Heinrich Haberl

Balaclava - The target in sight -

c. 1900

Bernhard Pankok (1872 Münster - 1943 Baierbrunn), General Wilhelm von Blume, 1915, aquatint etching, 34 x 29.5 cm (sheet size), 26 x 22 cm (plate size), signed in the plate at upper left, in pencil at lower right and dated in pencil at lower left. - At lower left old collection stamp, at the right broad margin with a small spot, otherwise very good condition. About the artwork The 1915 aquatint etching of General Wilhelm von Blume is based on a 1912 oil painting in the LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur in Münster. A second oil portrait of the general by Pankok is in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. When Pankok painted the first oil portrait in 1912, the general had already been retired for 16 years. It is therefore a retrospective portrait. Accordingly, the orientation of his head is such that he is looking back in both the oil painting and the etching. Without fixing on anything in particular, he looks thoughtfully inwards and reflects on his life. Uniformed and highly endowed, it is his military activities in particular that he is reviewing attentively and, as his gaze reveals, quite critically. Pankok has literally written the sum of his experiences on Wilhelm von Blume's face: The physiognomy is a veritable landscape of folds, furrows, ridges and gullies, all the more striking against the flat background. It is clear that each of the medals was also won through suffering. However, by breaking the boundaries of the picture, his bust appears as an unshakable massif, which gives the general a stoic quality. The fact that the design of the portrait was important to Pankok can be seen from the different versions, the present sheet being the third and probably final revision, which Pankok dates precisely to 18 February 1915. Compared with the previous state, the light background now has a dark area against which the sitter's face stands out, the dark background in turn combining with the uniform to create a new tension in the picture. Pankok's taking up of the portrait of the high-ranking military veteran and its graphic reproduction can also be seen in relation to the First World War, which had broken out in the meantime. In the face of modern weapons of mass destruction, Wilhelm von Blume's warfare and military writings were relics of a bygone, more value-oriented era. About the artist After studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1889 to 1891 under Heinrich Lauenstein, Adolf Schill, Hugo Crola, and Peter Janssen the Elder, Bernhard Pankok went to Munich in 1892, where he worked primarily as a graphic artist for the two major Jugendstil magazines "Pan" and "Jugend," which established his artistic success. Through this work he met Emil Orlik, with whom he had a lifelong friendship. In 1897, he exhibited his first furniture, and in 1898, together with Richard Riemerschmid, Bruno Paul and Hermann Obrist...

Johann Friedrich Bause (1738 Halle a. d. Saale - 1814 Weimar). Half-length portrait of a man with beard and cap after a drawing by Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich. Etching and coppe...

Jörg Olberg (*1956 Dresden), Agony, 1987. etching, E.A. (edition of 30), 24 x 17 cm (image), 46 x 37 cm (sheet), each signed in pencil lower right "Olberg" and dated "IX [19]87", inscribed lower left "E.A. [Epreuve d'Artiste]". - minimal crease and dust stains in the broad margin - The architecture of decay - About the artwork Jörg Olberg draws here the sum of his artistic study of the Berlin ruins, which were still present in the cityscape well into the 80s. With his work "Agony" he creates an allegory of decay. Positioned in the landscape of ruins, a ruined house grows before the viewer, rising like the Tower of Babel into the sky, its roof and gable brightly illuminated by the sun. But already the roof shows mostly only the rafters, and as the gaze is drawn further down, the building visibly disintegrates, the beams protruding in all directions looking like splintered bones. Slowly but inexorably - in agony - the house will collapse in on itself and become nothing more than the burial mound of itself. At the same time, the small-scale stone composition and the plaster form a pattern-like ornamentation of decay. The tension in the picture is fed by the counter-movement of growth and collapse, which is heightened by the dramatic formation of clouds. The swirls of clouds are reminiscent of a world landscape...

Carl Maria Plückebaum (1880 Düsseldorf - 1952 ibid.), Der Talismann (sog. Dukatenscheisser), partly colored etching, 11.5 x 8.5 cm (plate size), 26.5 x 20 cm (sheet size), signed by hand below the image on the right "C. Plückebaum" and inscribed by hand at lower left "Der Talismann". - left and right side of the sheet with browned stripes, otherwise good copy - The philosopher's stone - About the artist Here, Carl Plückebaum gives free rein to his anti-academic impulses and turns the subtle humor of his pictures into crudeness. Following Adrian Ostade's peasants as they go about their needy business, we see a cowardly fellow in a squatting position. His excrement, however, is not the organic remains of digestion, but - like the golden donkey in the Grimm fairy tale - ducats. However, they appear more brown than golden, which is emphasized by the discreet hand-coloring of the picture. The unattractive accumulation is countered by the blossoms decorating the crouching man's hat. Totally absorbed in his action, his activity is evident in the strained expression on his face, giving Plückebaum a whole new verisimilitude to the concept of naturalism. The title "The Talisman" then turns naturalism back to the miraculous, formulating in a humorous way that these legacies are also a "miracle of nature". About the artist Coming from a poor background, Carl Plückebaum, who had a walking disability and was of short stature, initially worked as a church restorer. He also took private drawing lessons. In 1901 he won the first prize of the Düsseldorf Museum of Decorative Arts, which enabled him to finance his studies at the Düsseldorf Academy. There he was a pupil of Eduard von Gebhardt and Peter Janssen the Elder, but began to doubt the academic teaching. In 1906 he took part in a group exhibition at the Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, which violated the academy's statutes and led to his dismissal. However, the extraordinary success with the public confirmed him as an artist and provided him with the financial means for a study trip to Italy. Enchanted by Florence, he retired to the Franciscan monastery of Fisole, where he worked as a fresco painter. Back in Düsseldorf, he turned increasingly to children's and animal drawings, and in 1907 he was a founding member of the Niederrhein Secessionist Artists' Group. In 1910 he travelled to Italy again, accompanied by his painter friends Walter Ophey and Carl Schmitz-Pleis, visiting Rome and Naples in particular. He then stayed in Munich to study the Old Masters at the Pinakothek. It was in the artistic circles of Schwabing that he met his future wife, the painter Meta Weber. In Düsseldorf, Carl and Meta Plückebaum...

