Edith Soterius von Sachsenheim
Edith Jeanette Soterius von Sachsenheim (born December 26, 1887 in Marienburg , Austria-Hungary , † January 4, 1970 in London , United Kingdom ) was a Transylvanian-Saxon painter.
Life
She was born in Marienburg (today Feldioara ) on December 26, 1887 , as the daughter of Arthur Soterius von Sachsenheim (from the Transylvanian-Saxon noble family Soterius von Sachsenheim ) and Wilhelmina, née Gust. She showed artistic talent in painting at an early age, and her parents support her desire to pursue a career in this field. After completing a two-year course (1903-04) at the Sibiu Art School , her father moved her to live with relatives in England, where she spent a year (1904-05) taking English lessons, followed by piano - and art lessons. The National Galleryallowed her to copy museum work, and it was there that she developed an interest in Turner's watercolors, a visible influence in her early works as well as in a later period from 1948. In July 1905, Edith was awarded an "excellent" grade on a piano exam at the London College of Music .
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In 1907 her father decided that she should continue her studies in Munich, where she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts and developed an interest in portraiture and anatomy. A year later she began to visit Moritz Heymann's artistic circles , where she met artists who showed a close affinity with the youth group . Edith's works from this time, e.g. B. “Sitting Half Nude” or the portrait of her friend Eleanor Garrett-Ward, reflect her ambition to overcome the outdated artistic conceptions of the Academy . In these paintings, as in all of her other works of this creative time, elegant, curved lines and the decorative, large-area colorations of Art Nouveau appear . She spent three years in Munich, apart from her occasional return home on public holidays. In 1911 Edith returned to Transylvania, where she organized her first exhibition in the Brașov galleries.
In 1912 she married Franz Herfurth; together they moved to Austria, where they spent the First World War. In 1918 she moved back to Brașov. She became the mother of three children - Editha, Günther and Eva - and, as with many women in art , family responsibilities limited her artistic pursuits for a while. The marriage did not last; They divorced in 1926 and the next year she married her childhood friend, Professor Ludwig Herbert. However, he also did not promote her artistic work and so Edith followed her motherly duties and worked as an English teacher on the side. Ludwig died of a heart attack in 1936 at the age of 51.
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After this painful incident, Edith moved to southern Germany to be close to her daughters who lived there. She also spent some time in Poland, but returned to southern Germany for the remainder of World War II. She painted as often as she could and mostly made watercolors of the places where she lived and visited. This led to a new phase in her artwork; she gave up modernism completely and limited herself to a strictly objective, realistic representation of her subject. Until 1946 she taught art at various schools and painted in her free time. In January 1946 her son Günther died and in August of the same year she moved to Graz, Austria with her oldest daughter. Another creative phase followed in 1948 when she made a series of watercolors in Graz and on a visit to Zurich. These works are influenced to some extent by her early encounter with Turner's art. In 1952 a landscape watercolor won the silver prize in the “ Foyles Bookshop International Artists Competition”.
In 1955 she moved to London, England to live with her daughter Eva. She drew portraits (including of her daughter's family) and mainly painted roses. In 1957 Edith submitted the drawing "A little girl from Krakow" to the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and exhibited it. The exhibition moved across the country.
Edith died in 1970 at the age of 83. During her lifetime she created over 200 paintings, drawings and lithographs that are now in several museums or in the possession of friends and relatives across Europe. In 1998 the Transylvania Museum in Gundelsheim held a retrospective exhibition and bought 50 of her paintings, some of which are on permanent display in the museum. In 1999 the Gundelsheim collection was also exhibited in Munich in the Haus des Deutschen Ostens . In 2001 the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum Wien bought three portraits of officers from the First World War in order to display them there.
Contemporary art and friends
- Arthur Coulin: A friend from Sibiu. In 1907 he painted an oil painting of Edith in Sibiu when she was 19 years old. The portrait is in the Transylvanian Museum .
- Ernst Honigberger: A friend from Sibiu who also studied in Munich. In 1908 he made a pencil drawing of Edith at the age of 20. This is now in the Gundelsheim Museum.
- Robert Wellman: A friend from Sibiu. He became a family friend and painted a portrait of Edith's father Arthur Soterius von Sachsenheim. This is located in the family house in London, England.
- Trude Schullerus: A friend from Sibiu who also studied in Munich. She was a friend of the family for life.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Braşov Art Museum, 2009 - 2010 Arthur Coulin exhibition, page 88 (PDF; 5.0 MB) Archived from the original on September 23, 2013. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved June 18, 2013.
- ↑ a b c d e f Marius Tataru: Edith Jeanette Soterius von Sachsenheim (website that contains a list of paintings that are in the possession of museums) . SoteriusvonSachsenheim.com. Retrieved June 18, 2013.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Soterius von Sachsenheim, Edith |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Soterius von Sachsenheim, Edith Jeanette |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Transylvanian-Saxon painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 26, 1887 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Marienburg , Austria-Hungary |
| DATE OF DEATH | 4th January 1970 |
| Place of death | London , UK |