Rudolf Epp

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Rudolf Epp, self-portrait
Man in a red doublet, dated [18] 59, painted in Hottingen in the Black Forest
The red stocking
The Uninvited Guest, around 1875
Mother bathing with child in the forest pond, around 1890

Rudolf Epp (born July 30, 1834 in Eberbach ; † August 8, 1910 in Munich ) was a German painter of realism who is attributed to the Munich School .

Life

Rudolf Epp was born in Eberbach am Neckar in 1834 as the son of a decorative painter. After he drew and worked as an artist from a young age, he was taught for the first time by the landscape painter Karl Ludwig Seeger . He then studied at the Grand Ducal Baden Art School in Karlsruhe as a student of Johann Wilhelm Schirmer and Ludwig Des Coudres and attended the Düsseldorf Art Academy .

Due to his obvious talent, he was given leave of absence from military service by the then regent and later Grand Duke Friedrich I of Baden . A grand ducal commission and additional financial resources enabled Epp to go on a study trip to the Black Forest . Around 1859 he made numerous landscape studies in the area around Freiburg im Breisgau and Landstuhl .

In 1862 he married Katharina, b. Steibl. After Schirmer's death, he moved to Munich in 1863 , which was considered the center of art. Here he was particularly fascinated by Carl Theodor von Piloty , who was to become director of the academy from 1874 to 1886. In Munich, Epp quickly gained a good reputation as a sought-after painter.

In 1868 the son Franz Ritter von Epp , later ennobled as an officer, was born; The birth of their daughter Helene followed in 1870, and their second daughter, Augusta Anna, was born in 1871. She remained unmarried until Epp's death and lived in her parents' apartment. Augusta Anna served her father as a model for various portraits and figurative representations.

Rudolf Epp worked as a painter well into his old age; he died in Munich in 1910. His estate was for several years in the Lenbachhaus , the luxurious villa of his painter friend Franz von Lenbach, who died in 1904, in Munich . Part of his estate was auctioned at Hugo Helbing in Munich in 1914 .

The Rudolf Epp Street in Eberbach is named after him.

plant

Especially after the middle of the 19th century, countless painters from all over Germany moved to Munich, which was then considered the center of German art. Among them were numerous painters from the then Grand Duchy of Baden who sought their luck in the art capital of Munich. Rudolf Epp is representative of many of these artists who soon fell into oblivion and are grouped under the umbrella term " Munich School " to this day. Epp has understood how to remain true to his artistic forms of expression and not to succumb to the artificial and exaggerated clichés of the bourgeois buyer class. His motifs are realistic and describe life in the late 19th century without judging. This makes them attractive to this day and valuable evidence of art and cultural history. He was a constantly searching and progressing minor master who, even after five decades of painting, did not freeze into artistic routine, as is often the case with successful painters, but instead remained stylistically varied. The number of his works is in the hundreds. He painted many motifs several times.

The main components of his artistic work are mainly smaller genre pieces . The fine moods and the skillful combination of finely colored landscape and unaffected natural figures give his paintings a special artistic statement. The humorous picture statements and the lovingly supplemented picture details were widely recognized by the public. Rudolf Epp's art was also valued overseas and a considerable number of his paintings were sold to the USA during his lifetime and were not only distributed as originals but also as reproductions. Motifs from Epp adorned the first magazines around 1890. Colored postcards ( lithographs ) with Epp motifs were sold in both Europe and North America. Some of his paintings were part of the special commission from Linz and became the property of the Federal Republic of Germany after the Second World War. Even today, motifs based on Epp enjoy great popularity as art prints and as templates for tapestries.

Works by Rudolf Epp are in numerous public collections, including a. Kunsthalle Mannheim , Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe , Kunsthalle Bremen , Wallraf-Richartz-Museum (Cologne) and Neue Pinakothek (Munich). Three works are also owned by the Widener University Art Collection & Gallery, Chester, Pennsylvania.

References and comments

  1. ↑ Cat. Helbing 1914 at digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de
  2. ^ DHM: Database for the Central Collecting Point Munich .
  3. ^ DHM: Database for the Central Collecting Point Munich .

literature

Web links

Commons : Rudolf Epp  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Epp, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH July 30, 1834
PLACE OF BIRTH Eberbach
DATE OF DEATH August 8, 1910
Place of death Munich