in which it is said that a member of a competing Buddhist school invited Nichiren to a contest to see who had the greater religious power to control the levitation of a rock. According to this legend, the man was able to lift the rock but Nichiren prevented him from lowering it. Upon losing the contest, the story goes, the man left his sect and became a Nichiren’s follower.
Nichiren Praying for the Repose of the Soul of the Cormorant Fisher at the Isawa River in Kai Province. One of the ten Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s Sketches of the Life of the Great Priest series.
In the eighth print of the series, we see Nichiren in his red robes, seated in prayer, sitting atop a cliff overlooking a river. Below is a small fishing craft used by fishermen who use trained cormorants to catch the fish. Two men sit in the boat, their hands also clasped in prayer. Nichiren had an affinity towards fishermen as his father was once one. However, at this time, a number of Buddhist sects showed prejudice towards fishermen as they killed (fish) for their own consumption. The story of Nichiren and the cormorant fisherman was the basis of the kabuki play Nichiren shônin minori no umi (Nichiren and the waters of Dharma), and Kuniyoshi had also featured it in a series of 10 landscape prints published around 1831.
The Priest Nichiren praying for the restless spirit of the Cormorant Fisherman at the Isawa river by Yamamoto (Yamamoto Shinji)
The woodcut print artist Tsukioka Yoshitoshi a few years later returned to the theme of Nichiren and the cormorant fishers with his own work, a triptych, entitled The Priest Nichiren praying for the restless spirit of the cormorant fisherman at the Isawa River. On the left panel is the ghost of the fisherman Kansaku, who had died as a result of fishing in a sacred area, and in 1274 appeared to Nichiren in a dream and begged him to save his lost soul. On waking, the priest found himself on the bank of the Isawa river in the Province of Kai, and there he prayed for Kansaku’s soul. Kansaku’s ghost is attended by several of the cormorants that he used to catch fish for him (tight metal collars were placed round the cormorants necks so that they could not swallow the fish before he had collected it).
Nichiren presiding over a crowded service in a temple hall, a dragon emerging in a dark cloud from the inert body of a woman lying prostrate before him. One of the ten Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s Sketches of the Life of the Great Priest series.
The ninth print of the series is a depiction of Nichiren’s 1277 encounter with a dragon. He was at Mount Minobu praying along with many of his supporters at a prayer assembly in the temple. Suddenly a beautiful woman appeared on the floor in front of him and interrupted his prayers. Nichiren performs an exorcism on the woman in the temple, bringing forth a dragon which frightens the people gathered at the assembly. To calm the assembled people Nichiren holds aloft his Buddhist scriptures demanding that the woman should show her true self at which point she transforms into a shichimen daimyōjin (seven-faced dragon). Following her revealing her true identity, she vanishes.
The Saint’s Efforts Defeat the Mongolian Invasion in 1281. One of the ten Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s Sketches of the Life of the Great Priest series.
The final print in the series focuses on the war between the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China and Japan in 1281 when that summer the Mongols invaded Japan. This was the second time the two regimes had clashed. The first time the two nations fought was seven years earlier when the Mongol’s first invasion of Japan occurred in 1274. In the battle, a storm fortuitously aided the Japanese defence, as it helped to sink part of the Mongol fleet. Legend has it that Nichiren predicted the Mongol invasion in his book Risshō Ankoku Ron. It was the fierce storm which put an end to the Mongol invasion and Nichiren was given credit for conjuring up the storm. However, it should be remembered that Nichiren often predicted that Japan would be destroyed for ignoring him and his teachings about the Lotus Sutra. The woodblock print depicts the Japanese soldiers being driven back the Mongol invasion. Mongol ships continue the battle by launching fire stones from catapults towards the shore, but the ships appear to be sinking due to the storm and power of Nichiren’s prayers.
Utagawa Kuniyoshi received a commission in 1831 for this new print series in remembrance of the 550-year anniversary of the death of Nichiren, the founder of Nichiren Buddhism. The finished prints were later used for Nichiren Buddhist religious materials.
Statue of Nichiren Daishonin on the outskirts of Honnoji, in the Teramachi district of Kyoto.
Nichiren was born on 16th of the second month in 1222, which is 6 April in the Gregorian calendar and died outside of present-day Tokyo, on October 13th 1282. According to legend, he died in the presence of fellow disciples after having spent several days lecturing from his sickbed on the Lotus Sutra.
In 1856 Utagawa Kuniyoshi suffered from palsy, which caused him much difficulty in moving his limbs. It is said that his works from this point onward were noticeably weaker in the use of line and overall vitality. He died in his home in Genyadana in 1861 aged 63.
In March 2023 I took you on a Japanese journey The Tokaido Road Trip and today I want you to join me on another such voyage of discovery through a series of ten Japanese woodblock prints in ink and color on paper made by Japanese artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi, one of the last the great Masters of ukiyo-e. Kuniyoshi was born on 1 January 1st 1798, the son of a silk-dyer, Yanagiya Kichiyemon. It is thought that he helped in his father’s business as a pattern designer, and those days helped to influence him some with regards to his rich colour usage and textile patterns in his prints
Self-portrait of Utagawa Kuniyoshi from the shunga album Chinpen shinkeibai, (1839)
The ukiyo-e movement came to prominence in Japan between the 17th and 19th century. It was a form of art and one of the first times in Japanese history when art ended the adherence of social class and developed into an art form that appealed to the lowborn, who had money, as well as the rich aristocrats.
The Ghost of Asakura Togo, Woodblock Print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi
The subjects most found in these woodblock prints were travel, beautiful prostitutes, and kabuki actors, the 19th century Japanese equivalent of movie stars. Many of his popular prints were often not really something that the aristocracy would want to display in their residences, but such depictions as in his print, The Ghost of Asakura Togo, were just the thing that appealed to everyday Japanese urbanites who were searching for some excitement in their lives.
The Story of Nichiren
The portrait of Nichiren Daishonin was painted in the 14th-15th Century, and is kept at Nichiren Shu’s Head Temple, Kuon-ji.
This is the story of Nichiren Dashonin, a Japanese Buddhist priest and philosopher who lived in the thirteenth century and it was his controversial teachings which form the basis of Nichiren Buddhism, a branch of Mahayana Buddhism. Nichiren was born on February 16th 1222 and died on October 13th 1282. Nichiren, also known as Koso, was a Buddhist priest who had various miracles attributed to him and who founded the Nichiren sect of Buddhism, of which Utagawa Kuniyoshi was an adherent.
It was his controversial declaration that only the Lotus Sutra, which is regarded as one of the world’s great religious scriptures and most influential texts contained the highest truth of Buddhist teachings suited for the Third Age of Buddhism. He maintained that the sovereign of Japan and its people should support only this form of Buddhism and eradicate all others. Nichiren on three occasions remonstrated with the government, underlining his wish to guide people with ‘the Lotus Sutra’. However, on each occasion his pleas were rejected.
