Frieda Mentz-Kessel: Successful identification in 2014 and Best Wishes for 2015

A happy New Year &

Best Wishes for 2015 !

Thanks to reader Archimandrill this identification problem of a print commemorating a 25th anniversary in what looks like (or could be) a circus tent print is solved. It is by Frieda Mentz-Kessel (Graz, Austria 1878 -1969 Jena) she was working as a linocut printmaker in Jena (near Weimar). There's not much to be revealed in the Internet about her life or work. She was married to history professor Georg Hugo Mentz (1870-1942) and exhibiting in the 1930's wilt fellow women artists in the "Jena Kunstlerinnen Verein" announcements found in newspaper and she was actively involved in the Womens Rights Movement.

Among them I found Dachau painter and printmaker Paula Wimmer (1876-1971). Besides her bathing boys (a theme after Max Liebermann) she is best remembered by her prints that are often also located in a circus tent. I will show more of her work soon. 

Frieda's print was in an auction and, when it was sold, the Internet connections obviously were deleted. I just was lucky to stumble over it in this short window of opportunity. 

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

NOID: Identification of prints.

During Christmass time I can see Blog visits rising, and now having the extra attention this is a fine opportunity to ask readers and visitors to help identify some printmakers and solve some puzzles.

To start with: I've found this picture of a very nice woodblock print somewhere in the Internet, safed it but so far was unable to find it again. The signature could read F. Mentz Kaßsel. But I have never found a printmaker by that name. It seems to me a 25 year anniversary of some kind (a choir singing). 

Same goes for these two Internet found "said to be Russian" (are they ?) wintery and snowy prints. They are (very) reminding of Paul Leschorn's (1876-1951) speciality (below). And I don't know if they are by the same printmaker.

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

    

  

Elbe seen from Blankenese and Mount Sullberg

Hamburg and River Elbe

some paintings and views  

In before posting Hamburg and the Elbe river from Finkenwerder Island were shown because of Louise Steinbach-Weinholdts reprinted woodblock view. Today we look at river Elbe from the opposite bank.  

The village of Blankenese was formed around and below ice-age formed mount Süllberg. It was originally a fishing community, later sea going captains retired here in the twentieth century followed by wealthy Hamburg merchants, artists  and well-to-do people settled here. It is now a very beautiful place, renowned for its wonderful views, grand villas and estates, its restaurants, river beaches and holiday and weekend lea sure 
   

And of course a place visited by hords of painters and other artists trying to capture what indeed is one of the worlds great panorama's. Below is a painting by an anonymous painter, sold in a German Auction site not long ago, hard to believe the artist is unknown: it's my favorite !

Here are some more by known (Hamburg) painters, a personal choice, from many more examples. 

1: Facing upstream from Blankenese.

Claus Richters (1813-1994)

     

Albert Feser (1901-1993)

Albert Feser (1901-1993)

    2 Facing downstream from Blankenese:


Ernst Eitner (1867-1955) 

Friedrich Kallmorgen (1856-1926) 

Ivo Hauptmann (1886-1973) 

Hans Porwoll (1898-1984)

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

All pictures are mouse-clickable to embiggen. 

Christmas card 2014 Monogram: PBH = Paul Burty Haviland

Reader Tom within 24 hours solved the mystery of the Monogram in my Christmas card. It was designed by Paul Lewis for Paul Burty Haviland (link*) (1880-1950) the son and heir of the french china manufacturer Haviland & Co. in Limoges Charles Edward Haviland and Madeleine Burty. 

He was an early 19th century photographer and close of friend Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), and married to Renée Lalique's daughter Suzanne Lalique (1892-1989), the famous french Art Nouveau Glass designer. 

Suzanne was an artist too and besides a creative artist and painter she created besides her own a marriage between the Haviland Limoges china porcelain and Lalique's artist-icy. Just "dots and open space" but: Beautiful !

