Gustav Kruell

Background

Gustav Kruell was born on October 31, 1843 in Grafenberg, a small village near Düsseldorf, Germany. His boyhood was spent on his father's farm.

Education

At the age of fifteen Kruell was apprenticed to an engraver in Düsseldorf, with whom he remained for five years. He then went to Leipzig for study.

Career

In 1864 Kruell established himself in Stuttgart, becoming a member of the firm of Kühn & Company.

Financial reverses following a panic led Kruell in 1873 to emigrate to America. Here he entered the office of Harper & Brothers in New York, working at the same time, outside, for other publishers.

With Timothy Cole, Henry Wolf, Frederick Juengling, and Elbridge Kingsley, Kruell formed the Society of American Wood-Engravers. The ancient craft of wood-engraving, practiced for five hundred years, had been partially eclipsed by the rise of the newer art of engraving on copper, but the art once more came into its own in the hands of this "new school" of artists.

Kruell was frequently praised for his cleverness in drawing. He was particularly successful in portraiture, in which he evinced great vigor and distinction, reproducing the portraits from his own drawings. The most striking of his cuts were portraits that possessed strong individuality, such as those of Lincoln, two of which appeared in the Portfolio of National Portraits (1899) and one in Harper's New Monthly Magazine for April 1885. His engraving after the photograph used by Augustus Saint-Gaudens in modeling his statue for Lincoln Park, Chicago, is considered by many the finest portrait of the Great Emancipator.

Kruell made many portraits of the officers of the Civil War, both Union and Confederate, which became well known through the nationwide circulation of the weekly and monthly periodicals in which they were published. He also engraved portraits of Jefferson, Webster, Beecher, Bryant, Hawthorne, Darwin, Wendell Phillips, Lowell, and many others. That of Lowell, it is said, was accepted by the poet's family and intimate friends as the best of his later years. One of his most interesting portraits is that of Arthur P. Stanley, a thoughtful, earnest, and striking portrayal. His work was not confined to portraiture, however. His "Flight of Night, " after William Morris Hunt, and "Phorcydes, " after Elihu Vedder, appeared in the American Art Review (January, June 1880). He engraved blocks for Owen Meredith's "Lucile" and for Alfred Tennyson's "Dream of Fair Women. " "The Princes in the Tower" (St. Nicholas, February 1880) was done delicately yet with strength and depth of color. He raised his wood-engraving to the dignity of a fine art. Over five hundred blocks engraved by Kruell have been listed.

Achievements

• Kruell received awards at expositions in Paris, Chicago, Buffalo, and St. Louis and honors in Vienna, Berlin, and Paris. His prints are in the British Museum, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Museum at Washington, and in many private collections.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Parables for School and Home. With Twenty-One Woodcuts by Gustav Kruell. 1897

    (Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part...)

Connections

In 1867 he married Clara Cecilia Kühn, daughter of his partner.

Spouse:

Clara Cecilia Kühn