For twenty years between 1233 and 1253 Nichiren engaged in an intensive study of all of the ten schools of Buddhism which were prevalent in Japan at that time as well as the Chinese classics and secular literature. During these years, he became convinced of the pre-eminence of the Lotus Sutra and in 1253 returned to the temple where he first studied to present his findings. Here Nichiren introduced his teachings supporting a complete return to the Lotus Sutra as based on its original Tendai interpretations arguing that the people and their leaders who followed this form of Buddhism would experience peace and prosperity whereas rulers who supported inferior religious teachings invited disorder and disaster into their realms. However, his teachings angered Kamakura Shogunate and he experienced severe persecution and was exiled.
In 1831, Utagawa Kuniyoshi received a commission to produce a set of prints in remembrance of the 550-year anniversary of the death of Nichiren. The set was known as the Sketches of the Life of the Great Priest or Concise Illustrated Biography of Monk Nichiren.
Tōjō Komatsubara, Eleventh day of Eleventh month, 1264 by Utagawa Kuniyoshi
Tōjō Kagenobu, a steward of Tōjō Village in the Nagasa District of Awa Province in Japan was a passionate believer in Nembutsu, a fundamental devotional practice in the Pure Land school of Buddhism, which Nichiren had criticised ten years earlier. Tōjō Kagenobu was so infuriated by Nichiren’s severe criticism of the Pure Land (Jōdo) school that he attempted to have Nichiren seized. For this reason, he had harboured hatred for Nichiren and watched vigilantly for an opportunity to kill him. On November 11th, 1264, while Nichiren was travelling to Komatsubara, the home of his disciple, Kudo Yoshitaka. It was following his return to Awa, the year after he was pardoned from his exile to Itō on the Izu Peninsula. Tojo Kagenobu saw his chance to eliminate Nichiren. He and hundreds of his warriors, including horsemen and swordsmen, ambushed Nichiren at Komatsubara in the Awa Province in November 1264. In the depiction we see Nichiren holding up his mala (rosary), with its sparkling crystals which confused his attackers. Nikkyo, his student and disciple, is seen in the background, crouching. During the bitter fighting, two of his followers were killed and although Nichiren received a sword cut upon his forehead and a broken left hand, he managed to escape. The incident became known by the Nichiren Budhists as the “Komatsubara Persecution“. Tojo Kagenobu, who had led the attack is said to have gone mad and died within three days of this incident.
Nichiren Prays for Rain at the Promontory of Ryozangasaki in Kamakura in 1271
Japan experienced a major drought in the summer of 1271. The government asked Ninshō, a Japanese Shingon Risshu priest and the founder of the Gokuraku-ji, a Budhist temple in Kamakura, to conduct rain rituals. Nichiren, then only a lowly monk, disparaged Ninshō’s supporters, venturing that even he would follow Ninshō if he made it rain in a week. Nichiren was proved right as it did not rain, and he took advantage of the challenge to take on new followers for himself. In the woodblock print we see Nichiren as he prays for rain and is immediately rewarded with a downpour. This event takes place in Kamakura in 1271. The print itself is viewed as the second-greatest design in this famous series. Before us we have a dramatic depiction – the drama in the the heavy downpour, the drama in the waves and drama in Nichiren’s acolytes as they look on, astounded by the miracle they have witnessed. The umbrella at the top of the scene extends into the upper margin and is often trimmed.
Nichiren Saved from Execution at Takinoguchi in Sagami Province
Nichiren’s incessant attacks on the other Buddhist schools led to Hōjō Tokimune, the de facto ruler of Japan, exiling Nichiren to Sado Island under the supervision of Hōjō Nobutoki, the constable of Sado in 1261. However, this threatened exile did not stop Nichiren continuing his attacks on the other factions of Buddhism. The original plan was that Nichiren was to be escorted to Echi, to the residence of Homma Shigetsura, Hōjō Nobutoki’s deputy; from there he was to be taken directly to Sado Island. But Hei no Saemon, a government official and affirmed enemy of Nichiren decided to have him executed as he was being escorted to Homma’s residence. An attempt was made to behead Nichiren at Tatsunokuchi, but it was unsuccessful. Legend has it that as the executioner’s sword was about to come down on Nichiren’s neck, it broke in half. Various other supernatural happenings were alleged to have occurred to prevent and thwart his death. In this third print of the series Nichiren is seen in prayer, kneeling beside a pine tree which is growing close to the ocean. His executioner stands behind him. It depicts him about to be executed when the rays from the sun destroy the executioner’s sword, averting his death. Nichiren’s exile was later carried out as it had been originally planned.
The Star of Wisdom Descends on the Thirteenth Night of the Ninth Month
The fourth print of the portfolio is entitled The Star of Wisdom Descends on the Thirteenth Night of the Ninth Month and depicts Nichiren holding his rosary, standing before an old plum tree, in which appears a shining apparition of the Buddha. Behind him are two officials and a group of armed men. The scene is illuminated by the full moon which bathes the entire vista. Raymond A Bidwell the collector of oriental art and porcelain, wrote an article in 1930 for Artibus Asiae, a semi-annual publication of original scholarly articles, entitled Kuniyoshi III in which he likened Kuniyoshi’s depiction with that of Christian art:
“…the same spirituality and relationship of man to God as was expressed by the Italian primitives in their pictures of God appearing to the saints… Nichiren and the rough soldiers who have him in custody see in adoration and consternation a vision of The Buddha standing in the branches of a leafless plum tree on a clear moonlight night. The intense beauty of the evening sky and moon against the lace like branches of the aged and gnarled plum tree, make you feel that God must manifest himself directly…”
Bidwell’s conclusion was that Kuniyoshi transcended the Italian painters in his successful approach. Raymond A. Bidwell would later go on to donate the largest collection of Kuniyoshi prints in the U.S. to the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts.
…….to be continued.
Most of the information for this site came from various Wikipedia pages.
During a period of very low temperatures and snowy conditions, it might seem appropriate to focus on art depicting sunshine, blue skies, and warm azure-coloured seas. However, today’s blog will start with featuring beautiful depictions of snow and ice and explore how people who experienced these conditions seemed to find enjoyment in them. Many such depictions are conjured up by nineteenth century Dutch artists and today’s blog is all about Fredrik Marinus Kruseman the Dutch painter who specialized in Romantic-style landscapes, and winter scenes, which made up about two thirds of his oeuvre.
