Marie Wippermann & Agnes Salomon in Paris

Agnes Salomon

 (married journalist Joachim von Bülow 1908)

(Hamburg 1884 - 1939 Brussels) 

Painter and printmaker 

Agnes Salomon (poss. "Dame in Weiss", before 1904)

She was the daughter of Hamburg "Kaufmann" (merchant) Samuel Salomon  and Léa Isaacson (1843-1902). Lea is buried in Hamburg Ohlsdorf cemetery. 

A Samuel Salomons is buried here also but in another plot (without dates) 35 years later in 1937. It might be her father although he by then must have reached a respectable high age, not impossibly but maybe another relative rests here (brother/nephew?). Her mother Lea's ancestors possibly can be traced to a Jewish community in Neubukow near Rostsock and I have a hunch Samuel Salomon might be related to a very prosperous Schleswick/Dittmarschen Jewish cigar manufacturer originating from Stavenhagen (also near Rostock) with honorary title "Komerzienrat" bearing the same name several decades earlier. On my request the Hamburg Jewish community offered help with the ancestry/genealogy because my arm-chair research from neighbouring Friesland had come to a halt. Results will be shared in due time. Lea was 41 btw giving birth to Agnes and she died when Agnes was 18, the same year we find her in Paris. Some interesting questions arise: was she the last and/or only child ? How did her father finance her studies in Munich (under Angelo Jank and Christian Landenberger) and Paris ? She married into an aristocratic family, the son of a diplomat and military so surely there must be traces of her fathers prosperity and business in Hamburg allowing her to study abroad.   

Agnes Salomon (Paris Brd. Vaugirard, 1902)
(Trees suggesting fall or early winter) 

Print stitched with contemporary photo. Entrance to metro next to  small building on the square, right  

Why research an artist that is so little known, forgotten and obscured ? I had Agnes in my archive files with just one print (and some paintings of which the marines surely are not by her but by an unknown "A. von Bulow"). It is however a very early print, showing Paris Boulevard de Vaugirard, adjacent to "Place de Maine" (and the Metro entrance). Opposite, then was the backside of Montparnasse train station demolished in the 1960's to make place for the imposing over Paris Tour Montparnasse. 

  

It is possibly the earliest woodblock prints by a German woman artist I've ever come across. 

Gabrielle Munter (Herbst in Sèvres, 1907)

In these years later well known Gabrielle Munter (1877-1962) was also fiddling with block printing in Paris (1907-08) when Agnes Salomon created her Bvd. Vaugirard print. 

Albert Marquet: Paris Boulevard Madeleine (also with Metro entrance)
Compare it with  Agnes' printed Boulevard Vaugirard version 

Although not an Art Historian by birth or academic training I've wondered about the similarities in Marie Wippermans prints with painter Albert Marquet (see before posting) who had become seriously popular in Paris in the first years of the 20 century. Marquet was a close friend of Matisse and colleague of Raoul Dufy with whom he travelled and painted together in Normandy in 1906 (below posters). 

Rose Friedrich (Dresden): Stilllife fruits in bowl.

Rose Friedrich (1877-1953) from Dresden was student of Matisse in Paris and so was Marie's close friend painter Ida Gerhardi (1862-1927) also from Lüdenscheid who lived and worked in Paris for 20 years (1891-1913), friend of August Rodin and Kathe Kollwitz. 

Académie Colarossi (Ida Gerhardi standing right)  

Marie Wippermann also choose these decorative and colourful advertising murals for her Seine woodblock print (see before posting).    

Marquet: Trouville 

Dufy: Trouville 

Only recently, after getting in contact with Marie Wippermanns grandson (see before posting, these prints were accidentally sold and never meant to leave the family, but that is another story) I came to see this print of a handsome woman in light coat and feathered hat in a Paris café by Agnes Salomon. She wasn't married then, she was in 1908 in Paris, with aristocrat, journalist and self-taught painter Joachim von Bülow from Breslau but his (military) ancestors also originated from the Rostock area. The couple later moved to Berlin and eventually to Brussels.  

The Café print was in the personal belongings of Marie Wipperman. Who like Agnes, married the same year she returned from Paris in Halver near Lüdenscheid, Germany moving into her house at Marktstrasse 11 in Halver (above a: right, b: middle). 

  

Exhibition poster by Emanuel Josef Margold (1888-1962)
(Sold for over $ 16.000)

My renewed research efforts (continuing business) resulted in finding the 1902 woodblock print of Boulevard Vaugirard exhibited in the Rudolfinum in Prag in 1907 (68th Jahresausstellung des Kunstvereins Böhmen (Bohemia).

Amedee Joyau (Dunes, Bréville, Normandy)

Hans Neumann ("Aristokrat")

A long row of very interesting and well known international artists took part and I suppose because of the presence of several French and British, were invited to join. 

William Nicholson (Sarah Bernardt )

Allen Seaby (Two Swans) 

Dagmar Hooge (Badende Mädchen)  

Jean Veber (Soiree bourgeois) 

Of which I was able to trace various exhibited prints (selection above). The café portrait by Agnes Salomon possibly was mentioned in a 1904 print catalogue as "Dame im Weiss". Agnes on that occasion was mentioned living in Munich. 

Please send all information on Agnes von Bülow-Salomon and help me to write and complete her short biography. 

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