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Alfred Schmidt (1876 – 1956) – Portrait of the concert singer Caroline Naase
CODE: QR08
oil on canvas circa 1920
cm 60 x 47 – without frame
cm 78 x 65 – frame included
Signed in the center to the right: Alf Schmidt.
Alfred Schmidt
1876 Dresden – 1956 Graefelfing
An Impressionist on the Chiemsee
Female creatures walking in shimmering air [...]"(1), who find their pleasure in the warm, golden tones of summer and the sparkling silver-gray surface of the lake, correspond to Schmidt's characteristic motif. One is inevitably reminded of the Impressionist Christian Landenberger (1862-1927), of whom Schmidt was a friend and who painted canvas after canvas on Lake Ammersee, but "softer, sweeter and more narrative, because [Schmidt] often expands on the fact that nature and the human body come together to create a small genre idyll."
His art is a commitment to plein air painting. He openly shows his Impressionist momentum. He gradually set aside the originally anecdotal aspects of his painting, which he experienced at the Karlsruhe Academy from 1886 to 1893, both through the one-year study stay in Paris and Brittany in 1889 and through the influence of Landenberger and Swabian landscape painting. From this point on, artistic development is barely perceptible. He had found his personal style and adhered to it.
At the end of 1899, Schmidt arrived in the Swabian capital from Karlsruhe in the entourage of Leopold Graf von Kalckreuth (1855-1922), who was appointed to the Stuttgart Academy with Carlos Grethe (1864-1913) and Robert Poetzelberger (1856-1930). With these he founded the Stuttgart Artists' Association there, of which he was a member for 40 years, and also his painting school for women until he was appointed full professor at the State Academy of Art in 1918. In the summer months, Schmidt was drawn to the countryside. First he painted in Diessen am Ammersee. From 1920 he discovered Lake Chiemsee and settled on a farm in Gollenshausen. In the later stages of his life, the Bavarian Sea advanced to become the focus of his artistic work. He was one of the first to own an outboard motor, which he used to roar across the lake. He was also known as "Violet Schmidt" because he expressed his sense of the discoloration of the landscape so appropriately in a violet-bluish hue. In this way, the summer air, the reflections of the water, the cloudy sky and the figurative motif merged into a harmonious Impressionist dance of colors to create a concentrated atmosphere that the Chiemsee is able to stage in so many ways.
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