Fredrik Kruseman was born in the Netherlands city of Haarlem on July 12th, 1816. He was the fourth son of Jacoba Mooij and her husband Benjamin Philip Kruseman, a Lutheran hat-maker. Fredrik had two older brothers, Hendrik and Jakob and a younger brother Benjamin. He also had two cousins who became famous painters. Cornelis Kruseman a painter of historical and biblical subjects who later became Director of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Amsterdam and Jan Adam Kruseman, a historical painter and portraitist.
A Winter’s Scene with Skaters on a Frozen Waterway by Fredrik Kruser (1858)
Fredrik was tutored by many of the great Dutch landscape artists of the nineteenth century school. In 1833, aged seventeen, he was apprenticed to Jan Reekers who taught him the skills required to draw from nature and the intricacies of perspective. Between 1832 and 1833 he also attended classes at the Vocational City Drawing School in Haarlem and studied painting with Nicholas Roosenboom, who had a studio near where Fredrik lived. It was in September 1833 that Fredrik Kruseman first exhibited his landscape work. It was at the Exhibition for Living Masters in The Hague. In 1835, Fredrik moved to the Gooi, an area around Hilversum, in the centre of the Netherlands. Here he took advanced studies with Jan van Ravenswaay. He also studied briefly with the landscape painter, Barend Cornelis Koekkoek.
During his twenties and thirties, Kruseman travelled widely throughout Northern Europe before finally setting up home in Brussels in 1841. He returned to the Netherlands and lived, between 1852 and 1856, on the outskirts of Haarlem. After that four-year sojourn he returned to the Belgian capital where he remained for the rest of his life.
Winter Landscape with Skaters and Wood Gatherers at a Ruinby Fredrik Kruseman
Kruseman’s 1845 painting entitled Winter Landscape with Skaters and Wood Gatherers at a Ruin depicts a frozen canal with skaters, walkers on a path along the shore, a picturesque castle and strange bare trees. Men scavenge for wood for their home fires. Life is hard at this time of year.
A Winter Landscape with Skaters on a Frozen Riverby Fredrik Kruseman (1862)
Kruseman’s painting entitled A Winter Landscape with Skaters on a Frozen River is a beautiful depiction and is a Romantic observance and veneration of nature. The sky dominates the paintingfxf. Before us we have a frozen waterway on which are a number of skaters bordered by snow-covered banks. On the right bank there is a refreshment table. We can also pick out a fallen skater in the left of the foreground and a young couple with their dog crossing the centre of the frozen river close to a wide crack in the ice. In the left middle-ground we can just make out a sailing boat frozen to the riverbank. The colours Kruseman has used are cool blue-grey tonality over the black mirror-like surface of the ice.
Wintry River Landscape with Windmill by Fredrik Kruseman (1844)
Although Kruseman is best known for his Romantic wintry landscape paintings he completed many other landscape works.
Monk Meditating near a Ruin by Moonlight by Fredrik Kruseman (1862)
One notable romantic piece is his 1862 painting titled Monk Meditating near a Ruin by Moonlight. The ruin of the title is the abbey in Villers-la-Ville near Brussels, which used to be one of the most significant Cistercian abbeys in Europe and close to where the painter lived for a while. In the right foreground of this nocturnal scene, we see a monk meditating near the overgrown ruin. The abbey was founded in 1146 and was a former Cistercian Abbey located in the very heart of Walloon Brabant.
Village Street on a Sunny Day by Fredrik Kruseman (ca. 1835)
Landscape with two Farmers by Fredrik Kruseman
In the foreground of this atmospheric work, we see two peasants talking to each other. One holds on to his ox, while the other is accompanied by his dog. The background consists of a wide landscape with a few hills. Once again the sky plays a dominant part of the painting.
Tranquil Landscape with Women Washing by a Stream with Cattle and Sheep by Fredrik Kruseman
A River Landscape with Cows and Sheep by Fredrik Kruseman
In his winter scenes of frozen rivers, Fredrik Kruseman cleverly produced jet-black mirror surface of the ice and the marks left by skaters. Some of his most famous depictions were set in the fading light of early evening and combined the wintry scene with a background glow of a setting sun or a bright light emanating from the interior of a cottage or house.
Fredrik Marinus Kruseman worked well into the late 1870s and died in St Gilles, a suburb of Brussels, on May 25th 1882.
Max Liebermann was Jewish, not a strict Orthodox Jew, but more of a secular Jew who regarded himself through assimilationist eyes. Maybe because of this he avoided painting religious subjects with the exception of a painting he completed in 1879 entitled The 12-Year-Old Jesus in the Temple With the Scholars.
Der zwölfjährige Jesus im Tempel (The Twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple) by Max Liebermann (1879)
The painting depicts twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple, having been at the Festival of Passover in Jerusalem with his parents, but unbeknown to them, he had stayed behind in the city when they had set off to return home. The story continues as per the biblical tale (Luke 2:43-48):
“…After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they travelled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you…”
The setting for this painting is derived from Max’s visit to the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam in 1876 when he made architectural sketches of the Portuguese Synagogue of Amsterdam. The curved staircase, which he later depicted as a spiral staircase in the painting, is a reference to the 16th-century Levantine Synagogue in Venice. The paned window on the upper edge of the painting also echoes the windows of the Portuguese Synagogue of Amsterdam.
Liebermann originally depicted Jesus, not as a holy figure, but as a dark-haired boy with Semitic features and mannerisms, arguing the doctrine with his elders. The painting was first exhibited at the First International Art Show in Munich in 1879, at a time when antisemitic activism and propaganda was just starting to break out in Germany. The artwork caused a major outcry with critics terming the depiction blasphemous. The art critic for the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, Friedrich Pecht, asserted that Liebermann had painted “the ugliest, know-it-all Jewish boy imaginable,” and went on to state that the artist had shown the Jewish elders as “a rabble of the filthiest haggling Jews.” More criticism rained down from upon high with the Crown Prince of Bavaria declaring that he was scandalised, and the Bavarian State Parliament even spent time debating the painting and Pecht’s comments. One Catholic MPs criticised the fact that it had been admitted into a State establishment knowing that the country had inhabitants who were overwhelmingly devout Christians. One deputy pronounced that Liebermann, being a Jew, should have known better than to paint such a scene and that the painting was reviled as “a stench in the nostrils of decent people” It seemed that Lieberman’s mistake was simply that as Liebermann was a Jew, he had depicted an overtly Jewish Jesus.
