Emma Bormann in Groningen

Emma Bormann 

visiting Groningen (Netherlands)

The works and biography of Emma Bormann (1887-1975), as an important artist, are extensively published, both in books and in the Internet. She was appointed professor teaching graphics in Münich Art Academy in 1918 and in her long life she travelled extensively creating woodblock prints of the many places she visited all over the world: highly collectable and likewise priced.

In 1922 however she travelled to the Netherland making sketches for later printmaking. In that year the "Verein für verfielfaltigende Kunst" published her print of the Academy in Groningen and therefore has become one of her best known. Finding a print signed and titled in what looks like Bormann's own handwriting and not with the VfvK publishers title and credit suggests she also stocked local galleries with signed copies after her trip. After all: world traveling costs money, even when you are born rich, earn a professor's salary and are married to a doctor (Dr. Eugen Milch). 

I have no idea if the other prints she created in Groningen were also made for the "Verein" (I don't think so) but they were created during that same 1922  trip. One of them is showing the small village of Godlinze: pretty accurate, even the garden fence (lower right) is cut and printed correctly.  

There’s at least one other signed print to proof she extended her trip also visiting the city of Rotterdam some 250 Km south where she did the "Kolk-haven". This historic and medieval centre, the heart of Rotterdam was erased after the cowardly German bombardment of the city on may 14th 1940. 

But then to my surprise I recently discovered another Groningen print. One I’d never seen before. It’s titled “Lage der A”. Which it is not. It is actually the “Noorderhaven” just around its corner, looking North. I know, my roots are in Groningen and for the last 10 years I drove past these old store houses, to and from my work in the UMCG.

The mistaken title is the more remarkable because Emma Bormann also sat sketching on the opposite north side of the Noorderhaven looking South over the city. Creating this really very nice view of the city, below. And that print I'd also never seen before. 

On the left is the Martini-tower, the tower and spine of the Academy are in the middle and on the right the tower of the "der Aa"- church. This color(ed) print recently surfaced in the Internet in an auction. To be more correct: I found it long after the auction. 

To my surprise, researching these two new to me Noorderhaven-Groningen prints a bit, I found in the Archives of the City of Groningen yet another print by Bormann and one I also never had seen before. It shows the "Grote Markt" and the "Martini"-tower, an etching and: on a busy market day.

Over the years I have found, picked up and collected several prints of the iconic Martini tower, or Olle Grize (old Gray One) as it is lovingly called by Groningen’s citizens. But not many showing the tower on a market day held on what was then one of the most beautiful and best preserved medieval market squares in Europe. Until it was destroyed with the liberation of the city in 1945.
(left: Hendrik Jochem Gorter 1905-1944 who did not survive the occupation and right: "Estgerbuh" (pseudonym for Henriette Rosina Dorothea Hubregtse (1879-1959) 

All pictures are mouse clickable to embiggen. 

All pictures taken freely from the internet for friendly, educational and non commercial use only. 

Martha Cunz: the Dutch Connection (II)

Martha Cunz

St.Gallen (1876-1961)

Swiss painter, print- and bookplate maker.

In before posting the importance of Martha Cunz as one of the pioneers of color woodblock printing was emphasized. In a relative short period between 1902 and 1905 with her experiments she was able to create very fine prints of extra ordinairy quality in the Japanese way, inspiring her colleagues and paving the way for a new generation of printmakers, often women and most of them professionally trained as painters, to give it try too. 

Many of these women already were accomplished painting artists and/or teachers with professional careers.

This unsigned and never before published print (above) has great similarities with Martha Cunz' early St.Gallen and other night prints. Perhaps it will be attributed to her with certainty one day.  

   

My personal interest and main focus in woodblock-print collecting and research is concerning this perticular group of German women printmaking artists. Their biographies which are often unknown, obscured and very incomplete I try to complete. They were born between 1856 and 1895 and were professionally active with printmaking 1905-1940. The (my) list, today comprising of some 150 names of artists. Only a few of them acquired the fame and status of Martha Cunz but most of them had modest careers and stayed relatively unknown. 

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Here are some more examples of a some printmaking women artists who I know visited the Netherlands. 

Helene Mass (born 1871) 

The same location anno 2010, 1905 and the famous painting by Dutch impressionist Georg Henri Breitner (1857-1923) 

Helene Mass' visit to Amsterdam resulting in this characteristic Canal print showing the junction of two of Amsterdam canals: the Keizersgracht and the Reguliersgracht (print shown with courtesy of reader Holger in Munich). 

