Clara Telge (part III): Hina Matsuri

Clara Telge

(1870 - 1942)

(Part III)

Hina-matsuri 

Co-incidence or serendipity ? 

This wonderful painting emerged in auction in the first week of March while I was still deeply involved in my research into the life of forgotten Hamburg painter Clara Telge. Sold: and although I tried, sadly not to me. I was too involved reading and discovering the 1922 remarks by Hungarian Fauvist  Vilmos Perlrott-Csaba (1880-1955) about the quality of Clara's work (see before posting). I think the quality in this painting is what he meant and was referring to. I'm not an expert on paintings but would it be far fetched to recognize the free and impressionist hand of her Berlin teacher Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) ?    

Lovis Corinth: portrait of an older lady

A double co-incidence because on first (European) glance it is "just" a painting of "some Chinese Dolls". The 4 puppets arranged and displayed before a mirrored mantelpiece, most likely in Clara's home and possesion, are actually showing  members of the imperial Japanese family. 

Detail of Clara Telge's painting.

The tradition setting up or installing a home altar with the beautifully dressed puppets the third day of the third month is deeply imbedded in Japanese culture and is called Hinamatsuri (Hina-matsuri, 雛祭り). It happens to co-incide or is also called "Girl-day" or Princess-day . Read here (follow the link) all about this history and tradition in Kyoto National Museum. 

  

Although Clara was born in Shanghai (in China) and her father had a long career and thriving business in China, the moment I discovered this painting I also found the link to Japan which I shall reveal in next episode and posting. 

As this "Hina-matsuri" is only the third example of an oil painting by Clara known to me I invite readers and passers-by sending other examples for sharing as well as details about her life and family helping me to compose her short biography.

Next: Part IV, Clara's father in the Orient  

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

Emmy Gotzmann: first result & great find !

Emmy Gotzmann

(1881 - ?)

U-Bahnhof Bülowstrasse, Berlin 
(seen in the direction of Nollendorfplatz, next station)

U-Bahnhof Bülowstraße today.

The revealing of this painting is the result of using the immense possibilities of a friendly Internet. Combining knowledge, effort and research I'm really happy to show the world this wonderful painting that has not been seen, admired or enjoyed for so long. 

(Bülow station see in the direction of Nollendorfplatz, next station)

From Emmy's viewpoint side of the street looking towards the left: Luthers Kirche. Looking right would give the exact view on Bülow station and Potsdamerstraße crossing. This view before the line was raised, the station build and a passage was created through the wall of houses. 

And after raising the line and creating a passage. Around 1905   

This posting is also an announcement and a welcome to Emmy Gotzmann's biography that will appear later this year in honor of the obscured life and career of this wonderful and neglected painter. Who knows what other great paintings will be revealed. It's publication will be announced in this Blog. 

The newly build Bülow station, the front is situated along Potsdamersträße.   

This station is one of three rather famous stops in Berlins basic first "Hochbahn" line build in the late 1890's and opened in 1902. 

Between the Luthers Kirche and Berlin-Zoo/Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church  completed in 1906 on Auguste-Viktoriaplatz and Kurfürstendamm): Wittenbergplatz, Nollendorfplatz (with "Kaufhaus des Westens" founded in 1905) and Bülowstraße crossing Potsdamerstraße. The iconic station buildings were destroyed, like anything else, in the allied bombing in the last year of WW2. However, Bülow Bahnhof was rebuild.

Emmy must have taken the Godfather of Impressionists Camille Pissarro's (1830-1903) 1897 depictions of Boulevard Montmartre with high viewpoint and  diagonal compositions in mind. Pissarro was exhibited in Berlin with 40 paintings in Kunstsalon Cassirer in 1907 in nearby Victoriastraße 35 (along with 4 works by my research subject Fanny Remak by the way).

Lovis Corinth: Berlin, "Unter den Linden" and the Brandenburger Tor (were the Liebermanns owned a city palace).

 

Max Slevogt: "Unter den Linden". 

