Louise-Cathérine Breslau

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Self-portrait by Louise-Cathérine Breslau (1891, Musée d'Art moderne et contemporain de Strasbourg )

Marie Louise-Cathérine Breslau , actually Maria Luise Katharina Breslau (* December 6, 1856 in Munich ; † May 12, 1927 in Neuilly-sur-Seine ) was a German - Swiss lithographer and pastel artist between naturalism and impressionism .

Life

Maria Luise Katharina Breslau was the daughter of the doctor Bernhard Breslau and his wife Katharina Freiin von Brandenstein. In 1858, her parents moved to Zurich because her father was offered the post of chief physician for obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Zurich . After her father died in December 1866 of an infection he had at work, Luise Katharina was educated in a monastery near Lake Constance .

She received her first drawing lessons from the painter Eduard Pfyffer, who urged her to continue her studies in Paris . Accompanied by his mother, Breslau went to France in 1876 to study with Tony Robert-Fleury at the renowned Académie Julian in Paris. At the Académie, the young painter attracted the attention of her teachers with her great drawing talent, but also the jealousy of some classmates, including the Russian painter Marie Bashkirtseff . In her diaries, Bashkirtseff described the development phase of Breslau in detail up to 1881. In 1879, Breslau's first exhibition took place in the Salon de Paris , in which she subsequently participated regularly until 1891; In 1889 and 1900 she received the gold medal at the Paris World Exhibitions . During this time she opened her first studio in Paris and changed her name to Louise-Cathérine Breslau .

Until the end of the century, Paris remained the artistic reference point in Wroclaw, where she cultivated friendship and exchange with Edgar Degas , Henri Fantin-Latour , Jules Bastien-Lepage and Jean-Louis Forain . On study trips to Brittany , she made the acquaintance of the Swedish painters Ernst Josephson and Allan Österlind, and later she had a close relationship with the sculptor Émile-Antoine Bourdelle . From 1890 her sphere of activity shifted to Switzerland , where she often took part in the national art exhibition until 1929. In 1900 she moved to a studio in Neuilly-sur-Seine with her long-time colleague, the artisan Madeleine Zillhardt. Zillhardt was her muse , model , confidante and supporter. In 1901, Breslau was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor . In the same year her works were shown at the Kunsthaus Zürich , in 1904 at the gallery owner Georges Petit and in 1910 at Paul Durand-Ruel . With the outbreak of the First World War , she lost her close contacts in Paris and increasingly her artistic publicity. It was only in 1921 that the portrait of the philosopher Anatole France reawakened greater public interest.

Louise-Catherine Breslau died on May 12, 1927 after a long illness in Neuilly-sur-Seine. She was buried next to her mother in the cemetery in Baden , in the canton of Aargau . The grave in the former city cemetery still exists today (as of May 2017).

In Paris, in Saint-Germain-des-Prés , there is a public square called Place Louise-Catherine-Breslau-et-Madeleine-Zillhardt .

Works (selection)

  • Chez soi ou intimacy . Louise-Cathérine Breslau with her mother, oil on canvas (1885)

  • Portrait of Jean Carriès, oil on canvas (1885/86)

  • Les Gamines (1890/93)

  • La Toilette, oil on canvas (1898)

  • The milliners , pastel, (1899)

  • Portrait of a Seated Lady, oil on canvas, (1912)

Awards

  • In 1891 she was granted Zurich citizenship
  • 1899 member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts
  • 1901 Knight of the Legion of Honor , Louise-Cathérine Breslau was the third and first foreign woman to receive this award.

literature

  • Dominique Lobstein : Breslau, Marie-Louise-Catherine . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 14, Saur, Munich a. a. 1996, ISBN 3-598-22754-X , pp. 143 f.
  • Robert de Montesquiou: Un maître femme. Mademoiselle Breslau. In: Art et Décoration. 1904.
  • Emile Hovelaque: Mademoiselle Louise Breslau. In: Gazette des Beaux-Arts . 1905.
  • Hans Vollmer : Breslau, Louise-Catherine . In: Ulrich Thieme , Felix Becker (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists from Antiquity to the Present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. tape 4 : Bida – Brevoort . Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1910, p. 586 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  • Alexandre Arsène: Louise C. Breslau. Les Editions Rieder, Paris 1928 (French, archive.org ).
  • Madeleine Zillhardt: Louise-Catherine Breslau et ses amis. Editions des Portiques, Paris 1932.
  • Renate Berger: Female painters on the way into the 20th century. In: Art history as social history. DuMont, Cologne 1982.
  • Anne-Catherine Krüger: The painter Louise Catherine Breslau 1856–1927. Hamburg, 1988 (biography and work analysis to achieve the title of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Hamburg).
  • Sabine Voigt: Marie Bashkirtseff's diaries from 1877–1884. Dortmund 1997, ISBN 3-931782-90-5 (also Diss. Marburg 1996).
  • Delia Gaze: Dictionary of Women Artists. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, London / Chicago, 1997.
  • Margot Brink: I write, so I will. Experiences of nullity and self-creation in the diaries of Marie Bashkirtseff, Marie Leneru and Catherine Pozzi, Ulrike Helmer Verlag, Königstein 1998.
  • Gabriel P. Weisberg, Jane R. Becker: Overcoming All Obstacles. The Women of the Académie Julian. The Dahesh Museum, New York and Rutgers University Press 1999.

Web links

Commons : Louise-Cathérine Breslau  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Carola Muysers, et al .: From Anker to Zünd - Art in the Young Federal State 1848–1900 . Ed .: Christian Klemm. Scheidegger & Spiess / Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich 1998, ISBN 3-906574-00-8 , p. 393 .
  2. ^ Madeleine Zillhardt: Louise-Catherine Breslau et ses amis.
  3. ^ Robert Savary: Louise Katharina Breslau. In: Find a Grave . May 30, 2017, accessed April 28, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Les rues de Paris - place Louise-Catherine-Breslau-et-Madeleine-Zillhardt - 6ème arrondissement. Retrieved April 10, 2020 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Breslau, Louise-Cathérine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Breslau, Marie Louise-Cathérine; Breslau, Maria Luise Katharina (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Swiss lithographer and pastel artist
DATE OF BIRTH December 6, 1856
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH May 12, 1927
Place of death Neuilly-sur-Seine