Louise Wagner (1875-1950)

Louise Wagner, who created mainly lithographic prints, obviously visited the Island of Marken, a traditional North Sea fishing community just north of Amsterdam before the completion of the Afsluitdijk in 1932 (see before posting).

     

Emma Bormann (1887-1974)

"De Kolk" in the heart of the old Rotterdam before it was destroyed by the cowardly fire bombing of May 14th 1940 by the German Luftwaffe as seen by later professor Emma Bormann.  

De mill depicted by her in the small village of Godlinze in the North-East of province Groningen. It was in a very bad state and was demolished in 1945. 

And this is the Groningen University "Academie Gebouw", build in 1909 after an earlier building was destroyed by fire, in the province's capital and where students receive their official degree after finishing their studies and where I for several years was allowed to speak, congratulate and welcome fresh academic professionals as colleagues among them one of my sons and more recently his girlfriend Anne-Maartje. 

British printmaker Eric Hesketh Hubbard (1892-1957) printed this "Repair warf in Delft" on the printing press of his friend Hendrik Roodenburg (1895-1987) a well known Dutch  topographic etcher, in 1924.

Please send me more examples of foreign printmakers visiting and working in the Neterlands for sharing in this Blog.

www.galeriesouris.nl

All pictures borrowed freely from the internet for friendly, educational and non commercial use only. 

   

Mabel Dwight, also in the old New York Aquarium

Mabel Dwight 

born Mabel Jaque Williamson

(1876 - 1955)

American lithographer 

Thank to Scottish reader James commenting this morning on Emma Bormann's Aquarium posting today a contribution dedicated to Mabel Dwight. Like Emma Bormann and Herbert Bolivar Tschudy in before postings she was in the old New York Aquarium too. It closed in 1941. "Queer Fish", above, happens to be her most popular print. She created many prints and in large editions. Modern copies often offered at a certain international internet auction site, original prints in Fine Print Galleries. And I found four of the New York Aquarium.

"Although Mabel Dwight studied painting in her youth at the Hopkins School of Art in San Francisco, she was fifty years old before she began to practice art seriously. Born in Cincinnati, she spent her childhood and youth in New Orleans and California and also traveled extensively in France, Italy, India, and Ceylon.  

She was married 1906-1917 to printmaker Eugene Higgins (1874-1958) who trained and studied in the "Academie Julian" and the "Ecole des beaux Arts" in Paris. While she was in Paris in 1927 she became interested in lithography. Dwight, who was deaf, was a keen observer of the human comedy, which she depicted with humor and compassion in her work.

Although considered a social realist (as was Eugene Higgins) like Emma Bormann she choose crowds, the aquarium, the circus, the beach and theater for her most popular and often very humorous prints. I found many examples of her work Googling and choose for this posting some (later?) colored examples.   

"Text: National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996).

This last example chosen because Herbert Bolivar Tschudy in before posting possibly choose the same New-York Ferry for his print. 

And this one "life class" (is that her among  all the boys ?) to make you curious enough to go out and do some internet searching for this wonderful artist.
  

All pictures are mouse-clickable to embiggen en were borrowed freely from the internet for friendly, educational and non commercial use only. 

Herbert Bolivar Tschudy (Judy) in the old New York Aquarium

Herbert Bolivar Tschudy
(H.B. Judy)

(1874-1946)

American impressionist painter.

Inside the old New-York Aquarium with Emma Bormann in before posting I met Tschudy, the  painter who shared with me the fascination for tropical fishtanks.

Plan of New-York aquarium in Castle Clinton Manhattan

The acquaintance leading me back to Dutch painter Gerrit Willem Dijsselhof (1866-1924) whom I introduced in an early Linosaurus posting (here*) and who is remembered best for his great number of Amsterdam Artis Zoo fish tank paintings (below). 

Tschudy, without a doubt from Swiss ancestry, also used to sign Judy probably avoiding the very un-Anglo spelling of his family name. His parents will have been admirers of Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) the founding father and first president of several free and democratic South-American states like Panama, Venezuala and Peru giving his name to the state of Bolivia.

Fulton Street Ferry underneath one of the pillars of Brooklyn Bridge

in 1914 by H.B.Tschudy. 

Fulton Street Ferry went out of service in 1924 the year this photograph of Brooklyn, Manhattan and both connecting bridges (Brooklyn and Manhattan) was taken. Manhattan Bridge was completed in 1909. 

Lill Tschudi (1911-2004) the Grosvenor School and Claude Flight (1881-1955) trained Swiss printmaker will probably be related but that is beyond my knowledge and horizon. 

  All pictures borrowed freely from the Internet for friendly, educational and non commercial use only.