  

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

A Happy Christmas 2014 and Best Wishes

And my special thanks and wishes for all the nice fellow print enthousiasts and print collectors, friendly Blog-article observers and commentors, reasonable print sellers and even more reasonable print exchangers, hard working "German-pioneering-Women-Woodblock-Printmakers-born-before-1900" out-there-in-the-field Scouts, enthousiastic and professional text editors and correctors, important and vital information and new picture senders, always cooperative museum and other email-answering archival correspondents, friendly car-boot and flee-market sellers, unselfish charity shop owners.

it is now time for a rest:    

And in person I would like to thank: Wolfgang Barina, James Barnes, Heert Burgers, Michelle Bos, Bill Carl, Tom Clemens, Charles Haji-Baba, Clive Christy-Hazell, Lily Lotus Green, Ortwin Danckert, Wim Eilander, Hans von Döhren, Ed Ogul, Erik (El-Vivio) Korbeek, Felicity Naylor, Holger Paul, Steven Muzy, Hubert Fricke, Karen Charbonneau, Klaus Ohlig, Klaus Voigt, Markus Wehner, Vlatko Milosevski, Cees Oorthuijs, Peter Weidlich, Auke Boorsma, Neil Philip, Sergei Prodolnov, Shaun D'Arcy-Burt, Henk Spruit, Stephen Bishop, Steve Deniss, Thomas Treibig and all their loved ones who helped making 2014 an unforgettable year. 

And to all deer persons "out there" I might have forgotten to mention. 

These two card/examples by printmaker Arthur Allen Lewis  (Mobile, Alabama, 1873 - New York City, 1957). I'm wondering: who was CBH ?? (or PBH)  (the surprising answer is given by reader Tom in next posting).  

The Newspaper reading dad found at: http://www.thefedoralounge.com/showthread.php?44052-Vintage-Christmas-cards

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

Louise Steinbach-Weinhold: Pollards on the isle of Finkenwerder.

Steinbach-Weinhold, Louise (Lise)

      (Dresden 1879-1971 Hamburg) 

Visiting Hamburg and enjoying the city and river Elbe in last postings this is a  good opportunity to show this print that showed up in German Ebay recently. To my knowledge (but that is not a way of measuring) the second example of a print by this forgotten printmaker. It is a limited (12/50) copy printed in 1990 from the original 1909 blocks. I do not have a clue who printed them, where and why, and if the original was at hand to determine and choose colors. (If it wasn't for the horizon it could easily be mistaken for a view of Provincetown Mass. USA)

It's titled "Kopfweiden" (Pollard Willows) in "Finkenwerder": an island in river Elbe just south of the great city. An idyllic place, a fishing community, around 1900 but 100 years later hardly recognizable by "progress': it's todays centre of the German Airbus industry. The sad thing about progress is it cannot be stopped. 

Louise's Pollards: although it's not 100 years old, as it should be, I loved it the moment I saw it. Just three color blocks (blue, green and purple) and a key block were used but it is how the eye is drawn into the composition and the great suggestion of depth (the purple roof top placed under the horizon) by overlooking the broad river from the heights of the moraine, a wall created by friction from the glaciers advancing from the North in successive ice-ages (350.000-150.000 years ago). When they retreated and melted the river bed of todays tidal river Elbe was formed.  

The traditional Elbe "Fischkutter" fleet is/was marked HF (Hamburg Finkenwerder) below by Thomas Herbst. The nearby (opposite) Blankenese fleet SB (Schleswig-Holstein Blankenese).  

Visiting Hamburg and Blankenese, the picturesque village on the opposing Elbe bank, and using the unique Hamburg water taxi service we enjoyed similar views from the other side, the North Bank, overlooking Finkenwerder and the bustling river with endless rows of cargo ships, fishing boats, tugboats and ocean steamers entering and leaving majestic Hamburg harbor. It created an everlasting impression in my memory. As it did on many artists who came here to paint and sketch 100 years before. A selection will be shown in next posting.
  

Louise, who had been a student of Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) in Berlin's Art Academy, was trained a painter but for most women artists that was to have a career as teacher, what she actually was for a while at a drawing school in her native Dresden. While studying in Berlin she will have learned that new way of Printmaking-the-Japanese-way from Emil Orlik (1870-1932) who was appointed to teach the craft (or is it an art ?) in Berlins "Kunstgewerbe Museum Schule" in 1905. 

Friedrich Schaper: Sommertag in Finkenwerder 1895.

Louise was married to painter and professor Eduard Steinbach (Hamburg 1878-1939) who taught at the Academies of Berlin, Leipzig, Karlsruhe and Hamburg and together leading a private painting school in Hamburg. They lived and worked in Berlin and Hamburg (below: camping along the river  by Eduard Steinbach).

She exhibited in the Berlin Secession 1909/10 and was close friends with painter/printmakers Arthur Illies (1870-1952), who also taught at the Hamburg Arts and Craft (Kunstgewerbe) school and that wonderful but short-lived Friedrich Lissmann (1880-1915) who appeared earlier in this Blog (do follow the label below to read more !)

