Clara Telge (part I): visiting "das Alte Land".

Clara Telge 

German painter and illustrator. 

(Shanghai 19-03-1870 - 25-02-1947 Hamburg)  

Here follows what I came to know about the artist Clara Telge and I invite readers and passers-by to send all they know about this forgotten artist and her family. To my knowledge she not known as a printmaker.  

Less then a handful of paintings by her hand can be found in the Internet. I stumbled over Clara Tele because she came to paint in "das Alte Land" while researching another artist printmaker, Anna Bähker who, I discovered a few weeks ago,  also visited this picturesque region just West of Hamburg. 

What I do know is Clara was born in 1870 in Shanghai where her father Carl Bernard Hermann Telge had started an important trading house (import/export) on “the Bund”, the strip of land in Shanghai along Huangpu River. 

Bernard Telge came to Shanghai the moment it was allowed to foreign companies to settle and open business in China following the opening of the Chinese market after the 1842 Treaty of Nangking and when England finally ended  the Chinese Opium wars: in the early 1860’s steaming from Hamburg or Bremen.

Shanghai: The Bund 

Telge’s trading company was involved in the construction of China's infrastructure: steel bridges and railways and the selling of torpedos to China’s imperial navy as well as importing Prussian railway steam-engines and was also active in China’s (coal) mining, owning mines and recruiting German mining engineers. 

Paul Kayser: Teacher in and view from "Malschule Valeska Röver" in Hamburg.

Students in Valeska Rövers painting school. 

Going by the names of Clara’s no doubt private painting teachers her fathers business must have been as successful as she was talented: returned from China she studied in Hamburg at Valeska Rövers paintings school (above) while in Berlin she became a master student of Max Liebermann and Lovis Corinth and was allowed to study in Paris with Lucien Simon.

Please send all you may know about this Telge family. In Berlin at the time was active a Carl Franz Paul Telge a famous jeweller/goldsmith and jewellery designer admitted to the Rumanian court of King Carol-I and Queen Elisabeth. During his reign (1866-1881) King Carol encouraged and “imported” many artists and craftsmen from Germany/Prussia (many from Hamburg) to his Kingdom. More about this you can read in the book. Paul Telge's father was Julius Telge (1814-1887), also goldsmith in Berlin since the 1840's but originating from a Braunschweig mr. shoemaker. (A jeweler Bernard Telge is also mentioned in a Berlin chronicle but probably a mistake with Paul. This could be a clue to a family connection).  

I met Clara Telge visiting and painting around 1910. Like so many of her artistic sisters, not much about her life and career is delivered to us in the textbooks or artist lexicons. She was there to paint while staying, for many years as a guest in the house of Pastor (referent) August Meyer in Borstel a rural community in a picturesque district close to Hamburg. 

Clara is not known as a printmaker but she is known by an illustrated with watercolours booklet she created privately and exclusively for the children of the Meyer family. The once private booklet with these great illustrations was published in 2004 in a limited edition: "Ein Altenländer Bilderbuch" für große und kleine Pastorenkinder".   

I further learned the Meyer residence in the village of Borstel also received other Liebermann students: Alma del  Banco and her friend Gretchen Wohlwil but also Clara’s sister (?)  and nephews and nieces (?) from Berlin (as a biographer would I love to know their names....).

Clara Telge: Helgoland 

One of the very few paintings by Clara I was able to trace: View on Helgoland, a strategic rocky North Sea island and Ice age remnant just north of Bremen. Helene Mass was here obviously (above) and one of my favorite German impressionist painters Leonhard Sandrock (below). 

“Das Alte Land”, today Germanys largest fruit producing district consisting of former marshlands claimed from the sea by 12^th century Dutch settlers was also the favourite subject of painter and printmaker (and Emil Orlik student)  Hans Förster (1885-1966) a native from Hamburg and awarded an exhibition in Hamburg Altona Museum that was extended until spring 2018.

More details about Clara Telge are mentioned in her short biography, one of the hundreds I’ve collected in my book that will finally be published later this month in a private and limited edition as a Liber Amicorum (book for friends) containing over 300 pages of short biographies of German, Scandinavian, Russian, Baltic and Dutch women printmakers active 1900-1935. 

Pictures embiggen by mouse-click

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

Inspiration and all seasons

Inspiration
&
Flow of consciousness 

Helene Mass (1871-1955) today is considered by most serious collectors and connoisseur the godmother of German color woodblock printmaking. She probably is. She was born in Schönlanke, Prussia (now Trzcianka in central Poland). Too little is known about her life and career, although over the years I was able to collect 38 examples of her prints from auctions, old catalogues, exhibition announcements etc. in my pictures archive. In the aftermath of WW-II Schönlanke, its church and with it its church books were destroyed by the invading Russian red-army. Hopefully more will come to light in the near future. In the region (Posen) lived several Mass families. I wonder if she was familiar with the work of Fritz Thaulow:      

Fritz Thaulow (1847-1906) was a Danish and German trained, Norwegian born painter and printmaker working in Paris, Belgium and the Netherlands. He travelled Europe and even visited the USA. He passed away staying in the well known artist "Hotel Spaander" in Volendam in the Netherlands. There's a wealth of information and plenty of examples of his work in the internet. But you only have to remember this: besides he was probably the finest painter of reflecting water surfaces he also was involved in the revival of aquatint etching at the turn of the century. Preceding modern woodblock printmaking. In all his work, water is the most important and charactaristic feature.

