Else Zinkeisen and friends: around Hamburg Bellevue and Ausser Alster.

Today some more nice pictures of picturesque Hamburg, to be more specific of the beautiful surroundings of the Alster the 2 lakes in the heart of this great city.

Visit also my earlier posting on the Alster Ühlenhorster Fährhus with Margarete Braumullers iconic print of this location that was destroyed in the bombing and firestorms following Operation Gomorrha in 1943 with the rest of Hamburg and was never rebuild. (use the search option or follow the labels to this post) 

Helene Mass, View on the Alster and Jungfernstieg
 from the Lombardsbrücke Haltestelle 

To my surprise Helene Mass was in Hamburg too (and in Amsterdam !), I wonder if the two printmakers ever met, hard to believe they did not. Another recent discovery is Else Zinkeisen (before 1910) studied privately in Berlin with painter Franz Skarbina (1849-1910 !) and an even greater surprise is that Wally Peretz-Brutzkus, of whom we know so very little, also was Skarbina's student (as was Marianna von Buddenbrock btw). This will all be revealed in the upcoming book and later postings.

 

Ernst Eitner, "Monet of the North": Alster ferry on its way to Uhlenhorst.   

Arthur Illies: Alster ferry on its way from Uhlenhorst.   

The many districts of this big city that are spread around the Alster were interconnected with a steam ferry service in service again today.

Many bridges spanning the many canals and branches, the inner city of Hamburg is often compared to Amsterdam. 

This print, possibly of historic importance, was recently discovered and is showing the "Fernsicht Brücke". For a while however we wrongly assumed it might be the Eppendorfer-Winterhude bridge depicted below by Hamburg photographer-printmaker Bernhard Troch (1867-1924). 

   

Eppendorfer Brücke with horse and carriage 

Fernsicht Brücke 

With its companion bridge the "Krugkoppel Brücke" the "Fernsicht Brücke" it closes the circuit around the Ausser Alster in the north. It is seen looking into the "Rondeelkanal" and "Rondeelteich" a "Cul de sac" of the Ausser Alster  occupied by the villa's of Hamburg prosperous elite build in the second half of the 19th century.  

Fernsicht Brücke in 1892, entrance to the Rondeelteich

Both wooden bridges were build around 1890 and replaced in 1927/28 by concrete and macon work bridges still standing today. They give access to "Bellevue": Hamburgs posh district with grand villas and city palaces build and owned by the rich and influential. Compare living here with living around Central Park in New-York, around Tiergarten in Berlin or in the heart of London. 

View from "Fernsicht" 

The new Fernsicht Brücke shortly after completion in 1928 

Most interesting is also the horse drawn coach: "Kaiserliche und Königliche Post" connecting Hamburg with the world with a network of fast and modern designed coaches working in clockwork schedules until the steam engine took over.

Unknown painter Bruno Liedmann: Deutsche Post (eBay find)  

This also never before seen (not by me) and recently found in Hamburg print by Else Zinkeisen of whom my research learned she possibly was from a prosperous family of Hamburg city-centre chemists/pharmacists shows the entrance (Park Tor) to a park.  

Else Zinkeisen: Park Tor

The Hamburg Stadt-Park in Winterhude is not far away and it is also not far from the "Künstlerhaus" were she lived in 1930. I would love to receive more genealogical and biographical information concerning the Hamburg Zinkeisen family.

Helene Mass: Kinder im Park

Else Zinkeisen had two artistic cousins in Dresden and is remotely connected to the famous Scottish painting Zinkeisen sisters Anna and Doris who derive from  a Zinkeisen timber trading branch of the family. 
  

Arthur Illies: Alster Wiese

And this Else Zinkeisen print (below) that came to me through different channels could very well show the, or a, "Stadt Park" or Alster meadow although Else Zinkeisen traveled and created views of other places (like Munich). Before today she was mostly know and remembered for her views of river Elbe seen from the heights of Hamburg-Altona.

More Alster and Hamburg in next posting.

Please send any information on Else Zinkeisen (27 aug. 1871 - prob. around or after 1934)

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.