Alfred Sohn-Rethel (8 February 1875 – 10 December 1958) was a German
Modernist
Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...
painter of the
Düsseldorf school of painting
The Düsseldorf school of painting is a term referring to a group of painters who taught or studied at the Düsseldorf Academy (now the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf or Düsseldorf State Art Academy) during the 1830s and 1840s, when the A ...
art movement. He was active in Düsseldorf, Berlin, Paris, and
Barbizon
Barbizon () is a commune (town) in the Seine-et-Marne department in north-central France. It is located near the Fontainebleau Forest.
Demographics
The inhabitants are called ''Barbizonais''.
Art history
The Barbizon school of painters is name ...
.
Biography
Alfred Sohn-Rethel was born 8 February 1875 to painters
Else Sohn-Rethel
Elisabeth "Else" Johanna Martha Maria Sohn-Rethel (14 March 1853 – 22 January 1933) was a German painter and singer, active in the mid and late 19th-century.
Biography
Elisabeth Johanna Martha Maria Rethel was born 14 March 1853 in Rome, I ...
(née Rethel) and
Karl Rudolf Sohn
Karl Friedrich Rudolf Sohn (21 July 1845, Düsseldorf – 29 August 1908, Düsseldorf) was a German portrait painter in the Academic style.
Biography
His father was the landscape painter, Karl Ferdinand Sohn. After graduating from the , he w ...
and was raised in
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in th ...
, Germany.
He came from a family of painters many of which were of the Düsseldorf school of painting, his maternal grandfather was
history painter
History painting is a genre in painting defined by its subject matter rather than any artistic style or specific period. History paintings depict a moment in a narrative story, most often (but not exclusively) Greek and Roman mythology and Bible ...
Alfred Rethel
Alfred Rethel (May 15, 1816December 1, 1859) was a German history painter.
Early life and education
Rethel was born in Aachen in 1816. He showed an interest in art in his early life, and at the age of thirteen he executed a drawing which procure ...
, his maternal great grandfather was
miniature painter
A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, watercolor, or enamel. Portrait miniatures developed out of the techniques of the miniatures in illuminated manuscripts, and were popular among 16th-century eli ...
and
portraitist
A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this re ...
,
August Grahl
August Grahl (26 May 1791, Göhren-Lebbin - 13 June 1868, Dresden) was a German portrait painter and miniaturist.
Life
He was the son of the Court Jeweler to the Hohenzollerns. From 1811 to 1813, he studied at the Berlin University of the ...
. His paternal grandfather was
Karl Ferdinand Sohn
Karl Ferdinand Sohn (10 December 1805 in Berlin – 25 November 1867 in Cologne) was a German painter of the Düsseldorf school of painting.
Biography
He was born in Berlin and started his studies at the age of eighteen under Wilhelm von Schad ...
.
He attended the
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf is the academy of fine arts of the state of North Rhine Westphalia at the city of Düsseldorf, Germany. Notable artists who studied or taught at the academy include Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Magdalena Jetelová, ...
(Düsseldorf Art Academy) in May 1888, and studied with artists
Eduard von Gebhardt
Franz Karl Eduard von Gebhardt (13 June 1838 – 3 February 1925) was a Baltic German painter of portraits and historical scenes, and a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.
Biography
He was born to Ferdinand Theodor von Gebhardt (1803â ...
,
Hugo Crola
Hugo Crola (30 November 1841, Ilsenburg - 30 June 1910, Blankenburg (Harz), Blankenburg) was a German portrait, landscape and Genre art, genre painter, associated with the Düsseldorfer Malerschule.
Life and work
He was the first of five childr ...
,
Adolf Schill, and
Johann Peter Theodor Janssen
Johann Peter Theodor Janssen (12 December 1844, Düsseldorf – 19 February 1908, Düsseldorf) was a German historical painter.
Biography
Janssen was born in Düsseldorf, son of the engraver (1817–1894), by whom he was first instructed befo ...
.
