Heinrich Haberl

Balaclava - The target in sight -

c. 1900

Bernhard Pankok (1872 Münster - 1943 Baierbrunn), General Wilhelm von Blume, 1915, aquatint etching, 34 x 29.5 cm (sheet size), 26 x 22 cm (plate size), signed in the plate at upper left, in pencil at lower right and dated in pencil at lower left. - At lower left old collection stamp, at the right broad margin with a small spot, otherwise very good condition. About the artwork The 1915 aquatint etching of General Wilhelm von Blume is based on a 1912 oil painting in the LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur in Münster. A second oil portrait of the general by Pankok is in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. When Pankok painted the first oil portrait in 1912, the general had already been retired for 16 years. It is therefore a retrospective portrait. Accordingly, the orientation of his head is such that he is looking back in both the oil painting and the etching. Without fixing on anything in particular, he looks thoughtfully inwards and reflects on his life. Uniformed and highly endowed, it is his military activities in particular that he is reviewing attentively and, as his gaze reveals, quite critically. Pankok has literally written the sum of his experiences on Wilhelm von Blume's face: The physiognomy is a veritable landscape of folds, furrows, ridges and gullies, all the more striking against the flat background. It is clear that each of the medals was also won through suffering. However, by breaking the boundaries of the picture, his bust appears as an unshakable massif, which gives the general a stoic quality. The fact that the design of the portrait was important to Pankok can be seen from the different versions, the present sheet being the third and probably final revision, which Pankok dates precisely to 18 February 1915. Compared with the previous state, the light background now has a dark area against which the sitter's face stands out, the dark background in turn combining with the uniform to create a new tension in the picture. Pankok's taking up of the portrait of the high-ranking military veteran and its graphic reproduction can also be seen in relation to the First World War, which had broken out in the meantime. In the face of modern weapons of mass destruction, Wilhelm von Blume's warfare and military writings were relics of a bygone, more value-oriented era. About the artist After studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1889 to 1891 under Heinrich Lauenstein, Adolf Schill, Hugo Crola, and Peter Janssen the Elder, Bernhard Pankok went to Munich in 1892, where he worked primarily as a graphic artist for the two major Jugendstil magazines "Pan" and "Jugend," which established his artistic success. Through this work he met Emil Orlik, with whom he had a lifelong friendship. In 1897, he exhibited his first furniture, and in 1898, together with Richard Riemerschmid, Bruno Paul and Hermann Obrist...

Hermann Prell (1854 Leipzig - 1922 Dresden-Loschwitz). Half-length portrait of a Pharisee, 1885. Sketch for the right-hand figure in the painting Judas Iscariot, 1886. Pencil drawing heightened with opaque white and black chalk on beige-grey wove paper (papier vélin), 34 x 27.8 cm (visible size), 52 x 45 cm (mount), signed, dated and inscribed "H. PRELL 1885 zu 'Judas'". Minor browning, collection stamp on the reverse. - In the shadow of betrayal - About the artwork This painting is the sketch for the head of the Pharisee offering the coins to Judas in one of Herrmann Prell's major works, the painting Betrayal of Judas, completed in 1886. The painting belongs to the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and is illustrated in Adolf Rosenberg: Prell, Bielefeld and Leipzig 1901, p. 21 (Fig. 19). It is especially highlighted in Thieme-Becker (vol. 27, p. 376). Hermann Prell, Betrayal of Judas, 1886 The monumental head, which fills the picture and is distinguished by its ornamented robe, is almost a lost profile, which in the executed painting is justified by the Pharisee's turning towards Judas. Despite the fact that the sitter withdraws from the viewer by turning away, it was necessary to artistically elaborate the motivation for the purchase of one of Christ's disciples, which is why the drawing focuses on the expression of the face, while the 'accessories' are treated in a more summary manner. In characterising the face, Hermann Prell performs a balancing act: since the Pharisee, despite his destructive actions, is an actor in the history of salvation, the head must show a dignity appropriate to the event, but at the same time the physiognomy must also bear witness to the scheming attitude that led to the betrayal. To solve this dilemma, Prell draws on the traditional depictions of the heads of the apostles, shading the face to indicate the obdurate darkness of the spirit and moving the base of the nose slightly upwards while the mouth falls away, thus giving a physiognomic expression to the motivation of the action. The fatal drama of the betrayal is expressed in the monumentalisation of the head and in the thunderous white highlights that contrast with the darkness of the chalk. As a study, considered by the artist to be a work in itself, this drawing reveals the pictorial problems and brainstorming of monumental painting. About the artist In 1872 Prell, who was one of the most important exponents of monumental painting of his time, began studying painting with Theodor Grosse at the Dresden Academy of Art and continued with Carl Gussow at the Berlin Academy in 1876. Hans von Marées taught him in Rome in 1878. More influential on his work, however, were Arnold Böcklin and Max Klinger, with whom Prell had been friends since his student days and with whom he worked together on several occasions. Prell's first major work, which established his reputation as a monumental painter, were the frescoes in the banqueting hall of the Architektenhaus in Berlin in 1881/82, commissioned by the state and depicting the different periods of architecture. Prell then went to Italy for two years to study fresco painting. Other major commissions followed. These included monumental frescoes in the town halls of Worms (1884), Hildesheim (1882-92), Gdansk (1895) and Dresden, the staircase of the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in Breslau (1893/94), the throne room of the German Embassy in Rome (1896-99) and the staircase of the Albertinum in Dresden (1900-1904). From 1886 Prell taught at the academy of arts in Berlin and in 1892 he was appointed professor at the academy of arts in Dresden. His students included Osmar Schindler and Hans Unger...

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