Preliminary Sketch
And yet in the painting we cannot understand the violent criticism of the detractors regarding Liebermann’s Jesus who is depicted as a long-haired, slightly effeminate, blond boy. However, this was not the original depiction as this is because Liebermann, in response to unrelenting criticism, repainted the figure before it was included in a Paris exhibition in 1884. Art historians know this as a sketch of the untouched 1879 version has been preserved, in which it can be seen that Liebermann had originally depicted a barefoot boy with short, unkempt dark hair and a stereotypical Jewish profile. Liebermann changed the young Jesus’s appearance with the figure once described as an “urchin” now appears as a serious, intelligent, perhaps slightly deferential child. However, the changes, did not change the mood of the German critics and the work was not exhibited again in Germany until the Berlin Secession exhibition of 1907.
Sewing School by Max Liebermann (1876)
In 1875 Liebermann left Paris and spent three months in Zandvoort in Holland. It was in this Dutch town that Max acquired a brighter and more less planned style by copying paintings by one of his favourite artists, Frans Hals. Max developed a practice of setting aside time between the idea for a motif coming to him and the implementation of the larger finished painting. When he returned to Paris in the autumn of 1875 he moved into a more spacious studio and began to convert his Dutch sketches into full sized works. He returned to the Netherlands in the summer of 1876 where he remained for several months. During this stay he met the etcher William Unger, who brought him into contact with Jozef Israëls and the Hague School. One example of this change of painting style was Liebermann’s work entitled Sewing School which he completed in 1876. The sewing school depicted in this painting was in an orphanage in Amsterdam. Liebermann had started his career as a realist painter, but by the time of this work, he was already establishing himself as an Impressionist-style painter.
Schusterwerkstatt (Cobbler’s Workshop) by Max Liebermann (1881)
During his visit to the Netherlands in the summer of 1880, Liebermann travelled to the small village of Dongen in North Brabant, in the southern Netherlands. It was here that he made a number of studies that would be used when completing the work in his studio. One example of this was his depiction of a cobbler in his workshop. At the workshop, he created studies that he later used for his 1881 painting Schusterwerkstatt, (Cobbler’s Workshop).
Altmännerhaus (Old Men’s Home) in Amsterdam by Max Liebermann (1881)
Having completed the Cobbler’s Workshop painting he travelled to Amsterdam on his way to returning to Munich. It was whilst in Amsterdam that he came across the Catholic Altmännerhaus (Old Men’s Home). He happened to glance into the garden of the establishment and saw a large group of older gentlemen dressed in black sitting on benches in the dappled sunlight. According to Erich Hancke’s 1914 book, Max Liebermann. Sein Leben und seine Werke:
“…He [Liebermann] had visited a friend at the Rembrandt Hotel, and when he looked out of the corridor window descending the stairs, his gaze fell down into a garden where many old men dressed in black were standing and sitting in a corridor bathed in sunlight […]. He later used a drastic analogy to characterize that moment: ‘It was as if someone were walking on a level path and suddenly stepped on a spiral spring that shot him up…”
Study for Old Men’s Home in Amsterdamby Max Liebermann (1881)
Liebermann immediately began to paint the scene and concentrated on the effect of light which was being filtered through a canopy of leaves and this dappled effect became known as “Liebermann’s sunspots” and would be seen in Liebermann’s later Impressionist depictions. He made two on-site portrait-format studies of the scene, one in oil and one in pastel, after which Liebermann painted the final picture in his Munich studio later that year. The painting was exhibited at the Paris Salon and received an honourable mention. Furthermore, Léon Maître, a well-known collector of Impressionism, acquired several of Liebermann’s paintings.
Recreation Time in the Amsterdam Orphanage by Max Liebermann (1884)
Life in Paris was taking its toll on Liebermann. He needed to sell his artwork to prove to himself and his parents that he had not wasted his life. This continual pressure caused Lieberman to fall into periods of deep depression and his painting output declined, furthermore, the works he put into the Paris Salon were not getting the recognition he believed he had deserved. There was also still the anti-Prussian sentiment amongst the French and this did not help him sell his work. In all, he realised that the Netherlands or Germany were much more acceptable places to work and live. He left Paris and spent a couple of months in Venice before returning to Munich in 1878. It was here that he was able to enhance his status as an important progressive artist. Munich had everything Liebermann required – the artistic culture and patrons who supported him. He spent hours visiting the city’s museums and art galleries and creating everlasting and important friendships. He eventually left Munich and relocated to Berlin, his birthplace, in 1884, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Martha Marckwald by Anders Zorn (1896)
In that same year, 1884, that Max moved to Berlin he married Martha Marckwald, the fourth child of the German Jewish couple Ottilie and Heinrich Benjamin Marckwald, who ran a wool store in Berlin. When Martha’s father died in 1870, Max’s father Louis became the thirteen-year-old Martha’s guardian. The Marckwald and Liebermann families became even closer when Max’s elder brother Georg Liebermann married Martha’s elder sister Elsbeth. On September 14th 1884, thirty-seven-year-old Max Liebermann married twenty-six-year-old Martha. It was a marriage that would last more than fifty years until Max died in 1935. In August 1885 Max and Martha’s only child, Käthe, was born and in 1892.
Max’s mother died on August 12th 1892, aged 70 and his father died two years later on April 29th 1894, aged 75. Although the death of his parents was a sad time for Max, he was finally released from their unrelenting words of warning as to the perilous status of an artist. Max moved into his family’s Berlin home in Pariser Platz where he lived out the remainder of his life.
Liebermann Villa at Wannsee
In 1909, overwhelmed by the noisy life in the German city, the Liebermann family bought a plot of land in the Alsen summer villa colony on the northern shore of the Kleiner and western shore of the Großer Wannsee at Wannsee, some twenty kms south-west of Berlin, close to Potsdam. It was here that they built themselves a summer home, somewhere to retire to during the hot summer months when city life became very oppressive. The Villa was designed by the architect Paul Otto Baumgarten, the garden by Liebermann in collaboration with the then-director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Alfred Lichtwark.
Martha Liebermann in the garden at Wannsee
Their summer home was situated amidst the magnificent villas of this impressive Berlin colony, embedded in a park, and represented a unique cultural landscape of the time of the German Empire and the Weimar Republic.
The Villa at Wannsee by Max Liebermann (1930)
Flowering Shrubs by the Gardner’s Cottage by Max Liebermann (1928)
The Flower Terrace at Wannsee by Max Liebermann (1915)
During the following years, Liebermann had designed a beautiful garden at the Villa Wannsee. He was so proud of the finishing results that the garden became the subject of many of Liebermann’s painting.
The Artist in His Studio by Max Liebermann (1932)
During the latter decade of the nineteenth century Liebermann continued living and painting in Berlin and would spend his summers at Wannsee or the Netherlands. Liebermann, like many of his contemporary Berlin artists, were dissatisfied with how they were being treated by the Association of Berlin Artists and the restrictions on contemporary art imposed by Kaiser Wilhelm II, so sixty-five of them seceded as a demonstration against the standards set by the Association and the government endorsed art. This break-away became known as the Berlin Secession and its aim was to form a “free association for the organization of artistic exhibitions”. In 1898, Liebermann became the President of the Berlin Secession, which was simply a group of artists that was formed as an alternative to the conservative arts establishment.
