Background
Carl Gutherz was born in Schoftland, in the canton of Aargau, Switzerland on January 28, 1844, the son of a school teacher, Heinrich Gutherz, and his wife, Henrietta Liischer.
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Carl Gutherz
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In 1851 his father emigrated with his family to America and established terra-cotta works near Cincinnati.
With raw material at hand, and under his father’s guidance, Carl soon learned to model, but the plant was financially unsuccessful, so it was abandoned, and the family moved on to Memphis, Tennessee. Heinrich Gutherz died there, still in early middle life, and young Carl went to work as a mechanical draftsman.
Within a few years he had become expert but dissatisfied, so with the money he had saved and with the help of his family, he sailed for Paris for instruction in art.
There he studied in the Academie des Beaux-Arts, and later with Pils, Lefebvre, and Boulanger, from whom he learned the best romantic technique of the day.
During the Franco-Prussian War he left Paris, studied for a time in Brussels and Antwerp, and then proceeded to Rome, where he painted his first noteworthy picture, “Awakening Spring", which later received an award in the Philadelphia Centennial.
Career
In 1872 Carl Gutherz returned to Memphis, but removed to St. Louis after two years to teach in Washington University, and to assist Halsey C. Ives in the development of an art department which in 1879 became the St. Louis School of Fine Arts.
In 1884 he returned to Paris for a residence of twelve years, the most productive period of his life. He exhibited annually in the Salon and was awarded the perpetual privilege of hanging his pictures in the exhibitions.
His best paintings were shown during this period, including “Lux Incamationis” (1888), Arcessita ab An-Selis (1889), “Temptation of St. Anthony” , “Ad Astra” (1891), and “The Evening of the Sixth Day” (1893).
He moved in the most respectable art circles and numbered among his intimates Bréton, Boulanger, Lefebvre, and Pevis de Chavannes. By the latter’s work he was particularly affected, and began for the first time to interest himself seriously in murals, which, although less pristine, were distinctly reminiscent of those of Chavannes.
So successful was he in this new field that in 1895 he was offered the commission to design the ceiling of the House Reading Room in the Library of Congress. He removed to Washington, D. C. , the next year to see it accomplished.
The legend of the fresco was “The Spectrum of Light, " executed in seven panels, each representing in one of the rainbow colors “some phase of achievement, human or divine”, with a central figure illustrating the allegory. Two other important commissions in mural art followed, “Law and Justice” in the Fort Wayne Court House, and in the People’s Church a pictorial delineation of the development of Unitarian theology.
His portraits were less successful than his imaginative painting as his true style a poetic mid mystical romanticism, in which his preoccupation with allegorical subjects, with diffuse form and roseate luminosity, could have full Play. As a portrait painter Gutherz was also moderately accomplished.
He died in Washington, D. C.
Achievements
Connections
Carl Gutherz married, in 1879, to Katherine Scruggs, the daughter of Finch Philip Scruggs, a Methodist minister of Alabama.
References
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Born
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Died
February 7, 1907 (aged 63) -
Nationality
American