1815-1905 German Adolph von Menzel Gallery His father was the headmaster of a school for girls, and intended to educate his son as a professor; but he would not thwart his taste for art. Left an orphan in 1832, Menzel had to maintain his family. In 1833 Sachse of Berlin published his first work, an album of pen-and-ink drawings reproduced on stone, to illustrate Goethe's little poem, Kunstlers Erdenwallen. He executed lithographs in the same manner to illustrate Denkw??rdigkeiten aus der brandenburgisch-preussischen Geschichte; The Five Senses and The Prayer, as well as diplomas for various corporations and societies. From 1839 to 1842 he produced 400 drawings, largely introducing to Germany the technique of wood engraving, to illustrate the Geschichte Friedrichs des Grossen (History of Frederick the Great) by Franz Kugler. He subsequently brought out Friedrichs der Grossen Armee in ihrer Uniformirung (The Uniforms of the Army under Frederick the Great), Soldaten Friedrichs der Grossen (The Soldiers of Frederick the Great); and finally, by order of the king Frederick William IV, he illustrated the works of Frederick the Great, Illustrationen zu den Werken Friedricks des Grossen (1843-1849). By these works Menzel established his claim to be considered one of the first, if not actually the first, of the illustrators of his day in his own line. Pencil drawing by Menzel, 1891.Meanwhile Menzel had set himself to study unaided the art of painting, and he soon produced a great number and variety of pictures, always showing keen observation and honest workmanship in subjects dealing with the life and achievements of Frederick the Great, and scenes of everyday life, such as In the Tuileries, The Ball Supper, and At Confession. Among the most important of these works are The Forge (1875) and The Market-place at Verona. Invited to paint The Coronation of William I at Koenigsberg, he produced an exact representation of the ceremony without regard to the traditions of official painting. In Germany he received many honors, and was the first painter to be given the Order of the Black Eagle in 1898 which included a title of nobility, becoming von Menzel.  Related Paintings of Adolph von Menzel :. | Euine Study,Recumbent Head in Harness | Studio Interior with Casts | Ball Supper | Treppenflur bei Nachtbeleuchtung | Eisenwalzwerk |
Related Artists:
Kurt Schwitters
German Dadaist Painter and Sculptor, 1887-1948 German painter, sculptor, designer and writer. He studied at the Kunstakademie in Dresden (1909-14) and served as a clerical officer and mechanical draughtsman during World War I. At first his painting was naturalistic and then Impressionistic, until he came into contact with Expressionist art, particularly the art associated with Der Sturm, in 1918. He painted mystical and apocalyptic landscapes, such as Mountain Graveyard (1912; New York, Guggenheim), and also wrote Expressionist poetry for Der Sturm magazine. He became associated with the DADA movement in Berlin after meeting Hans Arp, Raoul Hausmann, Hannah H?ch and Richard Huelsenbeck, and he began to make collages that he called Merzbilder. These were made from waste materials picked up in the streets and parks of Hannover, and in them he saw the creation of a fragile new beauty out of the ruins of German culture. Similarly he began to compose his poetry from snatches of overheard conversations and randomly derived phrases from newspapers and magazines. His mock-romantic poem An Anna Blume, published in Der Sturm in August 1919, was a popular success in Germany. From this time 'Merz' became the name of Schwitters's one-man movement and philosophy. The word derives from a fragment of the word Kommerz, used in an early assemblage (Merzbild, 1919; destr.; see Elderfield, no. 42), for which Schwitters subsequently gave a number of meanings, the most frequent being that of 'refuse' or 'rejects'. In 1919 he wrote: 'The word Merz denotes essentially the combination, for artistic purposes, of all conceivable materials, and, technically, the principle of the equal distribution of the individual materials .... A perambulator wheel, wire-netting, string and cotton wool are factors having equal rights with paint'; such materials were indeed incorporated in Schwitters's large assemblages and painted collages of this period, for example Construction for Noble Ladies (1919; Los Angeles, CA, Co. Mus. A.; see fig. 1; see also COLLAGE). Schwitters's essential aestheticism and formalism alienated him from the political wing of German Dada led by Huelsenbeck, and he was ridiculed as 'the Caspar David Friedrich of the Dadaist Revolution'. Although his work of this period is full of hints and allusions to contemporary political and cultural conditions, unlike the work of George Grosz or John Heartfield it was not polemical or bitterly satirical.
Heronymus Bosch
Bois-le-Duc ca 1450-1516
Samuel Sidley
British 1829-1896