Two Riders on the Beach by Max Liebermann (1901)
The Berlin Secession championed new forms of modern art and were not be tied down to and be dominated by the old-fashioned academic art favoured by the Berlin Academy. These break-away groups from the art establishments were not new occurrences as the same happened with the Munich Secession in 1892 and the Vienna Secession in 1897. The initial breakaway took place in Paris in 1890 when the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts along with its exhibition arm, the Salon au Champs-de-Mars, was formed as a modern alternative to the official Société des Artistes Français and its exhibition arm, the Salon de Champs-Élysées. These break-away groups all wanted the same thing – the rejection of the official arts governing bodies due to their aversion of avant-garde art such as Impressionism, forms of Post-Impressionist painting and Naturalism, as well as their obstructive exhibition policies, which were inclined to support time-honoured painters and sculptors over their younger, more modernist contemporaries.
Marthe Liebermann with her grand-daughter Maria by Max Liebermann (1922)
In 1920, Liebermann became president of the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin, which was the highpoint of his career and signified how the Academy had changed over since the time of the Berlin Secession.
Portrait of President Paul von Hindenburg by Max Liebermann (1927)
Being a Jew, Liebermann had got used to the anti-Semitism in his homeland but by the early 30s with the rise and coming to power of the National Socialists it had noticeably worsened. In a way, it was a good thing that Liebermann died quietly in his sleep at the family home on February 8th 1935 aged 87 as he avoided bearing witness to the atrocities which followed. In 1938, his daughter Käthe her husband Kurt Riezler and their twenty-one-year-old daughter Maria were forced to flee the country and go to America.
The Graves of Max and Martha Liebermann at the Senerfelderplatz Jewish Cemetery, Berlin
They tried to persuade Max’s widow, Martha, to also emigrate but she refused to leave the land where her husband was buried. Martha Liebermann remained in Berlin, ultimately committing suicide in 1943 to escape her impending deportation to a concentration camp.
Most of the information for this blog came from the excellent website Liebermann Villa am Wannsee which goes into detail about his life and works.
I also consulted the informative website on all things art: The Art Story
Information regarding the painting, A Twelve-Year-Old Jewish Boy, came from the website: Art and Faith Matter/s
My artist today is the German painter Max Liebermann. Liebermann was a key figure in the nineteenth century German art scene, who was well-known for his part in bringing Impressionism to the German art world and was one of the founder members of the Berlin Secession.
Photograph ofMax Liebermann by Jacob Hilsdorf (1904)
Max Liebermann was born in Berlin on July 20th 1847. He was the second born child of Louis Liebermann and Philippine Liebermann (née Haller). He had an elder sister, Anna and two younger brothers, Georg and Felix. His father was a wealthy Jewish fabric manufacturer who later became a banker. Max’s paternal grandfather Josef Liebermann was a textile entrepreneur and in 1860, the Liebermann family bought the Dannenberg’sche Kattun-Fabrik, which was one of the foremost companies for the production of cotton in Europe. Max was brought up in a very wealthy family environment.
Dorotheenstädtische Realschule, Berlin.
In 1851, aged 4, Max attended the local humanistic nursery school. He was not impressed with the school and throughout his school days, he had an aversion for his teaching establishments. On completion of his time at primary school he attended the Berlin Dorotheenstädtische Realschule. Max was not a great scholar and spent most of his time drawing rather than studying.
Palais Liebermann at Pariser Platz 7, to the right of the Brandenburg Gate (1892)
In 1857, when Max was ten years old, his father Louis bought the impressive Palais Liebermann, located in Berlin-Mitte at Pariser Platz 7, north of the Brandenburg Gate. Although Max’s family were Jewish his parents decided to bring Max up in the Jewish denomination known as Reform Judaism which was a highly liberal strand of Judaism and is characterized by little stress on ritual and personal observance, rather than the stricter orthodox way of life of their grandfather. The family attended church services in the reform community but increasingly turned away from the more orthodox way of life of their ancestors.
The Shoemaker by Max Liebermann (1881)
In 1859 Max’s father commissioned a portrait of his wife by the artist Antonie Volkmar. During one of the sittings Philippine Liebermann had her son Max accompany her to the artist’s studio. The story goes that Max asked the artist for a pen and paper so he could pass the time sketching. Antonie Volkmar was so impressed with Max’s sketching that she told his mother that Max would become a fine artist. Max’s parents, although aware of that prediction, wanted their son to carry on with his normal schooling and a compromise was reached that if he carried on attending school and did well, they would enrol him in private painting lessons from Eduard Holbein and Carl Steffeck. Upon finishing primary school, his father, Louis Liebermann, chose for Max and his brothers. the Friedrichwerdersche Gymnasium, a prestigious humanistic grammar school, where the sons of Bismarck had studied.
Workers on the Beet Field by Max Liebermann (1876)
Max graduated from the Gymnasium in 1866 and carried out his parent’s wishes by enrolling at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin where he studied chemistry, like his brother before him. However he was still more interested in his painting and would often miss lectures to go off on painting trips or helping out at Carl Steffeck’s studio. Later he attended the University of Berlin and studied law and philosophy but once again his mind was solely on art and in January 1868, following little progress with his studies, he was asked to leave. One can only imagine how his parents took this turn of events. They were furious as to how their son had wasted this golden opportunity. Whether it was the case that they had to make the best of a dire situation and realised that their son was only interested in his art, they arranged for Max to enrol at the Grand Ducal Saxon Art School in Weimar where he studied under the Belgian history painter, Ferdinand Pauwels. Pauwels took his students on a visit to the Fridercianum (Kassel’s Gemaeldegalerie), which has one of the world’s best collections of early German and Flemish paintings, amongst which are nineteen works by Rembrandts. These works were to influence Liebermann for the rest of his life.
Amsterdam Orphanage by Max Liebermann (1876)
The Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870 and twenty-three-year-old Max was captivated by the general population’s patriotic fury and passion. However, Max was unable to join up for military service on medical grounds and so volunteered as a medic for the Johannitern, the Order of St. John and he witnessed the war at the Siege of Metz. The battlefield carnage during the siege distressed Max and his patriotic war fervour waned rapidly.
