Academic nude
Large (50 x 75 cm.) pencil drawing of academic nude posing by this wonderful and versatile artist, a painter, postage stamp designer, etcher and printmaker. This drawing was probably the first work of art I ever bought when I was a student still living in the city of Amersfoort (mid 1970s) and a few years before the artist’s death.
Paris, Seine & Tour Eiffel
At some point he visited Paris (and the South of France). He must have been acquainted with the works of Albert Marquet (1875-1947) because he could have fooled anybody (he did me for a moment) with this lovely small Seine & Tour Eiffel oil sketch/painting in a matching old frame (as the French say: “dans son jus”). Old auction catalogues and the Internet delivered some more Paris impressions by his hand. The painting was found and acquired in 2022, almost 50 years after the nude, and retrieved from France.
Archive
Jos van den Berg suffered from achondroplasia, better known as dwarfism, like his colleague Toulouse Lautrec. He was much appreciated by his colleagues
gerbrandcaspers@icloud.com
Hofmann, Ludwig von (Darmstadt 17-08-1861 – 23-08-1945 Berlin)
Painter, designer, graphic and printmaker. Son of Prussian statesman Karl von Hofmann (1827-1910) and Cora Kekulé von Stradonitz (1835–1897. His father served as Minister-president of the Grand Duchy of Hesse from 1872 to 1876 and was briefly Trade Minister in the cabinet of Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898. Their children:
• Sophie (b. 1860) ∞ zoologist Justus Carriere (1854-1893)
• Ludwig (1861–1945) ∞ Eleonore Kekulé von Stradonitz (b. 1876)
• Heinrich (1863–1921), “Generalleutnant” ∞ Freiin Asta von Grüter-Diepenbroik (1875–1940)
• Maria (b. 1865) ∞ Justus Thiersch (1859–1937), “Bezirksarzt”, son of surgeon Carl Thiersch (1822-1895)
• Cornelie (b. 1866) ∞ Max von Kaisenberg (1862–1916), “Oberstleutnant”.
He worked in a combination of the Art Nouveau and Symbolist styles. His work was part of the painting event in the art competition at the 1928 Summer Olympics.
Began his studies in 1883 at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, then studied with Ferdinand Keller (1842-1922) at the Academy of Fine Arts, Karlsruhe. In 1889, he attended the Académie Julian in Paris, where he came under the influence of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898) and Paul-Albert Besnard (1849-1934).
After 1890, he was a freelance painter in Berlin. From 1894 to 1900, he travelled extensively and spent a great deal of his time at his villa in Fiesole. His appreciation of antiquity and attraction to the idea of Arcadia permeates much of his work. After 1895, he was a regular contributor of illustrations for the Art Nouveau magazine Pan. In 1896, he became a member of the Berlin Secession and he was married in 1899. He was also a member of the Deutscher Künstlerbund
In 1903, he was appointed a Professor at the Weimar Saxon Grand Ducal Art School, where he became a member of the avant-garde literary and artistic group centred around Harry Graf Kessler (1868-1937). Jean Arp (1886-1936) and Ivo Hauptmann (1886-1973) were among his students. In 1916, he was named a Professor at the Academy in Dresden, where he remained until 1931. He also provided illustrations for a new translation of the Odyssey by philosopher Leopold Ziegler (1881-1958) and works by Gerhart Hauptmann (1882-1946) Ivo’s father.
His overall production slackened in the 1930s and, in 1937, some of his works were labeled as "degenerate art". He retired to Pillnitz, near Dresden, where he died in 1945. His remaining works were almost confiscated by the Russians after the war, but his widow managed to save them.
See: Hauptmann, Ivo