Juliana Wilhelmina Bause: Löhrs Garten in Leipzig

As an in between posting on a rainy day (it is) and somewhat outside the general interest of this Blog today I share my research on this delicate washed pen and ink drawing by Juliana Wilhelmina Bause (1768-1837) I've recently discovered.

She is mostly remembered by a series of highly regarded copper plate engravings and although described in textbooks and lexicons, I’ve not been able to find them in the Internet. My guess Juliana choose the island designed and constructed in the newly commissioned English gardens (no longer existing) of her husbands city-palace in Leipzig. Anyway, what follows is what I was able to find about the artist on a rainy day, her family, life and her circles in Leipzig.

 Park, greenhouses and plan of Löhrs gardens.  

Her father Johann Heinrich Bause (Halle 03-01-1738 – 05-01-1814 Leipzig) was an important and highly regarded German copper engraver and professor in the Leipzig Academy.  

He was the son of Christian Gotlieb Bause (Halle 1696-1745) and Sophia Elisabeth Dryander (Halle 1705-1761). He is best known for his portraits of writers, poets, nobility and kings often after original paintings by painter to the Royal Court Anton Graff (1736-1813) (above, Bause by Graff) whom he’d met while working in Augsburg in 1759 with engraver Johann Jacob Haid (1704-1767) (below)

Bause always followed closely Graffs original paintings and although he was mainly self-taught and self-instructed took Johann Georg Wille (1715-1808), a royal to the king engraver working in Paris, as his example following his instructions transmitted through their correspondence (works by Wille below).

A printed catalogue of Bause's work appeared in Leipzig in 1786. He married in 1763 Henriette Charlotte Brünner (1742-1818) and they had two very beautiful and talented daughters. Friederike Charlotte (1766-1785), a pianist and musical talent, sadly died at the age of 21. Carl Philip Emanuel Bach (1714-1788) thought highly of her piano and glass harmonica playing skills and so did (Johann Wolfgang von) Goethe (1749-1832) who was a friend of the Bause family and  wrote about her extremely good looks.

 Sisters Friederike and Juliana Bause.

Her younger sister, the talented Juliana Wilhelmina Bause (1768-1837) married banker Karl Eberhard Löhr (1763-1813) and like her father she became an engraver and painter but only for her own amusement. Known and highly valued are the 8 landscape etchings by her hand after Kobell (prob. Franz 1749-1822), Johann Sebastian Bach Jr. 1748-1778, his father Carl Emanuel Bach and his grandfather Johann Sebastian Sr. ) and Both (prob. Andries Dirksz. 1608-1650) published in 1791.

Johann Sebastian Bach Jr. 

Recently widowed and forced to leave her house in 1813, ordered by French General Jean Toussaint Arrighi Casanova (1778-1853), a relative of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821). Casanova fought in the battle of Leipzig (16/19 october 1813, the “Völkerschlacht”) where the armies of Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sweden clashed and Napoleon and the French (with Polish, Italian and German) armies were defeated. 

Taking care of her father she moved with him to Weimar where he died a year later leaving her his vast collections of engravings. His last work was a s portrait of his son in law Karl Eberhard Löhr.

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Karl Eberhard Löhr was the son of banker Eberhard Heinrich Löhr (1725-1798) in Leipzig who’d made a fortune during the 7 year war (1756-1763). 

With this newly gained wealth in 1771 he had transformed a swampy marsh, inherited from his wife’s  Rahel Charlotte Barthel’s (1739-1803) father, just outside the old city into lustrous English gardens, a pond, huge greenhouses and an island: “Löhrs Garten” later “Keils Garten”, a Promenade  (“Tröndlring”) and a Palace as his house. Rich as a royal Karl Eberhard had build a huge collection of paintings. 

Karl-Eberhard and Juliana's daughter Juliane Henriette Löhr married Johann Georg Keil (1781-1857) a poet, scolar and intellectual who managed the estate, bequest and immense collections of his wifes’ two grand-fathers. They returned to the house in 1830 but the family sold it in 1889 when it was transformed in Hotel Fürstenhaus, existing to this day.

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

Kurt Frindby & Jakob Erikson: Eve Repentant, after the apple.

Eve repentant

("after the apple")

Visiting a collectors and antiques fair last fall I discovered her and instantly fell in love. Over the years I've had many encounters with objects, prints and paintings "I just could not live without". But too often I had to and did. Older and wiser now, I decided to spend the greater part of my budget-for-this-day on my new muse, not knowing I'ld ever meet her again.  

Kurt Frindby and Jacob Eriksen
?

The label(*) mentions Kurt Frindby (thought to be the retailer) and the artist Jakob Erikson. 

(*) Googling I actually found two different labels: 

It is, according to the label, an original copy, monogrammed J.E. and its of a sculpture in Charlottenburg Art Exhibition (Kopenhagen). But it's not unique. Googling Frindby and Eriksen (who isn't mentioned in any Lexikon but the Internet says (1899-1995) I found some more examples of my oak "Fynbopigen", which I failed to translate. My heart says: "very nice build girl" which I think she is. And I even found some (not many) examples of other sculptures by illusive Jacob Eriksen.  

Please help me to identify these two men and the history of this sculpture. And if you happen to know the whereabouts of her kneeling sister: please contact me. I'ld love to have her.      

  

August Rodin (1840-1917) and Eve. 

Jakob Eriksen, who-ever he was, obviously was inspired by Rodin's famous sculpture of Eve. My "research" shows Rodin could haven been inspired (he probably was, he knew his colleague Brock very well) by Thomas Brock's "Eve Repentant" exhibited in the Paris World Exhibition in 1898. There are today many copies of Rodin's Eve displayed all over the world.  