Tépéscsinálók (Tear Makers) by Mihály von Munkácsy (1871)
In the Spring of 1871, Liebermann lived in Düsseldorf, where the influence of French art was greater than in Berlin. Whilst in the city he met Mihály von Munkácsy, a Hungarian painter, who had earned international reputation with his genre pictures and large-scale biblical paintings. His paintings often featured scenes from the daily lives of peasants and poor people. Max saw Mihály von Munkácsy’s recently completed work entitled Tépéscsinálók and this stimulated his interest in genre painting. The subject of Munkácsy’s painting comes from memories of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution also known as the War of Independence and it depicts a wounded soldier, leaning on his crutches in a dark interior, recounting the story of life on the front line and the difficult battles he had experienced. Whilst the men were at war the girls, women, old people, and children remained at home in their villages looking after returning wounded soldiers, their kinfolk, who had suffered mentally and physically on the battle front. In this depiction the villagers listen attentively to the soldier’s emotional story and many cry (hence the painting’s title “Tearing Up”). Mihály von Munkácsy depicted the scene with particularly sympathetic memories, since the War of Independence and the tragic events that followed caused his sad childhood and saw him orphanhood at the age of six.
Self portrait in Kitchen with Still Life by Max Liebermann (1873)
Realising that the Netherlands was a place he had to visit to satiate his appetite for genre painting, Max, thanks to financial assistance from his brother, travelled to Amsterdam and Scheveningen. It was the first of many trips he made to the the Netherlands, a country he said inspired him.
Die Gänserupferinnen (Goose Pluckers) by Max Liebermann (1872)
When Max returned home in 1872 to continue with his studies at Weimar, his studio colleague Thomas Herbst had brought back a drawing of geese-plucking women from a study trip. Liebermann decided to use this motif and merge it with the style of Munkácsy and realised that this would be the basis of his next work. He then started on his large (120x170cms) painting entitled Die Gänserupferinnen (Goose Pluckers), which is now part of Berlin’s Alte Nationalgalerie collection. The work is painted in dark tones and depicts the simple task of goose plucking but the scene bears a resemblance to Mihály von Munkácsy’s work, Tépéscsinálók. It was the first painting that the twenty-five-year-old Liebermann exhibited in public at a Hamburg art exhibition. The art critics acknowledged the skilful painting style of Liebermann but were highly critical of the subject calling it distasteful and labelling him as the “painter of the ugly”. The painting was then exhibited that same year in Berlin but the critics were again fervently critical as they had been in Hamburg. However, the work found a buyer in the railway millionaire Bethel Henry Strousberg and with the money from the sale of the painting Liebermann travelled to Paris. His time in Paris was spent looking at the works of French artists such as Millais and Courbet and he was impressed by their style and motifs. Bethel Henry Strousberg’s empire later collapsed and he became bankrupt and had to sell some of the paintings he had collected over the years. Louis Liebermann, Max’s father, bought the Gänserupferinnen (Goose Pluckers) painting from him.
Potato Harvest in Barbizon by Max Liebermann (1875)
Liebermann had now discovered his first and favoured style, one which was both a realistic and unsentimental depiction of working people, and yet a style which avoided disdain, shaming of the subjects but also shied away from false romanticising of the people depicted. It was Realism. Liebermann became disillusioned with the German art scene which he believed had become too old-fashioned and somewhat retrograde and he was even disenchanted with Germany itself, so in December 1873 Liebermann travelled to Paris where he set up home and studio in Montmartre. Once settled in the French capital he sought out the artists who were looked upon as leading Realism artists of the day as well as the plein air Impressionism painters but many refused to meet with him due to the sour taste the Franco-Prussian War had left and the bitterness the defeat by the Prussian forces had caused and it had only ended three years earlier.
Flax Spinners by Max Liebermann (1889)
Besides still being influenced by Munkácsy, Liebermann had fallen in love with the art of French Barbizon painters Constant Troyon, Charles-François Daubigny, Camille Corot but above all Jean-François Millet. It was in 1874 that he submitted and had accepted his Die Gänserupferinnen (Goose Pluckers) painting to the Salon de Paris. However, this received negative reviews in the Parisian press, especially those newspapers which held nationalist views following the Franco-Prussian war. The first summer Liebermann spent in Paris it saw him travel to Barbizon, situated near the Forest of Fontainebleau, the home of the Barbizon School of artists, whose painters practiced en plein air painting which proved to be of great importance for the development of Impressionism. Liebermann decided to revert from the old-fashioned, heavy painting of Munkácsy, and became more engrossed in the methods used by the artists of the Barbizon School.
From 1874 Max Liebermann continued his studies in Paris and it was during thus time that he became increasingly interested in rural motifs, in “simple” people working on the land.
………to be continued.
Much of the information was found in various Wikipedia sites but also in:
Arnold and Louise settled down to living in the Colorado town of Denver in 1926. Soon the couple became active in the Denver art community and both were founding members of the Denver Artists Guild in 1928. Whilst living in Denver during the 1920s and 1930s, they would regularly visit Santa Fe in New Mexico and when in Taos would be guests at Mabel Luhan’s Los Gallos compound.
The Rönnerbeck Family (1937)
The help Louise received from the WPA was just what she needed as her portrait commissions had dwindled due to the Depression and the little savings she had left from a family inheritance was quickly diminishing. Besides her portraiture she had always been interested in painting murals and accordingly she worked long and hard and entered a number of WPA competitions to win mural commissions in various US States. In all, she entered sixteen mural commission competitions for the Treasury Department Section of Painting and Sculpture, a New Deal art project established on October 16, 1934, and administered by the Procurement Division of the United States Department of the Treasury.
