Hans Thoma

Hans Thoma ( born October 2, 1839 in Upper fief, Bernau in the Black Forest, today the district of Waldshut, † November 7, 1924 in Karlsruhe ) was a German painter and graphic artist.

Biography

Family, education and vocational

Thoma comes from a humble background. His father Franz Joseph (1794-1855) was a miller, and worked as a wood worker in the Black Forest. His mother Rosa (1804-1897), born Maier from Menzenschwand, came from an artisan family. The lessons started, first as a lithographer and painter in Basel, then watches as sign painter in Furtwangen, he broke off. He carried out autodidactic painting and drawing studies before he was accepted in 1859 by the Grand Ducal School of Art in Karlsruhe, where he was among other things a pupil of Johann Wilhelm Schirmer. His studies ended Thoma 1866 and went to stay in Basel and Dusseldorf together with Otto Scholderer 1868 to Paris, where he was particularly impressed by the works of Gustave Courbet and the Barbizon school. Also Thoma finally went to Munich, the then artistic capital of Germany. His stay lasted from 1870 to 1876 at the same time Thoma traveled to Italy for the first time in 1874. ; a second trip to Italy followed in 1880, after he had traveled to England in 1879, and they should exhibit in 1884 at the Art Club Liverpool. He was a friend of Arnold Böcklin and was at the Leibl circle near.

In 1877 he married the flowers and still-life painter Cella Bert Eder.

Since 1878, Thoma lived in Frankfurt's Westend, house to house with the painter friend Wilhelm Steinhausen, and in a common household with his wife, his sister Agathe and Ella, who in 1878 adopted niece of Cella. There he met, among others, on the in the neighborhood ( Mendelssohnstraße 69) living SDAP politician, former boarding school director and scholar Samuel Spier and his wife, the writer and art critic Anna Spier. The Spiers as well as other acquaintances Stonedown supported Thoma with orders. Anna Spier wrote articles and a portrait in a book about him; Thoma created a bookplate for it and painted a portrait which today is located in Nuremberg in the Germanic National Museum.

From 1886 to 1899 he lived there in the Wolfsgangstraße 150 An inscription on house recalls. During this time, the frieze was decorated with mythological scenes in the villa Pringsheim. Thoma was close to, inter alia, the painters of the Kronberger painter colony. At times, it was home to the writer Julius Langbehn. The builder of the house of Thomas, Simon Ravenstein, Thoma supported numerous commissions, the first in 1882 was the decoration of the house of the architect himself. 1899 moved the family of four an apartment with a studio next to the Friedrichshof in Kronberg what Thoma felt as a visible expression of the long-awaited recognition as a painter.

1899 Hans Thoma was appointed professor at the Grand Ducal Art School in Karlsruhe and the director of the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe. This office he held until 1920. At the Kunsthalle he equipped the Thoma Chapel, which is still visible there, on his 70th birthday opened an annex with Thoma Museum. The Karlsruhe time was overshadowed by the death of his wife Cella 1901, the Thoma years depressed right. Thoma was living now with his sister in Karlsruhe.

For his exhibition at the Kunstverein Munich 1890, he has been widely recognized in Germany and the art historian Henry Thode was his most important benefactor. Thoma was up by about 1910 of the most respected painters in Germany. Meyers Lexicon Great conversation held in 1909 determined that he had " become one of the favorite painter of the German people ", a term which in 2013 from Frankfurt's Städel - Museum with the exhibition " Hans Thoma. , Favorite painter of the German people ' " was picked up.

At Thomas students there was also the subsequent head of the School of Ceramics Landshut Hermann Haas.

Hermann Binz created his portrait as a gargoyle on Stephanie Fountain ( Karlsruhe).

Artistic development and importance

His early works are marked by a lyrical pantheism. In his time in Munich he painted mainly landscapes. In Frankfurt were working with a narrative or allegorical content in the center of his work. At the age he worked hard on his " Thoma Chapel ," which he embellished with scenes from the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.

When his best and most authentic works are still regarded his landscapes (Black Forest, Upper Rhine valley and Taunus ), and the portraits of his friends and family as well as his self-portraits. No longer able to convince today often grotesquely exaggerated, realistic, mythological and religious subjects, who were strongly influenced by Böcklin.

He belonged to the preferred selection of contemporary artists who proposed the Komite for collecting and assessing Stollwerck images Cologne chocolate producer Ludwig Stollwerck to commission for drafts.

His sponsors Henry Thode Thomas stylized plant into an embodiment of national identity, with which the collection was prepared by the National Socialist art criticism of the soil.

Honors

  • Bernau in the Black Forest, the Mayor Ludwig Baur founded in 1949 the Hans -Thoma- Kunstmuseum, enter into the oil paintings, prints, art and craft work and personal documents a glimpse into the artist's work.
  • The Hans Thoma Prize was named after him, State Prize of the State of Baden- Württemberg for visual artists and artists.
  • Several schools bear the name of the painter, like the Hans -Thoma -Gymnasium in Lörrach, or the Hans -Thoma -Schule in Karlsruhe and in [ Oberursel ].
  • Many roads such as in Berlin, Bremen, Frankfurt, Karlsruhe, Mannheim and Potsdam were named after him.
  • A place in Heidelberg was named after him in the glove home district
  • On September 1, 1993, an asteroid was named after him ( 5492 ) Thoma.

Major works

  • The bees Friend (1863; Kunsthalle Karlsruhe)
  • Black Forest Landscape (1867; Kunsthalle Bremen)
  • Portraits of his mother and sister (1868; Museum Folkwang Essen )
  • Black Forest Landscape (1872; Staatliche Museen Berlin. )
  • The Rhine at Säckingen (1873; Säckingen; Hans -Thoma- Museum Bernau )
  • Singing in the Greens ( 1875; Landesmuseum Hannover )
  • Religious education (1878, private collection )
  • Lemon Saleswoman (1880, Sander collection )
  • Taunus landscapes (1881 and 1890; Neue Pinakothek Munich)
  • Children Dancing (1872, Landscape, Kunsthalle Karlsruhe)
  • Children Dancing (1884, Portrait, Private Collection )
  • The Angler (1888; Städt art collections Bonn. )
  • Moonlight Geiger (1890, private collection )
  • The Keeper of the Tales (1893, Galerie Neue Meister Dresden)
  • The migratory brook (1906 )
  • The Goatherd (1869; Landesmuseum Mainz )
  • Series of 12 -month, 8 planets and 10 images of Christ ( 1906-08, Kunsthalle Karlsruhe)

The main Thoma collections possess the Städel Art Institute in Frankfurt and the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe.

Publications

  • The landscape painter. A coloring book for children, 1904 ( digitized )
  • Festival Calendar by Hans Thoma, Verlag von EA Seemann, Leipzig. Portfolio with 31 colored plates.
  • In the autumn of life. Collected reminder sheets, 1909
  • In the winter of life. Memoirs, 1919
  • Roads to Peace, 1919
  • Year Book of the Soul, 1922

Exhibitions

  • 2013: Hans Thoma. Favorite painter of the German people. Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, catalog.
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