Agnes Meyerhof, sister of the Wild One.

Meyerhof, Agnes

(Hildesheim June 2th 1856 – August 22^nd - 1942, murdered aged 86(!) in Theresiënstadt concentration camp)

Sculptor, (portrait)-painter, drawer, arts and crafts artist and printmaker. 

Obtaining by swapping prints with very friendly German collector Wolfang this wonderful print of Castle Blonay in Switzerland is a good opportunity to continu posting after a short break. For this reason I share today the entry on Agnes Meyerhof in the proposed book on some 150 pioneering German women artists born 1860-1900 and active between 1900-1940 with color woodblock printmaking. 

Agnes Meyerhof was one of four children of the well to do Hildesheim Jewish merchant Magnus Meyerhof (?- 1900). The Meyerhof family has been for 250 years residents of Hildesheim, the ancestral house located in the “Friesensteg”. The children enjoyed much artistic encouragement in childhood from their mother Caroline Schwabe (she died in 1877). Agnes' sister, Leonie Meyerhof (1858-1933) was a well known writer, playwright and literary critic. Their nephew Otto Meyerhof (Hildesheim 1884-1952 Philadelphia - USA) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1922, fled the Nazis through France and emigrated to the USA. Both sisters were awarded street names in Hildesheim.

Agnes received first drawing lessons, with her sister, from the sculptor prof. Friedrich Küsthardt (1830-1900) in Hildesheim and later studied with Julius Maria Jakob Welsch (1832-1899) and Hugo Steiner-Prag (Prague 1880 – 1945 New-York). The Frankfurt Zoo, its animals and the palm garden were favourite subjects and she travelled to Florence and Rome. Her work is collected and displayed in the Städel-Museum in Frankfurt am Main. Only these 2 prints came to my knowledge to this day: Pelicans  and Castle Blonay in Switzerland.  

Some of the painting by Agnes Meyerhof I was able to find.

Isobel Bohun-Lockyer (1895-1982), one of the few outside the Grosvenor School british linocut printmakers of the time, also visited Blonay Castle creating this print in 1924: nice enough, but nowhere matching the free artistic cutting and printing hand of Agnes, making very curious for more examples of her printmaking.  

Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) was here too. Besides the cold walls of Blonay (he was born in Switzerland) he painted this luscious female landscape "Origin du Monde" along with its title not just a celebration of purest female beauty but also a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire. 

Which brings me to Agnes' sister Leonie Meyerhof of whom I did find a portrait. She expresses in words, much like Courbet did in paint, deepest thoughts and feelings about sexuality, desires and the meaning of (her) life. 

Ich bin die Feuerlilie

Die wilde der Familie

Bin hoch und schlank

Bin flammenbraun

Und gucke über 

Den Gartenzaun

Ich bin die Feuerlilie

Die wilde der Familie

Ich will die Welt 

Da draußen sehen 

Komm nimm mich, Windchen

Und tu mir schön!

Ich bin die Feuerlilie

Die wilde der Familie

Meine Schwestern weiß

Sind Klosterfraun,

Die goldene Blickes 

Zum Lichte schaun   

Ich bin die Feuerlilie

Die wilde der Familie

Mein Sein ist kurz,

Ist Lust und Glut -

Rasch will ich sterben,

So find' ich's gut. -

Ich bin der Feuerlilie!  

 Te Nave Nave Fenua (The Delightful Land), 1892
(Paul Gauguin 1848-1903)

(A quick -my- translation for English readers)

I am the fire lilly, the wild one in the family.

I'm lean and tall, flaming brown and peeping over the garden wall 

I am the fire lilly, the wild one in the family.

I want to see the world outside, take me, breath of wind and do me good. 

I am the fire lilly, the wild one in the family.

My sisters white, are nuns looking up into the light with golden gazes

I am the fire lilly, the wild one in the family.

My life on earth is short and will be over soon, all lust and glow, and thats fine with me, 

I am the fire lilly ! 

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

Kanae Yamamoto

Kanae Yamamoto 

(山本鼎 1882-1946)

painter, founder of modern Japanese printmaking
(Sosaka Hanga), socialist and idealist. 
Theorist & Inventor of Craypas  pastel crayons.

Self portrait Kanae Yamamoto, 1915 & Vincent van Gogh, 1888 

In two of my last postings images by Kanae Yamamoto were used. I first read about this printmaker in Clives' Art end the Aesthete (here*). Then I stumbled over a picture used in Lillies Japonisme blog later finding, to my surprise, a "Brittany cow overlooking the sea" print for my Red Heads posting.  

