Adolph Menzel was a German artist, who represented Realism movement. He worked with a variety of media, including drawings, etchings and paintings. During his lifetime, Menzel was mostly famous for his illustrations of the life of the 18th-century Prussian monarch, Frederick the Great, and his court.
Background
Adolph Menzel was born on December 8, 1815 in Breslau, Silesia, then a part of Prussia (present-day Wrocław, Poland). He was a son of Carl Erdmann Menzel, a lithographer, and Charlotte Emilie (Okrusch) Menzel. Also, Adolph had two sisters and one brother — Elise Menzel (Preuss), Emilie Krigar (Menzel) and Richard Menzel.
Education
In 1833, Adolph attended Prussian Academy of Arts (present-day Academy of Arts in Berlin), where he drew from plaster casts and ancient sculptures. Thereafter, Menzel was self-taught.
Menzel began his career, working in his father’s lithography shop in Breslau (now Wrocław in Poland) and later in Berlin, where his family settled down in 1830. Also, at the beginning of his career, Adolph worked as an illustrator and his activity in this field is best exemplified by a series of four hundred designs for wood engravings, produced to accompany Franz Kugler’s "History of Frederick the Great". It was followed by illustrations for similar publications, such as a lavish edition of "Works of Frederick the Great" (1843–1849), containing 200 plates.
In 1849, Menzel began a cycle of paintings, dealing with the life and achievements of Frederick the Great. In 1850, he completed one of his best-known paintings of the greatest monarch of the Enlightenment, entitled "Frederick the Great with Friends at Table". Some time later, in 1855, the painter visited Paris, where he attended Exposition Universelle and saw Courbet's "Pavillon du Réalisme". In 1861, he was commissioned to create the painting, entitled "The Coronation of King William I at Königsberg". It took him four years to finish the work. Between 1872 and 1875, Adolph painted his masterpiece, namely the large canvas "The Iron Rolling Mill". This work was purchased by the Nationalgalerie in Berlin.
In the late 1880's, Adolph started to abandon painting in oils for gouaches. However, he never stopped drawing in pencil and chalk and was always able to find expression for his keen powers of observation. The last three decades of his career saw Menzel firmly established as one of the leading artists in Germany, a prominent figure in Prussian society and the recipient of numerous honours, including the elevation to the nobility in 1898.
A retrospective exhibition of his work took place in the Nationalgalerie in Berlin a few weeks after the artist’s death in 1905.
Flute Concert with Frederick the Great in Sanssouci
The Studio Wall
The Iron Rolling Mill (Modern Cyclopes)
Emilie Menzel Asleep
Staatsminister Freiherr von Schleinitz
Beati Possidentes (Blessed are those who have)
Théâtre du Gymnase in Paris
sketch
Junge mit Wasserglas
Views
Quotations:
"It is so true, that the more a person is suited for art, the more he is disheartened by the craft aspect of his work. But all art is craft, something that has to be learned with difficulty, and that is where the greatness of art lies."
Membership
Adolph Menzel was a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the Royal Academy in London.
Académie des Beaux-Arts
,
France
Royal Academy of Arts
,
United Kingdom
Imperial Academy of Arts
Personality
Despite the fact, that Menzel had numerous friendships, he preferred to detach himself from the others. It is likely, that he felt socially estranged for physical reasons — Menzel had a large head and stood about four foot six inches.
Quotes from others about the person
"In a word, the man is everywhere independent, sincere, with sure vision, a decisive note that can sometimes be a little brutal. While being perfectly healthy he has the neurosis of truthfulness. The man who has measured with a compass the buttons on a uniform from the time of Frederick, when it is a matter of depicting a modern shoe, waistcoat, or coiffure, does not make them by approximations but totally, in their absolute form and without smallness of means. He puts there everything that is called for by the character (of the object). Free, large, and rapid in his drawing, no draftsman is as definitive as he." — Louis Edmond Duranty, a French novelist and art critic
Connections
Father:
Carl Erdmann Menzel
Mother:
Charlotte Emilie (Okrusch) Menzel
Sister:
Elise Menzel (Preuss)
Sister:
Emilie Krigar (Menzel)
Brother:
Richard Menzel
References
Drawings and Paintings: 130 Plates
This volume contains 98 black-and-white images and 32 color plates of Menzel's works, many of which have rarely been seen outside of Germany.
2016
Adolph Menzel: The Quest for Reality
The author of this book, Werner Busch, examines the artist’s multifaceted oeuvre and brings the long nineteenth century into aesthetic focus.
2017
Adolph von Menzel: 96 Masterpieces
This Art Book with Foreword by Maria Tsaneva contains 96 selected reproductions of paintings and drawings from Adolph von Menzel.