1789-1872 Austrian Jakob Wassermann was born on March 10, 1873, in Furth, the son of a Jewish merchant. After a childhood with many restrictions, he began his career as an office clerk, in Munich and then in Freiburg. In 1898 he moved to Vienna and eventually established himself as a writer. Derivative and imitative, Wassermanns novels showed from the outset a strong dependence upon Fyodor Dostoevsky - particularly in his fondness for the psychological probing of criminals and social outcasts - as well as the influence of the master of the romantic horror and detective story, E. T. A. Hoffmann. Wassermanns first significant work is Die Juden von Zirndorf (1897, The Jews of Zirndorf), in which his deep knowledge of his own community in F??rth and Nuremberg stands him in good stead. As in many of his other works, Wassermanns preoccupation with innocence and redemption is here interleaved with a somewhat crass depiction of depravity and superstition. Der Moloch (1902) pays tribute to the contemporary literary cult of the great city (here Vienna), seen as an all-devouring monster of sin and perversion. Caspar Hauser (1908) is probably the authors best novel; the book, based on fact, deals with the case of the mute youth who appeared one day in 1828 on the streets of Nuremberg. Resemblances to Dostoevskys The Idiot may also be noted in this tale of the rejection and contamination of innate purity by corrupt society. After Caspar Hauser Wassermanns novels and short stories become increasingly preoccupied with bizarre and perverse anecdotes and intrigue, often initially drawn from biography or the newspapers. Das Gansemannchen (1915; The Goose Man) illuminates the problem involved in simultaneous cohabitation with two wives. Christian Wahnschaffe (1919) exploits the theme of the rich mans son who rejects the world to turn toward Buddhism. Der Fall Maurizius (1928, The Mauritius Case) is a type of detective novel made colorful by excursions into hypnosis but also weighed down by a tedious mass of psychological dissection. Like Honor?? de Balzac, whom he imitated, Wassermann introduces the same characters into different novels; thus Etzel Andergast (1931) is a sequel to The Mauritius Case, and its hero, Joseph Kerkhoven, reappears in Joseph Kerkhovens dritte Existenz (1934, Joseph Kerkhovens Third Existence). Wassermann is a somewhat uneven and labored writer, and he cannot in any sense be considered a stylist. His novels are often marred by diffuseness and miasmic obscurity. At the same time his extensive output is of considerable historical interest and illuminates rather well the consequences of marriage between the new depth psychology and the popular novel of sensation and crime. He died on Jan. 1, 1934, in Alt-Aussee.  Related Paintings of Jakob Alt :. | St Bruno Examining a Drawing of the Baths of Diocletian Location of the Future Charterhouse of Rome (mk05) | Lansdowne portrait of George Washington | Mary with the Child | Die Erschaffung der Eva | Portrait of Andres Manuel del Rio Spanish-Mexican geologist and chemist. |
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Arthur hacker,R.A.
1858-1919 was an English classicist painter. Born in London in 1858, Hacker was the son of Edward Hacker, a line engraver specialising in animal and sporting prints (who was also for many years the official Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths for Kentish Town in the St Pancras registration district, north London). In his art he was most known for painting religious scenes and portraits, and his art was also influenced by his extensive travels in Spain and North Africa. He studied at the Royal Academy between 1867 and 1880, and at the Atelier Bonnat in Paris. He was twice exhibited at the Royal Academy, in 1878 and 1910, and was elected an Academician in 1910. In 1894 he was the subject of a bust by Edward Onslow Ford. An original portrait by Hacker of Sir Alfred Keogh by hangs in the RAMC HQ Mess at Millbank, London. He died in London on November 12, 1919. In 1902,
Raffaellino del garbo
Italian Early Renaissance Painter , ca.1466-1524 Italian painter and draughtsman. According to Vasari, he began as the most gifted assistant of Filippino Lippi and the most promising painter of the new generation but never fulfilled expectations, deteriorating into mediocrity and worse. Raffaellino's first known work is the frescoed vault of a small antechamber off Filippino Lippi's Carafa Chapel in S Maria sopra Minerva, Rome, uncovered during restoration in the 1960s. It was decorated with pagan themes, to Filippino's designs, apparently after the main chapel was completed in 1493. Filippino's influence is evident in the all'antica detail and animated figure style, to which Raffaellino brought a youthful freshness and charm. Vasari, in his account of the vault, likened it to an illuminator's work. It has been suggested that Raffaellino remained in Rome and worked with Bernardino Pinturicchio in the Borgia apartments in the Vatican, where some frescoes of 1495 show stylistic affinities with Raffaellino's work in S Maria sopra Minerva.
Nils von Dardel
Swedish, 1888-1943,Swedish painter. After a short time at the School of Art in Stockholm, which he found too conservative, he travelled for the first time to Paris in 1910. There he immediately made contact with the Scandinavian artists who were pupils of Matisse and with them made his debut in Stockholm in 1912 as a member of the Man of the Year 1909 group. Under the influence of Cubism, Dardel painted a townscape of Senlis, in a style that eventually developed into the sophisticated naivety of Funeral in Senlis (1913; Stockholm, Mod. Mus.).