Carl Appel (painter)

Carl Heinrich Wilhelm Appel (born January 10, 1866 in Altona ; † January 15, 1937 there ) was a German painter .

Life

Tigress with her cubs , painting by Carl Appel

Carl Appel was a son of the innkeeper and ship's cook Heinrich Friedrich Appel (1836–1912) from Todendorf . The mother Catharina Maria Dorothea (1844–1904) came from the papermaker Johann Joachim Roeper from Grönwohld .

As a teenager, he is said to have worked in the Carl Hagenbeck pet shop on the New Horse Market in Hamburg. It is believed that he learned the taxidermy there. In 1887 he moved to Düsseldorf as a "taxidermist" and studied from 1888 to 1900 at the local art academy . His teachers included Peter Janssen , Eugen Dücker and Julius Hugo Bergmann . From 1891 to April 14, 1913, he lived alternately in Düsseldorf and Altona, where he finally settled at Heuberg 12.

Appel was considered solitary, shy of people and sometimes snappy. Perhaps for this reason he had little economic success. One reason for this could be his misshapen chest. Appel was a member of the Altona artists' association .

Works

Appel especially painted native and foreign animals and birds living in the wild. He found the motifs in the great outdoors and in Hagenbeck's zoo . He painted in the style of realism , sometimes also impressionistic. He participated in art exhibitions in Düsseldorf in 1902 and 1904. From 1904 he was represented in almost all exhibitions in Altona and in 1906 in the Glaspalast in Munich . Since he was able to depict animals and their characters very precisely, his paintings enjoyed high esteem among zoologists, although his later works were considered significantly weaker.

The marine painter Carl Becker established contact between Appel and Otto Lehmann , who ran the Altona Museum . Lehmann hired Appel around 1913 as a freelancer to create "biological groups" for the museum. It was a combination of animals that stood freely in the room, surrounded by components of the respective ecotope, which consisted of natural objects and background paintings. Appel also took on the task of designing the ceilings of the museum's bird department with pictures of birds in flight. This work, which Appel constantly accompanied until his death, was considered groundbreaking at the time and made him and the museum known nationwide. He also received such a low income.

Selection of works

• Tiger couple with cubs , 1904: Hamburg, Altona district office
• Entrance to the Emma shaft , around 1905: Dortmund, Westphalian Industrial Museum
• Elk , before 1919; Cows in the pasture , around 1927; Little red fox ; Roebuck and deer in the forest , four tigers : Hamburg, Altonaer Museum

literature

• Hermann Board : Appel, Karl . In: Ulrich Thieme , Felix Becker (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists from Antiquity to the Present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. tape 2 : Antonio da Monza-Bassan . Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1908, p. 37 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
• Gerhard Kaufmann: Appel, Carl. In: Schleswig-Holstein Biographical Lexicon. Volume 1, Karl Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1970, pp. 46-47.
• Michael Dückershoff, in: Hans Paffrath (Ed.): Lexicon of the Düsseldorfer Malerschule 1819–1918. Volume 1: Abbema – Gurlitt. Published by the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf in the Ehrenhof and by the Paffrath Gallery. Bruckmann, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-7654-3009-9 , p. 67 f. (Fig.).