Auguste Lepere (1849-1918) and Rodin's Eve.

Lepere, with Henri Rivière and the Beltrand brothers the godfathers of Modern Printmaking, showed his engraving skills combined with a touch of artistic interpretation and a simple extra color block in this original 1898 "the Studio" print of his friend's sculpture I was able to find and purchase recently (thank you Irene !) to accompany my Eve.   

Edward Steichen (1879-1973) and Rodin's Eve. 

Edward Steichen, famous early photographer in Rodins studio (1907) shooting this historical photograph. 

Thomas Brock (1847-1922) and Eve.

Brock was greatly praised and admired for his Eve Repentant. I'm quite sure he was inspired by the paintings of George Watts, sculpting his Eve that is now on display in the Tate Gallery but was in the Paris World Exhibition of 1898.   

George Frederic Watts (1817-1904) and Eve.

Well, I think I've found the source and origin of this chain of Eve Repentant sculptures. It was the third and last of a tryptic ("the new Eve" and "Eve tempted" painted by George Frederic Watts. A project started around 1875 and also exhibited in Paris. These paintings now are also in the Tate in London.    

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

  

Fanny Remak, Part II, her friends: Käthe Münzer-Neumann

Trying to illuminate the obscured life of Fanny Remak, from my desktop and with the help and force of the Internet, today: Part 2. In Part I tried summing up what could be found and was written about Fanny combined with the results of my initial and simple genealogical research. 
From wealthy and influential Jewish background and education in 19^th century Berlin to her end in London. Maybe with the help of her closest friends and colleagues, and maybe with the help of surviving relatives we will be able to find out some more.

In the archives of the “Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen” (VdBK) it was mentioned that she was a close friend of Käthe Münzer-Neumann. So here goes, the biography I composed combined with examples of her work that I was able to scratch together from auction catalogues and websites. Not much; strange, for a once well known and respected artist. On the other hand: I still have not one example of Fanny’s work to show you.

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Münzer-Neumann, Käte

(Breslau 1877 – 1959 Paris)

Painter and caricaturist and close friend of Fanny Remak.

She studied in the “Zeichen und Malschule” (VdBK) in Berlin with Max Uth (1863-1914) and Franz Skarbina (1849-1910), in the Academie Julian in Paris and with Ernst Joseph Laurent (1859-1929) and Edmund Francois Aman-Jean (1858-1936) in 1909. She lived in and travelled to Warsaw 1909-1911, to St. Petersburg (Leningrad), Kopenhagen, Netherlands (Volendam) and Berlin. Since 1933 living and working in Paris.

She was married to Dr. Jakob Neumann (died Paris 15-04-1948) but I have no idea what his occupation was. She (they?) returned to Berlin in 1929.  Immigrated as a Jew to Paris in 1933, unlike her sister Elise she escaped and survived the Holocaust going underground. After the war she find recognition and her work is very much appreciated in France.

Exhibited in the “Großer Berliner Ausstellung”, the Berlin Secession in the VdBK and in the Lyceum-Clubs, in Paris in the yearly Societé des Artistes Francais, in the Societé Nationale des Beaux Arts, the Paris Salon d’Automne, Salon des Indépendants and Salon des Humoristes. Member of the VdBK 1913-1940, exhibited with the VdBK 1930-1932.

She dies in 1959 in Paris, well respected as an artist in France but forgotten in Germany. In 1948 she lived in Paris, Rue Froidevaux 59 in the 14^th arrondisement, looking over Cimetiere Montparnasse.  

Rue de Froideveau - Paris 

(Painting by Murray Wagnon)

Münzer, Elise

(Breslau 15-08-1869 – murdered 19 sept. 1942 Treblinka death camp)

Writer, correspondent and newspaper journalist and the elder sister of Käthe Münzer, first woman correspondent to work in the “Berliner Morgenpost” newspaper, deported August 17^th 1942 with the first “Großen Altertransport (aged 73) to Theresiënstadt in Poland and murdered september 19^th in Treblinka extermination camp. She most probably will have known Fanny too. 

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(this could very well be her sister Elise)

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Mysterie painting: in Berlin ?

This last example (1898) described by the German auctioneer as “Straßenszene in Berlin”. A lovely watercolor (mind the fierce red inside of the umbrella), and it should really be no problem to find out the exact location, obviously a park. The Sphinx with child statue on the head of the bridge should be clue enough one should think. But a century later that proves to be not as simple. The child (Putte in German, or Putti in Italian) obviously is Amor (or Eros, or Cupid) or l’Amour. But where is it ?

The earliest and most famous of such combination I could find was a design by Jacques Sarrazin (1660-1668) executed by Jacques Houzeau and Louis Lerambert for Louis XIVth to adorn his Versailles palace gardens. Copies were later made, one still to be found in nearby Paris Chateau Champ sur  Marne. 

Later, similar combinations (there are many more "single phinx” statues) most  seem to have faces with curly (normal) hair instead of the stylized Egyptian hair dress that is also shown in Käthe's water color. 

German sculptor Max Klein (1847-1908) designed similar ornamental statues for the Bismarck Brücke in Berlin Grünewald of which one is surviving in a park to this day but: without Amor and with curly hair.

It could be:

It could be Käthte's painting is a phantasy, It could be Käthe was in Paris (1898, but she was just 21 ?). It could be, it is most probably, somewhere in Berlin: but where ?        

To be continued ………………….

If you think I am quite mad to go to such length: you are probably right, but please send in any ideas, additions or possible clues after finding and reading this posting and episode. Beware: there're more of Fanny's friends to follow shortly.

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