Gotthardt Kuehl

pseudonym: -

birth data

date of birth: 1850

place of birth: Lübeck

death data

date of death: 1915

death: Dresden

biography

The painter Gotthard Kuehl is regarded as one of the most important early impressionists in Germany. From 1867 Kuehl studied for three years at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden and then at the academy in Munich under Wilhelm von Diez. Gotthard Kuehl participated in the world exhibition at Vienna in 1873, where he first came into contact with French Impressionism. In 1878, Kuehl moved to the metropolis of Paris. The works of the naturalist Jules Bastien-Lepage and the painter Édouard Manet had a great influence on his artistic work. Study trips to Holland brought Gotthard Kuehl close to the art of the Old Masters as he made copies of the works of Jan Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch. He also maintained contact with other painter-colleagues such as Max Liebermann and Jozef Israëls. Interiors with social references were painted, for example, In the Orphanage of Gdansk and Old Mens House in Lübeck. In the years between 1889 and 1893, Kuehl was in Munich, and like Fritz von Uhde devoted himself to the Triptych as an image format. Since 1893 the painter lived in Dresden, became a Professor at the Academy and established a new realism at the Academy, which had previously been dominated by representatives of the late-romanticism. Kuehls paintings of interiors, which were still painted in the genre painting style, became increasingly free in an impressionistic sense in terms of light and style. This style was especially expressed in his late works of depictions of baroque churches. In 1915 he died in Dresden. His works can be found in the Kiel Art Museum, the Kunsthalle in Bremen and the Museum der Bildenden Künste in Leipzig.