Albert Ernst (1909 Fronhofen - 1996 Hamburg), View of a Coastal Town, etching, 30 x 37 cm (picture), 45 x 50.5 cm (frame), signed in pencil lower right "Albert Ernst", framed under g...

Lovis Corinth (1858 Tapiau - 1925 Zandvoort), Rudolf von Rittner as Florian Geyer, 1924 (Müller 854), drypoint signed in pencil. 20.4 × 14.2 (plate size), 37.7 × 30.6 cm (sheet size). Published by Karl Nierendorf, Berlin. Framed in a passepartout. - Strong, precise impression. Frame a little bit rubbed and with two small damages. About the artwork The knight is a leitmotif in Lovis Corinth's work, culminating in his Self-Portrait in Armour of 1914. Of all the paintings on this theme, Corinth most often depicted Florian Geyer. Descended from a Franconian noble family, he fought for the freedom of the peasants during the peasant wars of the Reformation, first diplomatically and then militarily, leading the legendary Schwarzen Haufen (Black Troops). The name derives from the black uniforms with which Geyer dressed the peasants willing to fight. During the Napoleonic occupation, the freedom fighter Florian Geyer was sung about by the Romantics, and the free corps Die Schwarze Schaar, founded in 1813 by Major von Lützow, succeeded the Schwarzer Haufen. It was against this historical background that Gerhard Hauptmann wrote the revolutionary drama Florian Geyer, which premiered at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1896. While the actor Rudolf Rittner, who would later appear in Fritz Lang's films, initially played the role of Schäferhans, he took over the leading role in the new production at Berlin's Lessing Theatre in 1904, again directed by Emil Lessing, which established his fame as an actor. Hauptmann himself praised the acting. He wrote to Hugo von Hofmannsthal: "It went quite well with Florian Geyer. In any case, I had the great pleasure of seeing the play again in an admirable performance". And Lovis Corinth was so taken with Rittner's performance that he painted an oil portrait of him in the role of Florian Geyer in 1906. After two further graphic versions in 1915 and 1920/21, Corinth returned to the painting a year before his death and almost twenty years after the oil painting to create this graphic version in 1924. Even the inscription in the picture was taken over. This proves all the more the importance of the knight and freedom fighter for Corinth's self-image. The oil painting, in particular, proclaims the single-minded determination to fight to the last for the values defended, manifested in the oil painting by the tattered flag held out to the enemy. There is a parallel with Rainer Maria Rilke's 1899 story The Cornet, in which the protagonist goes down with the flag that he first saved at the risk of his life. Consequently, the portrait is also a self-portrait, and the knight's armour is not an academic costume or an ironic refraction, but an expression of Corinth's self-image, which also includes his self-representation as an artist. The Secession poster...

Jim Dine has expertly sketched the accomplished French poet and coffee trader Arthur Rimbaud. A vignette of dark brown surrounds his thin, fine features, which are defined with a flu...

Paris: Gazette des Beaux Arts, 1892. Etching and dry point on cream laid paper. 7 9/16 x 5 7/8 inches (191 x 148 mm), full margins. Signed in pencil, lower right margin. A dark, ink...

This does not appear to be signed. not examined out of frame. In the manner of Frans Masereel here is an old woodblock print of a Jewish religious scene of the induction of a new torah in a procession with a chuppah, wedding canopy. In the tradition of the Jewish European artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Moritz Oppenheim, Max Liebermann, Lesser Ury, Jakob Steinhardt, Jehudo Epstein, Artur Kolnik, Stanislaus Bender...

A Man of Mangea is from the 1784 First Edition Atlas Accompanying Capt. James Cook and King; Third and Final Voyage of Captain James Cook. John Webber (1752-1793) was the official a...

A Young Woman of Taheite Dancing (Tahiti) is from the 1784 First Edition Atlas Accompanying Capt. James Cook and King; Third and Final Voyage of Captain James Cook.John Webber (1752-...

A Man of Kamtschatka (Russia) is from the 1784 First Edition Atlas Accompanying Capt. James Cook and King; Third and Final Voyage of Captain James Cook. John Webber (1752-1793) was t...