Kornelie Gerland ?

Kornelie Gerland 

(b. probably Strassburg 1865) 

Painter in Dresden.

(Possible printmaker).  

My brilliant special Austrian correspondent ("korrespondierendes Mitglied") Hannelore, who to my great pleasure recently accepted this splendid and important position, did it again. But first she corrects me on using the right terminology: Kurrent is the proper name for old German script not Sütterlin. It developed and evolved from 500 years of cursive writing. Sütterlin was a more modern version developed in 1911 based on Kurrent. It was abolished by  the NSDAP in 1941.  

Hannelore found a suitable candidate for the unidentified Gerland/Garland print in before posting. An artist named Kornelie Gerland is not be found in any of the known Artists Lexicons (that I have at my disposal) nor in Dresslers Kunsthandbuch. Which makes Hannelore's research all the more special finding a needle in a haystack.    

  

Kornelie Gerland (said to be a painter in Dresden in just one to be trusted biographical mentioning /occasion) was the eldest daughter of Strassburg geology and physics professor, composer, language and ethnic researcher, author and pioneering earthquake expert Georg Gerland. 

This extraordinary man and his more than interesting career and his families biography will be part of my upcoming publication. I can reveal here Kornelie's younger, and only brother Heinrich Gerland (also a professor) was married to Eva Schott, eldest daughter of Jena glass expert, inventor and entrepreneur Otto Schott. 

Otto Schott was a successful and according to his recently restored Jena villa a  prosperous glass-industrialist fabricating special optical and astronomical products (lenses) which resulted in a spectacular increase in quality of microscopic and astronomical imaging. Today it is a multi billion dollar international company. He closely worked together with Carl Zeiss.   

Otto Schott acted as patron to London based and exiled from Britain beginning of WW-1 German painter-lithographer Georg Sauter (1866-1937). Schotts eldest daughter Eva and her husband had met Sauter visiting London becoming friends. Schotts portrait was made by his protegé Georg Sauter (l.) and by the great  Max Liebermann himself (r.).  

Georg Sauter had married British Lillian, sister of John, Galsworthy (above by Sauter) after meeting her in London National Gallery. George's  brother in law was the author of the famous "Forsyte Saga" and awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1932. The book was made into one of the first European TV series and extremely popular in the late 1960's.

Sauter was a successful painter heavily influenced by James Abbot McNeill-Whistler (1834-1903), but also creating a scandal winning a second prize in  the prestigious 1909 Carnegie exhibition (read here) with this declared "erotic" painting ("the Bridal Morn" below) of a young women getting dressed by her mother and sister for her wedding day. Hard to understand what the fuzz was actually about a century later. The evolution of the human brain at full......     
  

Coincidence or clue ?

Eva Gerland-Schott died 1976 aged 89 in Hamburg-Wedel while I found the Strassburg Cathedral print, created most probably by her sister-in-law Kornelie Gerland, just 10 km. away in a Hamburg antiquarian shop last weekend. 

  

Thank you Hannelore. All information and suggestions welcomed

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

                

Elisabeth Schulz, Dresden painter and graphic artist

Elisabeth Sara von Schulz

(Dresden 28-10-1884 - 13-01-1968 Dresden)

Painter an graphic artist in Dresden

A Lisbeth Schultz, “Maler” is mentioned in Dresslers Kunsthandbuch 1930 at Wiltrudenstraße 5 in Munich.  Not Lisbet, not Schulz. Not Elisabeth Sara (von) Schulz. 

Confusing, if one is looking for an obscure printmaker, a graphic artist and a painter by that name not knowing if it is one or two persons. I learned the use of Schulz, Schultz, and Schulß are all “allowed” writing this family name in that period (before 1940).  

The Dresden painter was the daughter of “Generalleutnant” Richard Adolph von Schulz (1849-1923) and Adelheid Elisabeth Sahrer von Sahr (1855-?). She had two sisters: Marie Adelheid Schulz (1882-1948) and Margarethe Adolphine Schulz (1889-1959). Her father remaried Armgard Margarethe von Veltheim (1870-1939).They are all interred in Dresden in a family grave. 