The Fertile Land Remembers, oil on canvas mural by Louise Rönnebeck for the Worland, Wyoming Post Office, now in the Dick Cheney Federal Building, Casper, Wyoming, (1938)
In many of her submissions she focused on the power of women in striving for their goals but also depicted the plight of women and the children who were forced to work at a young age. In the end, she was awarded two commissions. In November 1937 she was invited to submit sketches for a mural that would decorate a wall in the post office of the Wyoming town of Worland. The Worland commission was for $570 and the artist was allowed 119 days for its completion. The organisers wrote Ronnebeck that the mural called for a “simple and vital design” based on a theme appropriate to the locale. Awarding Louise the Wyoming commission was a controversial decision as she was living in Colorado and many believed the commission should have gone to a Wyoming-based artist but the organisers stated bluntly that no Wyoming artist reached the standards they required. Louise commenced her oil on canvas mural entitled The Fertile Land Remembers in 1938. The mural depicts a white American couple with their child sitting in a wagon being pulled by two large oxen. These three figures, all looking towards us, are painted in a variety of rich colours whilst the native Indian horseback riders seen chasing buffalo are portrayed cloud-like figures in the sky above the wagon and are depicted in pale monochromatic luminous grey. None cast their eyes towards us. They are probably Cheyenne or Sioux, the forgotten people of Wyoming, who lived a nomadic lifestyle in order to pursue buffalo herds and were subdued and placed in reservations. Unlike the colourful people in the wagon being the present and future the pale grey figures are symbolic of the past. In the background we see the emerging elements of the white American future. Louise wrote about her thought process that went into the mural design:
“…The work is a romantic recollection of the covered wagon and the wild Indian and bison of the Old West, who still in retrospect hover over the irrigated fields and oil wells of the present. The covered wagon drawn by oxen is shown inexorably pressing through the galloping figures of a vanishing culture, whose form becomes shadowy and disappear into the past under the white man’s determination to open new lands. The landscapes on either side depict the present which was created by these pioneers. The way in which the idea is presented was suggested by the device of the double exposure used in many motion pictures to show the past and the present merging into one dramatic unit…”
Harvest by Louise Rönnebeck (1940)
Louise Rönnebeck’s second commission was for the post office and courthouse in the Colorado town of Grand Junction but which is now housed in the city’s Wayne N. Aspinwall Federal Building United States Courthouse. Louise won the opportunity to paint The Harvest through entering a contest anonymously, for fear of gender prejudice, and submitting a sample sketch. In 1940, with the enlargement of the Wayne N. Aspinall Federal Building, Rönnebeck’s mural was placed to embellish the postmaster’s office door pediment with its conspicuous V-shaped bottom. Her depiction represented the plight of the Native American Ute people who prior to the 1860s had lived in southwest Colorado for centuries and it was here that they had their seasonal hunting grounds. However, despite a Treaty which granted the Utes absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of their land, the lure of rich mineral deposits lured prospectors on to their land. The tribe was squeezed into an ever-smaller parcel of land by the incoming miners. The matter came to a head in 1881 when the Utes refused to leave the territory and were forced to the south-western border of Colorado. The six million acres of land once owned by the Utes was now up for grabs and settlers poured in establishing local industries such as orcharding in the form of growing peaches. In the foreground of Louise Rönnebeck’s large mural we see the harvesting of the peach crop by a young couple, modelled by Louise’s two children. To the left of the painting, we see settlers moving into the Ute’s land with their horses and to the right we see the result of this influx as the Ute people are forced out. This is a painting depicting a thriving local industry and acts as a counterpoint to the hard times of the Great Depression.
Unveiling of “missing” painting.
In a January 18th, 1992, article by Ginger Rice in Grand Junction’s Daily Sentinel, it describes the mural’s mysterious disappearance for more than twenty-five years. Workers removed the oil-on-canvas painting for conservation work, and it subsequently went missing. Fortunately, a General Services Administration building manager, Tim Gasparani, re-discovered the mural and in 1992, The Harvest finally returned to its original home.
The People vs Mary Elizabeth Smith. by Louise Emerson Rönnerbeck (1936)
In 1936, Louise Rönnerbeck completed a dramatic painting entitled The People vs Mary Elizabeth Smith. The depiction was based upon an emotional trial of an eighteen-year-old mother of a eight-month old child, Mary Elizabeth Smith, in January 1936. She, whom the press termed “the girl mother” had been accused of murdering her husband in the previous November. She had accused her estranged husband, nineteen-year-old Robert Dwight Smith, who was unemployed, as being abusive towards her. Just prior to the shooting he had petitioned the court to annul their three-year-old marriage which would result in their child being looked upon as being illegitimate. For Mary Elizabeth, this was too much to bear and so she took her brother’s hunting rifle, marched along to her sister-in-law’s house where her husband was staying and shot him. She told the police that she did not know why she did it. She just knew she had to protect her baby’s name. Her defence lawyers stated that having been deserted by her husband and struggling to bring up their son it had taken its toll on her mental health. Louise Rönnerbeck depicted the theatrical trial scene which she had witnessed.
The defence lawyer mitigated the actions of his client by reminding the jury of her personal history. Her father had deserted her leaving her mother to struggle to provide for her two children. Her own eight-month-old son, Rodney, born after a particular long and painful labour was the centre of her life. The courtroom was filled throughout the trial and the press feasted on the events. In his article, Jack Carberry of the Denver Post wrote:
“…”they met love, and in their ignorance of life, it engulfed them…”
Rönnebeck’s painting depicts the dramatic trial scene. In the witness box, at the centre of the legal proceedings, we see the frail reed-headed defendant, wearing a dark dress with a white collar, handkerchief in hand, as she grasps the side of the witness box. She is barely able to stand and is fully aware that if the all-male jury (at this time women were not allowed to be jury members) convicts her, she faces either the death penalty or life imprisonment. It was reported in the Denver Post that her testimony was one of child-like simplicity. On the left in the front row of the courtroom we see the girl’s mother holding her daughter’s infant son. She had come every day to offer support to her daughter. After Mary’s testimony it was reported that there was not one person in the courtroom who wasn’t crying, moved by the young woman’s simplistic testimony. Also in the scene we see the prosecutor waving the murder weapon and on a table to his right are the deceased bloodied shirt and trousers. The jury retired for five hours before returning and acquitting her for reasons of insanity.
The Children by Louise Emerson Rönnebeck (c.1935)
Following the end of World War II, Louise lectured at the University of Denver from 1945 to 1951 as well as providing some magazine illustrations. Her husband Arnold died of cancer on November 14th 1947, aged 62 and with her two children marrying, Arnold in 1950 and Ursula in 1953, she was left on her own. In 1954 she went to live in Bermuda where she and her family had spent many holidays. Here she taught art at the Bermuda High School for Girls between 1955 and 1959 and continued to paint. In the Autumn of 1973 she returned to Denver where she spent the rest of her life.
Louise Emerson Rönnebeck died in Denver on February 17th 1980, aged 78.
I collected information regarding the life and art of Louise Emerson Rönnerbeck from various sources. The main ones were:
My featured artist today is Louise Emerson Rönnebeck, the twentieth century painter famous for her murals. Louise Emerson was born on August 25th 1901 in the Philadelphia suburb of Germantown but spent her childhood in New York. She was the third child of Mary Crawford Suplee and Harrington Emerson and had two elder sisters, Isabel Mary and Margaret Eleanor. Her father was the son of Edwin Emerson, a Professor of Political science and was an American efficiency engineer and business theorist, who founded the management consultancy firm, the Emerson Institute, in New York City in 1900.
Car Accident at Aylard’s Corner (Denver) by Louise Emerson Rönnebeck ( 1937)
Having completed her regular schooling she attended Barnard College, Columbia University, which was then a private women’s liberal arts college in the New York City borough of Manhattan. In 1922 Louise Emerson graduated from Barnard College and, for the next three years, went on to study at the Art Students League of New York where she studied life drawing and anatomy with Canadian American painter, George Bridgman, sculpture with Leo Lentelli, the Italian sculptor and painting with Kenneth Hayes Miller. The latter had the greatest influence on her art and future career. Miller who taught at the Art Students League from 1911 until 1951 had among his students Edward Hopper and George Bellows.
