Louise Henry (painter)

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Self portrait

Louise Henry , b. Claude (born April 5, 1798 in Berlin ; † July 15, 1839 there ) was a German painter .

Life and art studies

Louise Henry was the fourth child of Louis and Judith Claude and came from a Huguenot family. Louise's great-grandparents on her father's side came from Mannheim (Sedan) between 1886 and 1889. The maternal great-grandparents came from the Metz area. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685 , Elector Friedrich Wilhelm laid the foundation for the loss of population caused by the Thirty Years' War to be offset by persecuted French fellow believers. (see Huguenots in Berlin )

Louise and her sister Henriette received art lessons from Herr Wohlers, the geography professor at the school. When she had proven within a year that she could earn money with handicrafts, her father gave permission to learn to paint. During the time of the French occupation (1806–1808) she contributed to the family income by selling portraits. In 1812, Louise first received drawing lessons based on sheets and plaster figures from Félicité Henriette Robert , and later from court painter Weitsch. From 1815 she taught Professor Kretschmar in oil painting. Since 1817 she was a student of Wilhelm Schadow and took lessons in portrait painting. She was also a student of Johann Friedrich Bolt , whose works, including many portraits, were intended for printing.

After Madame Robert's death, Louise Claude received her academic budget as a pension. Art education was difficult for women: anatomical drawing and living models were not allowed to study, and only men were allowed to enter the nude room. Access to public academies was denied to carry out this. They were denied access to the nude room with exclusively male models for moral reasons.

Art career

She married Paul Henry (1792-1853) at the French Church in Berlin on October 16, 1826 . His French family had immigrated to Berlin before 1893 and he came from a traditional family of artists. Paul Henry was the grandson of the engraver Daniel Chodowiecki (1726-1801), whose mother came from a family of French refugies . That year Schadow moved to Düsseldorf. When she married, Louise moved to Niederlagstrasse 1. This was where the leadership of the French Reformed congregation in Berlin was located. Under the influence of Henry Claude, she no longer had to use her art for acquisition and no longer had to be paid less than her male competitors.

Louise Henry has been involved with her art in the Berlin Academy exhibitions since 1812, where she presented around 80 works in various techniques in a total of 14 exhibitions. On March 1, 1833, the Prussian Academy of the Arts awarded her "extraordinary membership". Honoring a woman was intended to "encourage distant advances in art". To become full members, women had to send samples of their progress to the academy. Louise was elected an associate member of the Royal Academy of Arts. She exhibited her works in the Royal Prussian Academy of Fine Arts and Mechanical Sciences in Berlin . She mainly created female pastel portraits. Louise Henry was the last woman before the Academy's terms and conditions changed after the 1918 revolution . The next artist accepted into the academy was Käthe Kollwitz in 1919.

Louise Henry's work includes 40 portraits, 26 copies of models, eight group and family pictures, three genre scenes and four compositions based on historical models. The sketchbooks she left behind contain 340 sheets of drawing with 300 portrayed people, most of them portrait drawings of people known by name. She preferred to draw among friends and acquaintances, including Wilhelm von Humboldt , Friedrich Carl von Savigny and Wilhelm Schadow. But she also drew simple people: fruit women from Werder, cooks and workers at work. She dedicated other works to scenes from the Old Testament and other religious and literary subjects. Her family pictures are linked to the Berlin Biedermeier era: it contains detailed clothes, headgear and lifeless things from the Biedermeier era. The portraits were combined with contemporary details taken from popular literature. For example from the writings of the historian Charles Ancillon and his work on the history of the French refugies in Brandenburg-Prussia.

Meaning and honor

With short breaks in travel, Louise Henry lived in Berlin until her death. She died at the age of 41 as a result of laryngeal consumption and was buried in the Dorotheenstadt cemetery . Her grave site was leveled in the early 1940s "for lack of public interest".

Her works were represented in the "Exhibition of German Art 1775-1875". Louise Henry is one of the forgotten Berlin artists and in the "exhibition of the century" the "forgotten or overlooked talents" were shown. With a few exceptions, the works of art by Claude Henry are in private hands.

A street in the French-Buchholz district of Berlin was named after her. An extensive biography is included in the resolution to designate Appendix 1.

literature

Web links

Commons : Louise Henry  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Drucksache-VIII-0201: Name of the public street 18a in "Louise-Henry-Straße" . Appendix 1: Biography of Louise Henry.
  2. ↑ Promotions and honors. In: Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, Volume 4, No. 43, May 1833, pp. 351–352 ( books.google.de ).
  3. ↑ Printed matter - VIII-0201: Name of the public road 18a in the French Buchholz district in "Louise-Henry-Straße"
  4. ↑ “Surrounding streets were named after Huguenot families. The proposal by Louise Henry offers the possibility to refer to the Huguenot tradition and at the same time to appreciate an independent biography and its impact. "
personal data
SURNAME Henry, Louise
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Claude, Louise (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH April 5, 1798
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH July 15, 1839
Place of death Berlin