  

She is also known to have used the name Sarette von Schulz (her friends used the call her “Sarettchen”) after Sara or after her mothers maiden family name Sahrer von Sahr.

The painter Elisabeth Sara (von) Schulz worked and lived in Dresden and had studied in “Karlsruhe Malerinnenschule” with Friedrich Fehr (1862-1927) and etcher Walter Conz (1872-1947), in Berlin with Johann Walter Kurau (1869-1932) and Hans Nadler (1879-1958) in Dresden. Her painting technique shows her great admiration for her Baltic teacher Kurau (who is also known as Johann Valters) and closely resembles his style and use paint and color.There is no mentioning of the painter ever having lived in Munich. 

Above Walter Kurau, below Elisabeth von Schulz

There are indications, master and student visiting the same location and perhaps even using the same nude model. Printmaker Eva Langkammer (1884-1956) was an important representative of Kurau’s important school of painting, 

Above Walter Kurau, middle Eva Langkammer, below Elisabeth von Schulz

She worked as a nurse in WWI.  In Dresden she met and became friends with modernist artists Elisabeth Ahnert (1885-1966), Albert Wigand (1890-1978) and Dresden printmaker Ruth Meier (1888-1965) and therefore also will have been acquainted with Dresden painting school owner Martha Schrag (1870-1957).

She is also graphically known by at least one etching showing Dresden and river Elbe, signed “Sarah Schulz”. Another composition has an illegible signature (Sara Schulz ?) but also uses a monogram (left, in a triangle) LS, which may be a clue to the suggestion the painter and printmaker might be the same artist................. or not.

The printmaker uses besides “Lisbet Schulz” the monogram “LS” while the painter used the initials E.S, EvS and SvS.  

To complicate things further: Lisbet Schulz, the printmaker, is mentioned in the archives of the “Letter Stiftung” in Cologne with dates (28-10-1884 – "last mentioned 1958"), the dates belonging to the painter Elisabeth Sara von Schulz (below).

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Please send any comment, corrections, suggestions, any biographical or artistic information on, and more examples of prints and paintings by this artist for sharing. 

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

Carlos Grethe and Martin van Waning: I/III

Carlos Grethe

 (Montevideo 1864 - 1913 Nieuwpoort Be.)

German painter and etcher 

& 

Martin van Waning 

(the Hague 1889 - 1972 Dokkum, buried Schiermonnikoog)

Dutch painter, etcher and sculptor 

Portraits of Grethe by Bernard Pankok (1872-1943) and van Waning from his tombstone.

Pankok was his Grethe's colleague in Stuttgart and director 1913-1937 of the "Kunstgewerbeschule".

His portrait by Emil Orlik with whom he co-founded the Berlin Secession in 1907.

This is a humble attempt linking the lives and careers of two artists, at first sight separated by time and distance and who are  each individually interesting enough for a personal biography*below.  In three small postings and within the confinements, limitations  and narrow space of this Blog this is not an easy task. But this story is well worth sharing so here goes.

Reading and studying the Hamburg artists and visiting their world roughly around the turn of the 19th into the 20th century (before post), printmakers, painters, world trade, big money, prosperity and fine museums, one is bound to meet Carlos Grethe, the painter of oceans and seas and of the world largest and busiest port, its workers and its atmosphere. After a sister and a brother Carlos Grethe was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, the family returning to Hamburg in 1869. 

He studied in Hamburg "Kunstgewerbeschule" and later in Frankfurt Art Academy and was appointed professor in Karslruhe returning often to his native Hamburg to paint and with his students he founded a painters colony in Duhnen near Cuxhaven on the North-sea coast, where river Elbe meets the sea. 

He was a friend of the world largest private ship owner and largest West-Africa trader Adolph Woermann (1847-1911), who lived near Cuxhaven. Woermann enabled him to travel the oceans in his ships. I bet Woerman will have seen his ocean liners set of to and return from the America's with passengers and his tall ships to and from Africa for trade like in this postcard photograph.

Later celebrated painter and printmaker Wilhelm Laage was Grethes student but also was Heine Rath (who like Grethe was awarded a professorship in Karlsruhe) and Karl Otto Matthaei. 