Building Boom by Louise Emerson Rönnebeck (1937)
During the summers of 1923 and 1924 Louise travelled to France and studied fresco painting at the Fontainebleau Schools which had been established in 1921. It was situated in Fontainebleau, thirty-five miles south-east of the centre of the French capital and consisted of two schools: The American Conservatory, and the School of Fine Arts. Here she studied under Paul-Albert Baudouin, a painter of genre, landscapes and decorative panels.
Taos Indian Child by Louise Emerson Rönnebeck (1925)
In the Summer of 1925, Louise did not carry on with her tradition of going to Paris to study at the American Conservatory and School of Fine Arts as she and her sister Isabel had been invited to stay at Taos in the New Mexico ranch home, Los Gallos, belonging to Mable Dodge Luhan. The ranch was located near the eastern edge of the town center of Taos. Luhan, the heiress of Charles Ganson, a wealthy banker, was an American patron of the arts, who was particularly associated with the Taos art colony. The ranch was a meeting place for many contemporary artists and writers and Louise Emerson distinctly remembered her visit there:
“…It was a marvellous place, all wild, strange, empty and romantic…”
Mabel Dodge Luhan Ranch House
Other guests at the ranch at the time were the writers D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda along with Aldous Huxley. Louise was a great admirer of Lawrence and so she and her sister decided to call on him, albeit they had not been invited by the writer. Louise remembers that visit well. Despite not having been invited, it was perfectly all right. He seemed only too happy to have someone who would listen to him. She remembered that he had a red beard and deep-set eyes which conveyed a surprising intensity. She said she was impressed with this wiry, frail, yet madly gifted person, who talked in a common, ugly voice. He and his wife Frieda seemed very Bohemian and avant-garde. Lawrence fought with his wife and they shouted at each other. Despite looking very ill, he baked his visitors bread, and Frieda made jam. Sensing she had been in the presence of a genius, it remained, as Louise recalled, that it had been one of the most memorable days of my life.
Roberta by Louise Emerson Rönnebeck (1928)
Another of the guests staying at the Taos ranch was Arnold Rönnebeck. He was a German-born American modernist artist and sculptor who had arrived in America two years earlier. He was a good friend of many of the avant-garde writers and artists he had met during his time in Berlin and Paris. In America he had become friends with artist Georgia O’Keefe and photographer Alfred Stieglitz and it was at one of the latter’s gallery, An American Place that Rönnebeck first exhibited some of his artwork in America. The gallery was on the seventeenth floor of a newly constructed skyscraper on Madison Avenue. Arnold was impressed by Louise and wrote about her to his New York friend Stieglitz about his first impressions of this young woman:
“…What a summer! …. The one other person who is doing something about this country is a young girl from New York, Louise Emerson, a pupil of Kenneth Hayes Miller at the league. Still under the influence of Derain, but strong and powerful and with a very personal vision. She lives in one of Mabel’s cottages and is going very good watercolors and oil landscapes…”
Louise and Arnold Rönnebeck’s Wedding Photograph
Soon the friendship between Louise and Rönnebeck turned into love and in New York City, twenty-five-year-old Louise Emerson and Arnold Rönnebeck married despite him being sixteen years older than her. The marriage took place in March 1926 at the All Angels Episcopal Church on the Upper Westside of Manhattan and the reception after the ceremony took place in Louise’s parent’s home close by. Despite her marriage, Louise continued to use her maiden name professionally until 1931.
Arnold Rönnebeck working on his sculpture “Grief” in Omaha, Nebraska (1926)
The couple took an extended honeymoon travelling to Omaha, Santa Fe, and Los Angeles, places which Rönnebeck had to visit to finalise some painting and sculptural commissions and attend the one-man exhibitions of his work in San Diego and Los Angeles . After the honeymoon the couple settled in Denver where Arnold became director of the Denver Art Museum.
Louise with her son Arnold (1927)
Louise Ronnebeck gave birth to their first child, Arnold Emerson, in 1927 and two years later a second child Anna Maria Ursula was born. The Rönnebeck household with two young children and two working artists was somewhat chaotic and Louise had to balance looking after the family and carrying on with her art. Add to this mix, Louise was just starting her artistic career whereas her husband had passed the high-point of his career and since he arrived in America from Germany he had not reached the level of his European fame. Her struggle to manage all her tasks and family duties was highlighted in a 1946 Denver Post article, in which Louise was described as:
“…a four handed woman – – managing home and children on one side, and teaching and painting on the other…”
In letters and interviews Louise talked about the struggle to have time to be a mother, wife and artist. In a letter to Edward B Rowan, a friend and arts administrator, teacher, artist, writer, lecturer, critic, and gallerist, dated February 1938, she wrote:
“…Being mother of two strenuous children, and the caretaker of a fairly large house, I have to budget my time carefully…”
“… Between the children’s meal time, the mother rests while the artist works…”
Louise Emerson Rönnebeck
In a February 1930 article in the daily newspaper, Rocky Mountain News, entitled Denverite Out to Prove She Can be Mother and Artist by Margaret Smith, Louise was quoted as saying that she would never encourage her children to become artists as an artist’s life is both unsocial and confining. Although her husband missed the big city lifestyle, Louise was content with her new life in Denver and in a 1934 letter to her former teacher, Kenneth Hayes Miller, she wrote:
“…I have become very attached to life in the west. We rent a charming really spacious house almost in the country for very little money, take frequent weekends in the mountains, and the children are radiant and adorable persons. Arnold, however, misses bitterly the stimulation of a big city and longs very much for a change…”
Colorado Minescape by Louise Emerson Rönnerbeck (c.1933)
Louise and Arnold had only been living in Denver for three years when the country was hit by the Great Depression and Louise knew that with their finances being in a poor state she and the family needed some help to survive. She turned to the WPA. The WPA was the Works Progress Administration, later known as the Work Projects Administration. This was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers to carry out public works projects. The Federal Art Project was one of the five projects sponsored by the WPA, and the largest of the New Deal art projects. It was not solely created as some cultural activity, but as an assistance measure which would lead to artists and artisans being employed to create murals, easel paintings, sculpture, graphic art, posters, photography, theatre scenic design, and arts and crafts. One of the important things for the artists, besides earning money, was that commissions were essentially free of government pressure to control subject matter, interpretation, or style.
……….to be continued.
I collected information regarding the life and art of Louise Emerson Rönnerbeck from various sources. The main ones were:
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