![Wilhelm Maria Hubertus Leibl 008](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Wilhelm_Maria_Hubertus_Leibl_008.jpg)
Wilhelm Maria Hubertus Leibl (October 23, 1844 – December 4, 1900) was a German
realist painter
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...
of
portrait
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 ...
s and scenes of
peasant
A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasa ...
life.
Biography
Leibl was born in
Cologne
Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...
, where his father was the director of the Cathedral choir. He was apprenticed to a locksmith before beginning his artistic training with the local painter Hermann Becker in 1861.
[ He entered the ]Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...
Academy in 1864, subsequently studying with several artists including Carl Theodor von Piloty. He set up a group studio in 1869, with Johann Sperl, Theodor Alt
Theodor is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Theodore. It is also a variant of Teodor.
List of people with the given name Theodor
* Theodor Adorno, (1903–1969), German philosopher
* Theodor Aman, Romanian painter
* Theodor Blueger ...
, and Rudolf Hirth du Frênes. At about the same time, Gustave Courbet
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( , , ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and ...
visited Munich to exhibit his work, making a considerable impression on many of the local artists by his demonstrations of alla prima painting directly from nature. Leibl's paintings, which already reflected his admiration for the Dutch old masters, became looser in style, their subjects rendered with thickly brushed paint against dark backgrounds.
Career
In 1869, following Courbet's suggestion, Leibl went to Paris, where he was introduced to Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet (, ; ; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
Bor ...
, but was forced to return to Germany in 1870, due to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War.[Artist biography in ''German Masters of the Nineteenth Century'', pp. 269–70] In 1873 Leibl left Munich for the isolated Bavaria
Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total l ...
n countryside, where he depicted the local peasants in everyday scenes devoid of sentimentality or anecdote. The sketchlike quality of his earlier paintings was replaced by greater precision and attention to drawing. Living from 1878 to 1882 in Berbling, he painted perhaps his best-known work, the '' Three Women in Church'' (Kunsthalle, Hamburg). Its intensely realistic style recalls Hans Holbein in its clarity of definition. During the following years he moved to the town of Bad Aibling and, in 1892, to Kutterling, as his paintings united the disciplined drawing he had adopted in the 1880s with a new delicacy and luminosity.
Leibl painted without preliminary drawing, setting to work directly with color, an approach that has parallels to Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passa ...
. His commitment to the representation of reality as the eye sees it earned him recognition in his lifetime as the preeminent artist of a group known as the ''Leibl-Kreis'' (Leibl Circle) that included, among others, Carl Schuch
Carl Eduard Schuch (30 September 1846 – 13 September 1903) was an Austrian painter, born in Vienna, who spent most of his lifetime outside Austria, in Germany, Italy and France. He painted primarily still lifes and landscapes.
From 1865 to ...
, Wilhelm Trübner, Otto Scholderer
Otto Franz Scholderer (25 January 1834 – 22 January 1902) was a German painter.
Life
He was born in Frankfurt am Main. On completing his schooling, Scholderer went to the Städel academy of arts in 1849, where he remained until 1851. Amo ...
, and Hans Thoma
Hans Thoma (2 October 1839 – 7 November 1924) was a German painter.
Biography
Hans Thoma was born on 2 October 1839 in Bernau in the Black Forest, Germany. He was the son of a miller and was trained in the basics of painting by a painter of ...
.
During the first half of the 1870s, Leibl executed a series of 19 etching
Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types ...
s in a meticulous style. His charcoal drawings are conceived in great masses of light and shadow, blocked in as though he were using a brush and paint.
He visited the Netherlands in 1898, and his work was included in the Berlin Secession exhibition the following year. He died in Würzburg
Würzburg (; Main-Franconian: ) is a city in the region of Franconia in the north of the German state of Bavaria. Würzburg is the administrative seat of the ''Regierungsbezirk'' Lower Franconia. It spans the banks of the Main River.
Würzburg ...
in 1900.[
Image:Wilhelm Maria Hubertus Leibl 017.jpg, ''Wilhelm Leibl and Sperl on the hunt'', 1890–1895, oil on canvas, ]Neue Pinakothek
The Neue Pinakothek (, ''New Pinacotheca'') is an art museum in Munich, Germany. Its focus is European Art of the 18th and 19th centuries, and it is one of the most important museums of art of the nineteenth century in the world. Together with ...
File:Wilhelm Maria Hubertus Leibl 001.jpg, ''Girl with White Headscarf'', c. 1876, oil on panel
File:Wilhelm Maria Hubertus Leibl 012.jpg, ''In der Bauernstube'', 1890, oil on panel
File:Wilhelm Maria Hubertus Leibl 010.jpg, ''Die Spinnerin'', 1892
File:Johann Heinrich Pallenberg by Wilhelm Maria Hubertus Leibl 024.jpg, ''Johann Heinrich Pallenberg'', 1871
File:Wilhelm Leibl Standbildnis des Freiherrn von Perfall als Jäger.jpg, ''Freiherrn von Perfall als Jäger''
File:Wilhelm Maria Hubertus Leibl 022.jpg, ''Portrait of Rosine Fischler, Gräfin Treuberg'', 1878
File:Wilhelm Maria Hubertus Leibl 028.jpg, ''Portrait of a Man'', c. 1890
File:Leibl kopf.JPG, ''Girl with Black Headscarf'', 1879, oil on panel (detail)
File:Wilhelm Leibl - Porträt des Tierarztes Dr. Reindl.jpg, ''Veterinarian Dr. Reindl in the arbor'', c. 1890
Nazi-looted art
In 2009 the German Advisory Commission for the Return of Cultural Property Seized as a Result of Nazi Persecution recommended that Leibl's painting “Bauernmädchen ohne Hut mit weißem Halstuch” (‘Peasant Girl without a Hat and with a White Headcloth’) (1897), which had been seized by the Nazis, be restituted to the heirs of Dr. Alexander Lewin.
Notes
References
''German Masters of the Nineteenth Century: Paintings and Drawings from the Federal Republic of Germany''
Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1981. Free download available.
*Forster-Hahn, Françoise (2001). ''Spirit of an Age: Nineteenth-Century Paintings From the Nationalgalerie, Berlin''. London: National Gallery Company.
*
*Ruhmer, Eberhard, and Wilhelm Leibl (1984). ''Der Leibl-Kreis und die reine Malerei''. Rosenheim: Rosenheimer Verlagshaus. (German language)
External links
''German masters of the nineteenth century: paintings and drawings from the Federal Republic of Germany''
a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on Wilhelm Leibl (no. 41–43)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leibl, Wilhelm
1844 births
1900 deaths
19th-century German painters
19th-century German male artists
German male painters
Realist painters
Academy of Fine Arts, Munich alumni
Artists from Cologne
Munich School