In his paintings deepest respect for the greatness of the oceans is always present, and also  for the the hard working seamen, harbor laborers, and fishermen. Grethe witnessed the period of transition: from sail to steam. I bet Grethe knew the (quite dramatic) work of his American colleague Winslow Homer (1836-1910), below:

He died in Nieuwpoort (at the sea in Belgium) from the complications of an appendix operation only 50 years old.  

Hans W. Singer, foremost German art historian and art critic, was a great admirer of Carlos Grethe and wrote a lyrical article on Carlos Grethe in the Studio 1904 (and later in 1910 and after his death) and this was where I saw this picture of a sketch by Grethe of Hamburg harbor which made me wonder. I picked this volume up last year in a car boot sale.

I could not find a painting made after this sketch, this is an example that probably comes closest. 

Do return in a few days for part II of an amazing story, and a discovery never discussed before. 

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

* Ingrid Stocke: Carlos Grethe 1864-1913, "Leben und Werk, der Maler des Meeres", 2008          

Martha Nothmann, one and the same ?

Nothmann, Martha

(Hamburg  28-03-1869 – ?)

German painter, possibly printmaker.

Havellandschaft mit Segler
Martha Nothmann

When facts and sources are scarce research means often following a path trying to prove your initial or working hypothesis wrong. Here's an example. Help of readers is much appreciated.    

Hypothesis 1) the painter of the "Havellandschaft" is identical with: Martha Nothmann: Künstlerin tätig in Berlin (gest.1933) Mitglied 1911-1933 VdBK. (Archives of the “Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen” (VdBK)

Hypothesis 2) Martha Nothmann is identical with Martha Nothmann-Bender married to Jewish industrialist  and art collector Berthold Nothmann see below (*).  

Hypothesis 3) A woodblock print signed in German Sutterlin script (possibly) reads: M. Nothmann, 1928 (but with a different handwriting from the paintings signature).

Dresslers Kunsthandbuch 1921 mentions: Frau Martha Nothmann, M. (Malerin). Berlin W(ilmersdorf). Luitpolderstrasse 29. (Geboren) Hamburg 28.3.1869. (Member of the) VdK, WVB . The Luitpoldstrasse is near the Viktoria Luise Platz. A posh neighborhood were before WWII many artists lived.   

According to Dresslers Kunsthandbuch 1921 Martha Nothmann was a neighbor of painter and graphic artist Dora  Koch-Gotha-Stetter (1881-1968) who besides living in Ahrenshoop in summer (in the artist colony) with her husband Frits Koch-Gotta until WWII also had a studio and ran a private painting school in Luitpoldstrasse no.27 which was destroyed by bombing in 1944. 

Dora Koch Stetter (courtesy of Kunsthandel Koskull -Heubach) 

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(*) Nothmann, Berthold (Langendorf Upper Silesia/Poland 27-12-1865 -  febr. 1942 London). The son of plumber Heiman (Haim) Nothmann (1836-1911) and Amalia Riesenfeld (1834-1892) married 26-08-1894 Martha Bender.

Paul Cezanne, owned by Berthold Nothmann. 

Berthold Nothmann was a successful entrepreneur (tube manufacturer) and art collector since 1911. After his retirement in 1931 he moved from Düsseldorf to Berlin-Wannsee (a broad bend in river Havel, see the painting above) devoting completely to collecting art. Max Liebermann also lived here overlooking the Wannsee (Villa Liebermann). 

Wannsee, drawing by Max Liebermann

He was a close friend of Max Liebermann (1847-1935) of whom he owned a self-portrait bought directly from the great painter.

Max Liebermann, owned by Berthold Nothmann

Before his collection was confiscated by the Nazis he succeeded in selling several painting to art dealers. In 1939 he (and his wife !) fled to London where he died in 1942. In his collection were paintings by Paul Cezanne (Provence landscapes), Max Liebermann (selfportrait) and Adolf Menzel. 

Adolph Menzel, owned by Berthold Nothmann

Paul Cezanne, owned by Berthold Nothmann

Berthold had a brother Georg (Jiri) Nothmann (Langendorf 23-07-1873 - ) who with his wife succeeded in fleeing the Nazis in 1939 to the US.

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