Berlin Seccesionist Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) and Max Slevogt (1868-1932), with Max Liebermann (1847-1935) the three leading Berlin impressionists, likewise choose the high viewpoint and diagonal composition in their "Unter den Linden". And maybe Slevogt had the greatest of impressionists in mind: Claude Monet's Rue de Montorgueil from 1878 (left) 
  

Lesser Leo Ury

(Nollendorf Station)

Emmy's painting is all the more important because there are so few examples of Berlin street views in painting. Let alone of the U-bahn, build after the example of New Yorks above-ground system. That is besides the paintings by a painter who was always to stand in the shadows of this trio: Leo Lesser Ury (1861-1931) owned a studio at Nollendorfplatz(1) and he just had to look outside to paint in the rainy atmosphere that is so characteristic for much of his work.

(1) The name of Ury's neighbor George Mosson (a Berlin seccessionist) keeps popping up in many artists biographies. Mosson, a painter of flowers, also taught and ran a painting school. 
   

Thank you Hartwig D.(2) and author Ferdinand Ruigrok van de Werve ! 

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

(2) to the protection of the owner of the painting. 

Käthe Münzer: Found it !!

Käthe Münzer-Neumann

Herculesbrücke 

Berlin  

Regular readers may remember this watercolor by Käthe Münzer I used trying to find Fanny Remak a few postings back. Well, I've found it: Käthe is showing the Herculesbrücke connecting Lützlowplatz to the Tiergarten area crossing the Landwehrkanal. A man made short-cut of river Spree flowing through Berlin.  

She stood or sat, maybe on the terrace of the Albrechthof café on the opposite side of Luetzlow square, and facing West in the direction of nearby Berlin Zoo. 

Here in the Tiergarten Park area, in Viktoria-straße (parallel to Potsdamer-strasse) Max Liebermann and Paul Cassierer ran his famous Kunst-Salon buying from and selling the impressionists and introducing Vincent van  Gogh to the "nouveau-riche". And also Lesser Ury had his studio here, in Lützow-strasse. Later he moved to nearby Nollendorf Platz where his studio he was a neighbor of George Mosson, a painter of mainly flowers and who ran a private painting school. Both men taught at the Painting and Drawing school of the "Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen". Both were in the Gruppe XI, eleven artists opposing the Kaisers choice of "what is art and what is not" in 1892 preceding the Berlin Secession. Ury left us many paintings of the Landwehrkanal and Tiergarten Park. Mosson we'll meet in next posting.      

View on Nollendorfplatz by Lesser Ury 

All was destroyed in WW2. Squares, bridges, buildings. All the trees of the immense park were cut down and used as fire wood after the war ended. Only one of the two grand statues of Hercules, placed in the middle of the bridge, survived and is now in nearby Kölnischer park. The sphinxes with "putti" are lost. 

The statues were re-used from an older Hercules Bridge in the centre that was demolished constructing Berlin's U-bahn. The new bridge replacing an older wooden bridge across the Landwehr Canal. 

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Max Liebermann and Lesser Ury

in Tiergarten Park

In Tiergarten by Max Lieberman and by Lesser Ury

Both Liebermann, generally considered Germanies greatest impressionist, and Ury painted often in Tiergarten park. Ury, who was like Liebermann Jewish, only later found recognition and is now considered "The" painter of old Berlin. 

Hercules Brücke and Landwehr canal by Lesser Ury

"Tiergarten im Herbst" by Lesser Ury

Ury's career was much hindered by a jealous Liebermann, who was worshipped  like a God even during his lifetime but was not able to accept another great artist so nearby: like the sun he burned the wings of his colleague like an Icarus in public.     

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Konrad von Kardorf (1877-1945)

in Berlin

Luetzlow-Brücke (one bridge downstream of Herkules-Brücke) 

and Viktoria-Straße. 

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Ernesto Barbero (1887-1937)

Luetzow Brücke 

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

Bertha Schrader continued: Blaues Wunder !