Thaulow's waters brings me too Franz Kupka (1871-1957) who only incidentally showed his fascination with water and it's reflections. I love his bathing Muse and his compositional explorations of the subject. 

  

Having arrived at the nude body: I recently found (stumbled over a passed auction lot) this wonderful and very surprising nude by my personal printmaking muse (teacher and painter !) Else von Schmiedeberg. Although her biography is, like Helene Mass, also very thin and not entirely clear I do know she taught at the same Berlin institution with Emil Orlik (1870-1932).    

I would very much like to get into friendly contact with the lucky 2017 German auction buyer !   

Emil Orlik

Not many woodblock printmakers were involved in the female nude as subject for their creativity let alone women printmakers, but illusive Dagmar Hooge (1870-1930) was and so was  Hedwig  Matthiessen (1878-around 1927/30).  

I think Else Schmiedeberg may have created her auto portrait looking up to the "visitor", painting in her flowering garden (in Leipzig or Berlin) in this oil painting which I recently was able to acquire add to my modest Schmiedeberg collection.    

Else painting in her wonderful red rose garden and the stairs leading up to it brings me back to where I started: Helene Mass but now with this wonderful "Red Ivy" house and garden.

  

Helene Mass

The detail in this last print leads from the lakes and cities and from fall to this summers beach in 1916 surprise print by Dutch painter, lithographer and wood-engraver Jan Visser (1879-1961).

"All things are connected" 

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

All pictures embiggen by mouse click.

Mattiessen, Hedwig G.

Matthiesen, Hedwig G. 

(Rostock 12-10-1878 – after 1921 possibly in Berlin)

Painter and printmaker.   

Daughter of professor of physiology and zoology in Rostock University Ludwig G. Matthiessen (Fissau near Eutin 22-09-1830 – 1906 Rostock) and Paulina Augusta Emilie Meyer (Kiel 12-02-1841 - ?).  

The couple had 9 children of which Hedwig was the before last and of which 5 died before reaching full adulthood.  Hedwig worked and lived in Berlin. She was a member of the VdBK ("Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen") in Berlin 1912-1916. I wonder where she studied. 

Dressler’s Kunsthandbuch 1921 mentions :  living Berlin W.50 Charlottenburg, Augsburgstrasse 23 (Grth).

This is the meager biography of Hedwig in my German Women Printmakers Index, there’s simpley nothing more to rely on in the Internet. And there are just these two prints, a woodblock print (can one deny ?) with such strong resemblances to Eva Maria Marcus’ (1889-1970) blossoming fruit trees print proof of her artistic existence:

And secondly there's this lithographic print by her hand which is very reminding of similar summer garden compositions by printmaker Helene Mass (b. 1871 - ?) who actually taught “Farbholzschnitt” in the VdBK’s school of drawing in Berlin most probably herself a student of Emil Orlik (1870-1932).   

and by Helene Isenbart (1864- in or after 1927) this last example: nr. 1 on my wish list. There's no doubt these women artists living in Berlin met or at least had knowledge of their artistic sisters creative output and ideas.    

Please help and send pictures and information of other works by or biographical details of Hedwig Matthiessen.  

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These two new finds were  added to this article (31-10-2015) 

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

Fanny Remak, Part III, her friends: Julie Wolfthorn

Julie Wolfthorn
(born Julie Wolf(f)

(Thorn 1864 - murdered 1944 Theresiënstadt Ghetto)

German painter, celebrated portrait and grafic artist. 

Friend and colleague of Fanny Remak.
(Please help me by sending more/new information) 

Trying to unveil the obscured life and career of Fanny Remak (Thorn 1883-1970 London) today I take a look at the life and career of her friend Julie Wolfthorn. Both women worked closely together for some years in the board of the “Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen” until 1933 the Nazis made their work and eventually their life impossible.

Fanny had been a member of the VdBK since 1913, her friend Käthe Munzer (see Fanny Remak: Part II) since 1904 and Julie Wolfthorn since 1898. Fanny was elected chairwoman in 1928 and Julie joined her in the board in 1931 and they were in function until 1933. Both women sharing a Jewish and Polish (Preussian) background. Their families originating from roughly the same region although the Remaks had settled in Berlin a generation or two earlier. 

In 1933 the Jewish artists and board members were replaced by “Arien” colleagues Elisabeth von Oertzen, Helene Mass and L.E.Margarethe Gerhardt, all former board members and all three happened to be, besides painters, “Farbholzschnitt” or colour woodblock printmakers. All three appeared earlier in this Blog (follow the labels below).  

Julie Wolfthorn has recently been the artist of research by Dr. Heike Carstensen who researched, reconstructed and published Julie's biography so I'ld better not go into any detail in this humble and unscolarly posting.

