Erna Auerbach (Frankfurt am Main 1897–London 1975) was a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

-born artist and art historian best known for her work on artists of the Tudor-era in England.

Biography

She was the daughter of the painter Emma Kehrmann (1867-1958) and her father Ernst (1861-1926) was a College teacher that helped to introduce civics into the curriculum. She studied art history at the universities of Frankfurt, Bonn and Munich, under Rudolf Kautzsch, who supervised her doctorate, and

Heinrich Wölfflin Heinrich Wölfflin (; 21 June 1864 – 19 July 1945) was a Swiss art historian, esthetician and educator, whose objective classifying principles ("painterly" vs. "linear" and the like) were influential in the development of formal analysis in ar ...

. While there she was also taught by the philosopher Hans Cornelius, the classical archaeologist

Hans Schrader Johann (Hans) Hermann Schrader (15 February 1869, Stolp – 5 November 1948, Berlin) was a German classical archaeologist and art historian. He was a student at the Universities of Marburg and Berlin, where he was a pupil of Reinhard Kekulé von S ...

, and Georg Swarzenski, the director of the Städel Art Institute. Her doctorate was on German portrait painting in the 16th century, but she trained as a painter after taking her doctorate. She attended classes by Johannes Cissarz, and Willi Baumeister and spent time in 1926 in Paris. Her first solo exhibition took place in the Ludwig Schames gallery in 1925, and she also showed in group exhibitions in the Frankfurter Künstlerbund, and the “Women represented by women” exhibition in 1930. During this time she also taught evening classes at the Frankfurt Volksbildungsheim as well as other art schools. However, the increasing control of the national socialist government made it harder and harder for her to teach and exhibit. She left to for London in 1933 becoming what would later be described as an artist of a "lost generation", those who had established themselves in the Germany art scene, but later fled Germany after the rise of national socialism, and struggled to find their feet in their new adopted homelands. She exhibited in Germany and, after emigrating to England in 1933 (her family was Jewish), in her new home as well. When her studio was destroyed in World War II, she returned to art history. She studied at the

Courtauld Institute The Courtauld Institute of Art (), commonly referred to as The Courtauld, is a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art and conservation. It is among the most prestigious specialist c ...

in London after the war, focusing on the artists of the Tudor court, and wrote a second dissertation on patronage and painting in 16th-century England. This would become the subject of her first published book, ''Tudor Artists'' (1954), the first work in modern times to lay out the documentary sources for the arts of painting and

limning 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 ...

in the Tudor and Elizabethan periods. She died in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

in 1975.

Publications

*''Tudor Artists: A Study of Painters in the Royal Service and of Portraiture on Illuminated Documents from the Accession of Henry VIII to the Death of Elizabeth I'', Athlone, 1954 *''Nicholas Hilliard'',

Routledge & Kegan Paul Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law, ...

, 1961 *''Paintings and sculpture at Hatfield House'', Constable, 1971,

Notes

1897 births 1975 deaths Alumni of the Courtauld Institute of Art German art historians Jewish artists Artists from Frankfurt Women art historians University of Bonn alumni German emigrants to England Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom German women historians 20th-century German women artists British women historians {{Germany-painter-stub