Willy Dammasch (1887- ?), The Elbe seen from Finkenwerder.

Willy Tiedjen (1881-1950), Elbe impression and Hamburg skyline from Finkenwerder.  

Eduard and Louise worked (and possibly lived) on the Isle of Finkenwerder from 1901-1919 where a small artist colony had emerged frequented in summer by famous impressionist painters like Thomas Herbst (1848-1915) and Friedrich Schaper (1859-1956) but many other artists, local Hamburg painters and the lesser gods, will have payed a visit to this idyllic place with flowering fruit trees, haymaking and its traditional islanders, the inviting "Gasthausen" and fishing fleet.

Gretchen Wohlwill: Heu-ernte auf Finkenwerder.

Rolf Diener (1906-1988) Finkenwerder  

Gretchen Wohlwill (1878-1962), was here, the Jewish painter-printmaker who was befriended with painter, printmaker and Finkenwerder born Eduard Bargheer (1901-1979) (below). 

Printmaker Luigi Kazimir (1879-1937) visiting Hamburg also halted on Finkerwerder Island overlooking the Elbe and Hamburgs skyline on a gloomy day, obviously inspired by Emil Nolde's "Elbe Schlepper" (Elbe tug boat). 

Emil Nolde (1867-1956) 1910: "Elbe Schlepper" 

Hamburg printmaker Hans Förster (1885-1966), a shamefully neglected artist, but one of the earliest (1905-06) and a brilliant student of Emil Orlik in Berlin, immortalized the fishing village individuals of Finkerwerder making him a nice candidate to appear next in the Linosaurus. 

All pictures are mouse-clickable to embiggen.

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

Else Zinkeisen revisited: more Elbe fishing boats

Zinkeisen, Else

(Hamburg 27-08-1871 - ?)

Hamburg painter and printmaker. 

Harbored Elbe fishing boats drying sails. 

Belonging to the group of pioneer German women printmakers Else is almost at the end of my alphabetical research list: only Olga von Zitsewitz and Bertha Züricher to follow last. She came to mind when reader Tom (see before posting) has send me another print probably losing its makers signature, for sharing. An educated guess (the use of color, the way the horizon is done and the rather simply cut outlines of the vessels) would be Else Zinkeisen (After "eliminating" possibles:  Carl Thiemann, and Josephine Siccard Redl (both traveled and printed Venice lagune ships in evening settings) and Margarete (L.E.M.) Gearhardt but she was active in the Nidden Art colony in the Baltic).  

She is printmaker about whom I know so very little (*). I've shown her before in the Blog and I am confident eventually more about her identity and biography will be revealed and cleared up. With the help of readers. She clearly had a fascination for these Elbe ships so for that reason they are shown here together again. Seen from some height, looking down, suggests in some views she sat near the village of Blankenese (maybe lived there?). That lovely and picturesque spot adjacent to the bustling city and harbour of Hamburg I plan showing, artistically, in next posting.    

What I do know: 

Else was a member of the “Heikendorfer Künstler Kolonie” that sprang up around the house and studios of Heinrich Blunk (1898-1963) at the Kieler Forde, not far from Hamburg. Printmaker Oscar Droege (1898-1983) was a member (later becoming professor in Kassel) and painter Georg Burmeister (1864-1936). She followed private painting lessons in Hamburg and in Berlin with professor Franz Skarbina (1849-1910), in Munich with Angelo Jank (1868-1940). She studied also at prestigious Academie Colarossi in Paris and was professionally active in Hamburg around the 1920's. An expensive artistic  education and training for a girl in those days an indication for a (very) well to do background. 

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Some random biographical notes concerning artistic Zinkeisen families: 

(*) Else  could be related to Dr. Eduard Zinkeisen a pharmacists who in 1849 founded a successful and in Paris awarded mineral water company in Hamburg. Probably succeeded in the company by a namesake (his son?) Eduard Zinkeisen into the XXth century.  

(*) Gabrielle Zinkeisen (b. Dresden 1879), a painter and color woodblock printmaker (I've never seen an example) who also happened to study with Franz Skarbina in Berlin according to Thieme Becker Lexikon. She had a painting sister Gertrud (b. 1877). 

(*) Anna (b.1901) and Doris (b.1898) Zinkeisen, British/Scottish sisters, painters and stage designers. Their father Victor Z. a timber merchant originated from a Bohemian family that settled in Scotland in the 18th century. 

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