Background
Wilhelm Trubner was born on February 3, 1851, in Heidelberg, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany.
The next year saw him studying at the Kunstacademie in Munich, where he was to be greatly impressed by an international exhibition of paintings by Leibl and Gustave Courbet.
The next year saw him studying at the Kunstacademie in Munich, where he was to be greatly impressed by an international exhibition of paintings by Leibl and Gustave Courbet.
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Wilhelm Trubner was born on February 3, 1851, in Heidelberg, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany.
Wilhelm Trübner had early training as a goldsmith. In 1867 he met classicist painter Anselm Feuerbach who encouraged him to study painting, and he began studies in Karlsruhe under Fedor Dietz. The next year saw him studying at the Kunstacademie in Munich, where he was to be greatly impressed by an international exhibition of paintings by Leibl and Gustave Courbet.
The early 1870s were a period of discovery for Trübner. He traveled to Italy, Holland, and Belgium, and in Paris encountered the art of Manet, whose influence can be seen in the spontaneous yet restrained style of Trübner's portraits and landscapes. During this period he also made the acquaintance of Carl Schuch, Albert Lang, and Hans Thoma, German painters who, like Trübner, greatly admired the unsentimental realism of Wilhelm Leibl. This group of artists came to be known as the "Leibl circle."
During the following years Trübner lived in Munich, made numerous trips to other European capitals and spent a period in London, from 1884 to 1885. His painting came close to Impressionism and at the beginning of the 1890s he met Lovis Corinth and Max Liebermann. He was involved in establishing the Munich Secession in 1892, but soon left and founded the Freie Vereinigung the following year. In 1896 he was appointed director of the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt and shortly afterwards founded a private art school.
Wilhelm published writings on art theory in 1892 and 1898, which express above all the idea that "beauty must lie in the painting itself, not in the subject." By urging the viewer to discover beauty in a painting's formal values, its colors, proportions, and surface, Trübner advanced a philosophy of "art for art's sake." In 1901 he joined the recently formed Berlin Secession, at the time Germany's most important forum for the exhibition of avant-garde art. From 1903 until his death in 1917 he was a professor at the Academy of Arts in Karlsruhe, also serving as director from 1904 to 1910.
Trübner's paintings are in many public collections, especially in Germany, including the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, and the Neue Pinakothek in Munich.
On the Sofa
1872Rauchender Mohr (Kassensturz)
1873Public domain Girl with Folded Hands
1878Reiterporträt
1880Gorgonenhaupt
1891The Pub on Fraueninsel
1891Pomona
1898The Equestrienne - Ida Görz
1901Self-Portrait
1902Neuburg Gates, Heidelberg
1913Bildnis einer Ordensschwester in einem sommerlichen Garten
Wilhelm Trübner adhered to the artistic traditions of Realism and Art Nouveau.
Already being at the age of 49, Wilhelm Trübner married his student Alice Auerbach in 1900. She gave birth to their son Jörg in 1902.
