Ida Maier-Müller was a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

known primarily for her landscape paintings and

self-portrait Self-portraits are Portrait painting, portraits artists make of themselves. Although self-portraits have been made since the earliest times, the practice of self-portraiture only gaining momentum in the Early Renaissance in the mid-15th century ...

s. She was born in

Konstanz Konstanz ( , , , ), traditionally known as Constance in English, is a college town, university city with approximately 83,000 inhabitants located at the western end of Lake Constance in the Baden-Württemberg state of south Germany. The city ho ...

in 1821 and died in

Offenburg Offenburg (; "open borough" - coat of arms showing open gates; Low Alemmanic: ''Offäburg'') is a city in the state of Baden-Württemberg, in south-western Germany. With nearly 60,000 inhabitants (2019), it is the largest city and the administrat ...

in 1904. She settled in

Freiburg Freiburg im Breisgau or simply Freiburg is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fourth-largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart, Mannheim and Karlsruhe. Its built-up area has a population of abou ...

in 1843, where she captured the beauty of the local landscapes, especially those of the

Black Forest The Black Forest ( ) is a large forested mountain range in the States of Germany, state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine Valley to the west and south and close to the borders with France and Switzerland. It is th ...

and

Lake Constance Lake Constance (, ) refers to three bodies of water on the Rhine at the northern foot of the Alps: Upper Lake Constance (''Obersee''), Lower Lake Constance (''Untersee''), and a connecting stretch of the Rhine, called the Seerhein (). These ...

, in her paintings and prints. One of her best-known works is a self-portrait from 1845, showing her with curly hair, aged 25. This self-portrait is one of her most iconic works, and is housed in the Augustiner Museum in Freiburg. Ida Maier was also renowned for her paintings of flowers and other natural scenes, maintaining a strong connection with the 19th-century German landscape tradition. Despite her talent and contributions to regional art, Ida is a little-known artist today, remaining on the fringes of mainstream

art history Art history is the study of Work of art, artistic works made throughout human history. Among other topics, it studies art’s formal qualities, its impact on societies and cultures, and how artistic styles have changed throughout history. Tradit ...

, with few works widely disseminated. Maier-Müller is remembered, to a lesser extent, primarily for one of her fabulous

s. In the

history of art The history of art focuses on objects made by humans for any number of spiritual, narrative, philosophical, symbolic, conceptual, documentary, decorative, and even functional and other purposes, but with a primary emphasis on its aesthetics ...

self-portraiture Self-portraiture, or Autoportraiture is the Field theory (sociology), field of art theory and history that studies the history, means of production, circulation, reception, forms, and meanings of self-portraits. Emerging in Ancient history, Antiqu ...

is a practice charged with complex intentions that go beyond the simple visual record of the artist. Traditionally dominated by men, the genre of self-portrait provided painters such as

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (; ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), mononymously known as Rembrandt was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and Drawing, draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in ...

, Dürer, and

Van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2,100 artwork ...

with the opportunity to immortalize their images and explore questions of identity, status, and artistic style. However, the female self-portrait emerges in a uniquely challenging historical and cultural context. Women artists, throughout the centuries, have faced obstacles to formal education, public exhibition, and artistic recognition. Faced with these constraints, the act of painting themselves became for them a gesture of claiming identity, space, and artistic authority.Heller, Nancy. Women Artists: An Illustrated History. Abbeville Press, 2003

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Maier-Muller, Ida 1821 births 1904 deaths German women painters

See also

References