Career
Rave was a popular painter of naval art living in Hamburg. Between 1900 and 1909 he created about 300 paintings about 8,000 years of navigation. 1911 they were exhibited in Hamburg and sold in particular.
The paintings were reproduces as postcards by at two publishers, one from Hamburg, the other one from the Netherlands.
In 1910 he experiences the accident of German tall ship Preußen as a passenger, running aground close to Dover. His task was the documentation by photographs and paintings.
The voyage under the command of Herbert Schröder-Stranz and Alfred Ritscher as Captain of the ship Herzog Ernst failed, and just 7 out of 15 crew survived. In 1913 Rave published his experiences Tagebuch von der verunglückten Expedition Schröder-Stranz: mit Federzeichnungen vom Verfasser (Diary of the failed expedition of Schröder-Stranz).
Having cancer of the throat and hardly able to talk Rave shot himself on January 13, 1933.
His tomb, designed by his student Valentin Kraus from Munich, is situated on Hamburg Ohlsdorf graveyard. Die brandenburgische Flotte vor Emden, Format 4,80 m x 3,50 m, property of Kunsthalle Hamburg
SMS Seeadler, oil, before 1924, possibly several copies
Dampfwalfangschiff im nördlichen Eismeer, oil on canvas, 60 cm x 100 cm, 1910
Thomas Stearns "Civil Air Patrol ARCONA" auf See, oil on wood, 37 x 51 cm
Altes Land im rötlichen Winterlicht, oil on canvas, 60 x 100 cm.