In 1893, Sohn-Rethel met his future spouse, Anna Julie Michels while staying at
Lake Garda
Lake Garda ( it, Lago di Garda or ; lmo, label=Eastern Lombard, Lach de Garda; vec, Ƚago de Garda; la, Benacus; grc, Βήνακος) is the largest lake in Italy.
It is a popular holiday location in northern Italy, about halfway between ...
. They married on 8 October 1896 in
Hanover
Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...
, Germany. He moved in 1897 to Paris, which changed his painting style. On 8 December 1897, his eldest child Anna Clara Marie Elisabeth "Lissi" Sohn-Rethel was born. His other two children were
Marxist economist
Marxian economics, or the Marxian school of economics, is a heterodox school of political economic thought. Its foundations can be traced back to Karl Marx's critique of political economy. However, unlike critics of political economy, Marxian e ...
and philosopher
Alfred Sohn-Rethel
Alfred Sohn-Rethel (4 January 1899 – 6 April 1990) was a French-born German Marxian economist and philosopher especially interested in epistemology. His main intellectual achievement was the publication of ''Intellectual and Manual Labour: A C ...
(1899–1990) and painter and actor Hans-Joachim Sohn-Rethel (1905–1955).
In 1909, Alfred Sohn-Rethel co-founded the ''
Sonderbund group'' with other Düsseldorf painters, which included Julius Bretz,
Max Clarenbach
Max Clarenbach (19 May 1880 – 9 July 1952) was a German painter. His work was part of the art competitions at the 1928 Summer Olympics and the 1932 Summer Olympics.
References
External links
*
1880 births
1952 deaths
20th-cen ...
,
August Deusser
August Deusser (15 February 1870, in Cologne – 28 October 1942, in Konstanz) was a German painter and art professor, at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.
Life and work
From 1892 to 1897, he studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf; finishing ...
,
Walter Ophey
Walter Hugo Ophey (25 March 1882 – 11 January 1930) was a German painter and graphic designer, known for Rhenish Expressionism. He was a member of the Sonderbund group and Young Rhineland art groups.
Biography
Walter Hugo Ophey was born o ...
,
Wilhelm Schmurr, and his brothers
Otto Sohn-Rethel
Otto Wilhelm Sohn-Rethel (1877–1949) German Lepidopterology, lepidopterist and a painter of the Düsseldorf school of painting art movement. Sohn-Rethel was a member of the art groups, Sonderbund westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler, Sonderb ...
and
Karli Sohn-Rethel
Carl Ernst "Karli" Sohn-Rethel (1882 – 1966) German Modernist painter of the Düsseldorf school of painting art movement. He traveled often and was active in Düsseldorf, Munich, Rome, Positano, Paris, among other places. Sohn-Rethel was a me ...
. They held their first exhibition in May 1908 and brought German painting to the French Impressionists. He was a member of the
Deutscher Künstlerbund
The Deutscher Kuenstlerbund (Association of German Artists) was founded in 1903 the initiative of Count Harry Kessler, promoter of arts and artists, Alfred Lichtwark, director of the Hamburg Art Gallery and the famous painters Lovis Corinth, Ma ...
(Association of German Artists).
He died in
Tübingen
Tübingen (, , Swabian: ''Dibenga'') is a traditional university city in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer rivers. about one in thr ...
, Germany, on 10 December 1958.
Sohn-Rethel's work is in various public museum collections including
Städel Museum
The Städel, officially the ''Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie'', is an art museum in Frankfurt, with one of the most important collections in Germany. The Städel Museum owns 3,100 paintings, 660 sculptures, more than 4,600 ...
, the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
,
Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya
The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (, English: "National Art Museum of Catalonia"), abbreviated as MNAC, is a museum of Catalan visual art located in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Situated on Montjuïc hill at the end of Avinguda de la Reina Ma ...
,
among others.
References
External links
Artist: Alfred Sohn-Rethelin European Paintings and Drawings 1905-1915, Database of Modern Exhibitions (DoME), Institute for Art History at
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...
{{Authority control
1875 births
1958 deaths
German male painters
Artists from Düsseldorf
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alumni
Düsseldorf school of painting