admired
Francis of Lenbach - Self-portrait (c. 1900) oil on canvas
Francis of Lenbach - daughter Gabrielle (around 1901) oil on cardboard (77 x 62.5 cm)
Francis of Lenbach was the most sought after German portrait painter of his time. All the top names who could be a portrait of him. His favorite victims was Otto von Bismarck
, he conjured up more than 80 times on the canvas.
August Macke - Mark Franz (1910) oil on cardboard (50 × 39 cm)
Francis of Lenbach - Prince von Bismarck The strength Lenbach was, as many contemporaries in the detection of the nature of his opponent. And this he found mostly in the face again, upon which was the sole focus of many of his portraits. Above all, the eyes were painted in every detail, everything else was he like blurred indicated or did not it dar.
advice from the master
He was new as perhaps the greatest connoisseur old masters techniques, and his verdict on the emerging art trends of his time was devastating.
Marianne von Werefkin - Self-Portrait (1910) 
Lenbach Franz von - Portrait of a Girl pastel on cardboard (69.2 x 45.7 cm)
This is the reason for the following long quotation, in which his artistic credo is to play in parts. This quote has been introduced in the journal The Arts: Monthly Bulletin of Fine and Applied Arts - Volume 8 published in 1903 (see here:), edited by Friedrich Pecht
him for perhaps the best German painters of the 19th Century held.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Portrait of Alfred Doblin (1912) oil on canvas (50.8 x 41.3 cm)
Francis of Lenbach - Theodor Mommsen ( 1898) here are the views Lenbach to the turn of the century increasingly gaining in importance amateurish realism and expressionism, even in our time, in contrast to the masters of the 19th Century, is highly valued.
Otto Mueller - Self-portrait tempera on canvas (66 x 47.9 cm)
Francis of Lenbach - Portrait of Prince of Hohenlohe-Schilling Prince (1896)
I do not believe that any period of quiet purposeful development of talented painter has been so unfavorable, as the ours.
The continuing tradition is suddenly interrupted. - Holds the first best beginner it the only right to go direct to nature, and himself from the "long ago vanquished points" of his predecessors as far as possible free
Who is brave enough, without choice and taste his self been looking. albeit in a deterrent way bring on canvas, which imagines that he had invented the art.
In no other area than the artistic, unfortunately, it is conceivable that the young offspring
ignored the experience of earlier generations of simple and decreed: "With me, begins to develop from scratch." -
would at least have very strange effects wanted when it comes to science or industry, someone make use of self-delusion is not more of the already gained benefits and share the basics of the craft so out of sight, as is done in terms of our art products. to give
yourself a thorough knowledge of technique, is considered survived quite outdated and - And it is precisely the most spiritual in the highest sense artistically gifted old masters were keenest on perfecting the technique, but they were just a way already born in the water, it should swim in the future, while today everyone the water that are live element is to laboriously self-induced drag must. In the light of our current "original" art youth must think I am sometimes on Goethe's couplets:
says a Quidam, I am of any school,
lives No master, with whom I woo;
Also, I am far from
That I . what is learned from the dead -
That is, if I understood him right:
I'm a fool at his own hand! -
In any event, the present method, in which there are only masters and no apprentices more, very strong and time-consuming, because the individual no longer by the experiences of his ancestors, but, if anything, clever only at his own cost will .
.... have been like for her time entirely laudable - -
What made those - it seems as if, however, the children of modern times should not look back, nothing to learn from the ancients, not even take the middle of them, those which have achieved their great eternal effects. For they imagine, if they are at the hand of the master admired were motivated not to find the way to truth and nature, is not to fail but if you have the courage, with blinders against foreign impressions from the eyes, the nose's worth pursuing. Only new, never before seen has tried, sensation must be done.
last 100 years is not
However, it has been over a hundred years, nothing changed about the situation. Anyone who reads the brochure, for example, the Dusseldorf Art Academy, can here only shake his head with incomprehension. Poor students I find this just a
.
because art comes from knowledge, even if all art academies in Germany, this sale due to lack of alternatives like different.
who believe it may be saved, but the painter Franz von Prince Lenbach they would not convince them today!
Francis of Lenbach - Clara Schumann (1878-79) pastel