Kanae educated and trained in woodengraving both privately and in Tokyo Art School started the movement of Sosako Hanga, simply said doing all the work on the carving and printing himself and not aided by staff. All started with this first print (Fisherman) in 1904. Pioneering and introducing a new way of printmaking without a black (tying the composition together) keyblock.


So, scattered over the internet there is information and are examples of Yamamoto's prints and paintings but nowhere the two are combined. There's an actual Yamamoto Museum in Japan but its digital museum/website (in Japanese) is hard to understand and  shows very few actual pictures. And there's the excellent biography by Dieter Wanczura (Artelino) you must read: (here*)

Compare Kanae Yamamoto's Brittany bathers with similar compositions by Paul Gauguin.  

From 1912 to 1916 Kanae was in France, studying in Paris in the Academie Julian (like Carl Moser (below) did before him) and working mostly in Brittany, sending home his prints to finance his stay obroad. So surprisingly we find Urushibara (arriving 1907) wasn't the only Japanese printmaker staying in Europe at the time. This may also explain the rather odd publishing dates of some of his prints. Created in France, they were send back and published later, some of them probably even when he was already back in Japan. 

Eugene Boudin (l) and Kanae Yamamoto (around 1914)
(It would be very rewarding finding which village Yamamoto is showing)

In Yamamoto's Brittany prints we'll find obvious influences by French impressionist artists. However most of them already history by the time he arrived. Vincent van Gogh (1853 died 1890), Paul Gauguin (1848 died 1903) Claude Monet and Eugène Boudin (1824 died 1884) the landscape, and famous for his cows, painter. 

 Paintings of haystacks by Claude Monet and Yamamoto

Bu surely many of their works will have echoed in the region and in Paris. But post impressionist painter Paul Serusier (1863-1927) I'm convinced he will have met. And possibly Maurice Denis (1870-1943). It is interesting comparing some of Yamamoto's Japanese prints with works of resemblance by his fellow artists and see how this earliest Modern Printmaker set the way the way for his colleagues

Kanae Yamamoto

Paul Serusier and Carl Moser

French (Paris) printmaker Henri Rivière (1864-1951) who stayed and worked in Brittany 1884 from 1916, so when Yamamoto was actually there, was probably the greatest artistic influence on the younger printmaker Yamamoto.

Kanae Yamamoto

 Carl Moser and Henri Rivière

painting by Maurice Denis (1870-1943), the Cow Girl 1893

Kanae Yamamoto

 Paul Gauguin and "the crashing wave"by  Henri Rivière

Austrian printmaker Carl Moser (who took woodcarving lessons from Emil Orlik) also spend the summer months and stayed and travelled Brittany between 1900-1907, the year Yamamoto arrived. Even back in Austria Moser  kept on making prints of Brittany girls, Britany bonnets and Brittany landscapes.

Breton girl: Kanae Yamamoto

 Breton girls Paul Gauguin and Paul Serusier

And ofcourse French printmaker Amadée Joyau (1872-1913) worked in Brittany at the time Yamamoto stayed there. I've shown him in the Linosaurus before (here*)

And Czech printmaker Frantisek Simon (1877-1942 when living and working in Paris from 1907-1913 also visited "la Bretagne" and etched her rugged coast. 

Two of his woodblocks probably published in Japan: left, in a combined cutting and engraving technique (click to see details !) a French provincial  village (which ?) and right a maybe Russian panorama considering the shape of the church towers. Yamamoto made his way home avoyding war troubled Europe in 1916 through Scandinavia and Russia. Note in both prints his soft and consistent use of a pastel pallet.  

Above two examples of Yamamoto's qualities as an oilpainter: a Brittany beach and a later Japanese beach scene showing he best fits the description being a Japoanese Post Impressionist painter.

 Paul Gauguin and Kanae Yamamoto

"On the deck" a print probably made when he just had returned in Japan. It is dated 1917 and is showing a Japanese Fisherman working his nets. This last example, the group fishermen at a beach at sunset (or rise), proof of his superior cutting skills. I couldn't find a date, but the way he created the different expressions, shades of gray and structures of cloth of the robes with a simple cutting tool is almost incredible.

Being a theorist and idealist Yamamoto also invented and created the first use and production of color pastels in 1925. Together with a course in drawing for children according to the theory of Jiyu-ga (Drawing without a Master) Perfected, these artist materials are in use world wide both as original Sakura Craypas pastels (read more here*) as dozens of brands worldwide.

This posting has been one my most elaborate sofar, trying to create something that wasn't there before. It's by no means meant as definitive, at best a starting point for further interest for others. 
Some pictures I borrowed and reblogged from "Japonism" and the "Blue Lantern".