In the beginning of her career as an artist Julie designed several covers for the influential and innovative Magazine "Jugend" becoming later one of the first really successful woman artist-painters in the beginning of the 20^th century Germany.

She would paint the portraits of Berlins “beau-monde”, intellectuals, doctors, feminists, writers, artists etc..  and lived for over 30 years with her sister Luise, a translator, in their house and studio in the  Kurfürstenstrasse 50, near Berlin Zoo, a continuation of the famous Kurfürstendamm and not far from Café Splendid on nr. 75 (above). She was acquainted, worked and exhibited with all great artists of her time: Lovis Corinth, Max Liebermann, Franz von Stuck, Hans Hayek etc… (left, Julie in 1908) 

Kurfürstendamm 

In 1896 she was introduced to Ida and poet Richard Dehmel by her friend, poet and translator Hedwig Lachmann (1865-1918) in 1896 and was commissioned to paint the couple exhibiting the result in the "Grossen Berliner Kunstaustelling" the next year marking the beginning of her career as Germany’s foremost portrait painter. 

Hedwich Lachmann and Ida Dehmel

Ida Dehmel was the founder of the German and Austrian Women Artists Association (GEDOK). Avoiding the inevitable faith of all Jews in Nazi Germany she took her own life in 1942.   

Although once celebrated and famous, not even actively of the Jewish faith, harmless and now elderly in 1944 she was deported from her Berlin (above "Berl;inner Strasse") with her sister and transported to Theresiënstad “model”-Ghetto and perished under abominable and most inhuman conditions but never losing her dignity.  

Coming from middle class Jewish background a good or fine education for girls was quite normal and considered an obligation even. The German language needs only one (composite) word to describe it's philosophic and enlightened meaning: "Bürger-Bildingspflicht":  the obligation for any citizen or human being to educate one self and make the best out of your abilities and precious life. 

Under the wings of her grandmother Johanna Neumann-Kuehlbrandt (1816-1899) who was a writer, feminist and a poet) and had moved to Berlin maybe also to finish the education of her orphaned grandchildren and living in the Nettelbeckstrasse 7/II Julie as youngest of 5 children (like her friend Fanny Remak) was encouraged and enabled to study with the best private teachers and in the best private painting schools in Germany and abroad.

Adolph Eduard Herstein

This address later was owned by Henriette (Bock-) Neumann (see below) one of Johanna's other granddaughters returning from Poland because of better schools for her children in Berlin. Next door in the building was also the house and studio of Adolph Eduard Herstein (1869-1932) a German-Polish painter, graphic artist, teacher, and Secessionist who had an affair (and a son) with countess Fanny zu Reventlow (interesting reading here*).  

Studying in Paris Julie was accompanied by her niece Olga Fayans (1869-1954), one of Germany’s first female physicians. 

And possibly she was also accompanied in Paris by another niece, Henrietta Neumann (later married lawyer Leon Bock), who was enabled to study with Pauline Viardot-García (1821-1910) at that time probably the most famous opera singer in the world (above). Several of her nieces became opera singers, doctors, writers and artists or married one. Many also not surviving the Holocaust. Several nephews immigrated making careers in the USA.

In Paris, in the Académie Colarossi, (above) around 1890 Julie could have met Anna Klumpke (1856-1942) the American (portrait) painter and later companion of Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899) the world’s 19^th century’s most successful female painter, friend of George Sand the muze of Frédéric Chopin.  (Read here*  more about the astonishing Klumpke sisters).

Anna Gerresheim (1852-1921) is mostly remembered by her Ahrenshoop artist colony background but very successful as a free creating (portrait) painter somewhat before Julie started her own career. She is probably one of the first, maybe even the first artist in Germany to have tried at color woodblock printmaking but that will have to wait to a next posting. She had been an early member of the VdBK (1884-98) exhibiting in the “Großer Berliner Kunstaustellung” from 1881. All these liberated women will have been a role model for many younger German woman artists.

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Some of Julie's close relatives:

Johanna Neumann-Kuehlbrandt (1816-1899), was her grand-mother, poet, writer and active in  women's liberation circles.

Georg Wolf (1858-1930) above, a sculptor, was her brother. Said to have created a sculpture of two of his nieces (Marianne and Leonora, Olga Hempels daughters) in Tiergarten Berlin: but where is it ?

Luise Wolf (1860-1944 murdered Theresiënstadt), translator, was her sister.

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Henrietta Bock-Neumann (1865-1942 murdered Theresiënstadt), opera singer and translater, was her niece. 

Meta Neumann (1859-1943 murdered Theresiënstadt) well known singer, was her niece.

Dr. Olga Hempel-Fajans (1869-1954), one of Germany’s first doctors, was her niece.

Mina Arndt (1885-1926) important New-Zealand painter, was her niece (their grandmothers were sisters). She studied in England, Wales and Berlin (with Franz von Stuck and Max Liebermann) and visited, of course, her niece Julie while in Berlin (between 1907-1914). 

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