Bertha Schrader

(Memel 1845 - 1920 Moritzburg/Dresden)  

Painter and woodblock printmaker 

In 1893 the “König Albert Brücke” spanning the Elbe River was opened. A marvel of technical engineering it was the worlds first bridge this length spanning an entire river without a central pillar. It connects the Dresden townships of Blasewitz and Loschwitz. It was named after King Albert of Saxony (1828-1902) but in 1912 it was renamed "Loschwitzer Brucke" and knicknamend lovingly "Blaues Wunder". 

It was Dresdens 5^th bridge across the Elbe river and the only one to survive WWII devastations (and German sabotage) undamaged.  

Bertha Schader will have witnessed its construction, completion and opening. In 1912 a painting showing the bridge in a "recent Exhibition of Women Painters" in Dresden is mentioned (below). Sadly I cannot find any records of it other then this article in the prestigious magazine “The Studio”. The painting is probably lost.

The exhibition was held under the auspices of H.R.H. princess Mathilde, (she appeared earlier in this Blog here*) and was herself also represented with a painting. She was the artistic daughter of Albert’s successor, his brother King Georg of Saxony (1832-1904) but he died after just two years of reign. 
     

Bertha's view on Loschwitzer Bridge, painting owned by reader Katy in America

Bertha Schrader was as most (all?) pioneering women printmakers an accomplished and professional painter first. Until last week her history (she came from Memel in the Baltic) was shrouded in the mist of time. And lost in the total destruction of Dresden. She must have loved this spot because from the few surviving and known paintings by her hand there are 4 she made from this bend in the river upstream from the bridge and the "Altstadt". In the pointillist style of her teacher Paul Baum (1859-1932) in Dresden and also in the style of another of her teachers: Paul Graeb (1842-1892) from Berlin (below). 

Both paintings by Bertha Schrader

Dresden, build over centuries, “Florence on the Elbe”, was destroyed in just two days between 13 and 15 February 1945 as act of barbaric retaliation by civilized nations on a scale the world had never seen before. Disguised as, justified a necessity by bomber command to end a war that already was coming to an end. We today judge. Probably 25.000 citizens died in the firestorms, nobody knows. Exactly. Today Dresden is rebuild to its former glory.

Bertha Schader appears only as foot-notes in the transcendent German "Thieme Becker Künstler Lexikon" and French “Benezit”. She had been a student of Paul Baum, a former Meissen porcelain painter. He had been living and working since 1890 in the Knokke “artist colony” in Belgium and had returned in 1895 to be involved in the Dresden Secession. He himself had been a student of landscape painter Theodor Hagen (1842-1919) in Weimar.

Paul Baum (above), considered Germany’s last impressionist, soon returned to the Low Lands living and working in Sint Anna-ter-Muiden, near Sluis in province Zeeland for almost twenty years (1895- 1914). But eventually he returned to Dresden as a professor in Dresden Art Academy. Comparing Bertha with Paul Baum one can see how close they must have been: paintings by the student and the master are hardly distinguishable. Bertha, I'm sure, stayed with Baum in Sluis (below) and I could see them painting together on the canal.
    

"Canal" (possibly Sluis) by Bertha Schrader and "Sluis" by Paul Baum

(added info, see comments) 

In Sluis Baum also was visited by Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) the master from Berlin who on the occasion painted him (below). Max Liebermann (1847-1935) also liked to paint on the Dutch and Belgian coast.

Meeting Dutch painter Theo van Rijsselberghe (1862-1926) and already a (late or post-) follower of the Impressionists Baum later adopted the pointillist technique and colour theories of George Seurat (1859-1891) and Paul Signac (1963-1935).   

As we shall see in next posting Bertha (above right, probably in the Netherlands, left: Seurat in Honfleur) had besides her colleague and teacher (and friend?) Paul Baum family connections in the Netherlands. As she had in Norway where she also travelled to, to visit and to paint. 

She visited relatives and family on a little island connected with a wooden bridge to the mainland and no doubt has met a couple of very illustrious and famous colleagues (like the one above who happened to live there). All this I learned thanks to Katy, the present owner of this “Blaue Wunder” painting which today is in America. She is distantly, not directly since Bertha stayed unmarried, related to Bertha Schrader and Katy has found me through the Blog. Wonderful ! More to follow soon.

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