Ebba Tesdorpf (23 January 1851 – 22 February 1920) was an

illustrator An illustrator is an artist who specializes in enhancing writing or elucidating concepts by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text or idea. The illustration may be intended to clarify complicat ...

and

watercolorist Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to t ...

from

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; nds, label=Hamburg German, Low Saxon, Hamborg ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (german: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg; nds, label=Low Saxon, Friee un Hansestadt Hamborg),. is the List of cities in Germany by popul ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...

Life

Tesdorpf came from a

Hanseatic The Hanseatic League (; gml, Hanse, , ; german: label=Modern German, Deutsche Hanse) was a medieval commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and market towns in Central and Northern Europe. Growing from a few North German town ...

family. She was the daughter of businessman Hans Peter Friedrich Tesdorpf and Antoinette Karoline Mohrmann (formerly Abendroth). Her ancestors include her great-grandfather Peter Hinrich Tesdorpf (1751-1832) and his great-grandfather, Peter Hinrich Tesdorpf (1648-1723), both

mayor In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor as well as ...

s of

Lübeck Lübeck (; Low German also ), officially the Hanseatic City of Lübeck (german: Hansestadt Lübeck), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 217,000 inhabitants, Lübeck is the second-largest city on the German Baltic coast and in the stat ...

. She developed her talent for drawing in Hamburg. For a short time in 1898 she trained under Hermann Gross at the Academy in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in ...

. Her teachers were Mohrhagen Bernhard and

Johann Theobald Riefesell Johann, typically a male given name, is the German form of ''Iohannes'', which is the Latin form of the Greek name ''Iōánnēs'' (), itself derived from Hebrew name ''Yochanan'' () in turn from its extended form (), meaning " Yahweh is Gracio ...

who primarily taught drawing to women of the Hamburg high society. At the suggestion of Justus Brinckmann and

Alfred Lichtwark Alfred Lichtwark (14 November 1852 – 13 January 1914) was a German art historian, museum curator, and art educator in Hamburg. He is one of the founders of museum education and the art education movement. Background and career Alfred Lic ...

, Tesdorpf drew a documentation of the old Hamburg cityscape during the demolition phase in the 1880s and 1890s. Recording Hamburg became a passion for Ebba Tesdorpf. In her paintings she captured everything from the mundane scenes of Hamburg, its streets, the old parts of the town and the new, the city harbor and the canals that ran through it. With the death of her parents Tesdorpf became financially independent. Around 1894 Tesdorpf grew tired of life in Hamburg and moved to Düsseldorf, where she lived from then on. She donated her drawings as well as her purchased collection of valuable ''Hamburgensien'' (works of art pertaining to Hamburg) to the Hamburg Museum of Arts and Crafts. These pieces were later moved to the Museum of Hamburg History and provide a unique documentary of the appearance of the city of Hamburg in the second half of the 19th century. Tesdorpf considered it her "mission" to capture the "old Hamburg" in images - often structures destined for demolition in the years of urban renewal. Her life's work included over 600 drawings, along with a few watercolors which she painted at the turn of the century. In Düsseldorf she mainly painted

oil paintings Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest ...

. Tesdorpf died during a stay at a spa in

Ahrweiler Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler () is a spa town in the German Bundesland of Rhineland-Palatinate that serves as the capital of the Ahrweiler district. The A61 motorway connects the town with cities like Cologne and Mainz. Formed by the merging of the ...

References

External links

Works by Ebba Tesdorpf
at

Zeno.org Zeno.org () is a digital library with German texts and other content such as pictures, facsimile, etc., which has been started by the Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, a German publishing house and sister enterprise of Directmedia Publishing GmbH. ...

Literature by and about Ebba Tesdorpf
at the

German National Library The German National Library (DNB; german: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek) is the central archival library and national bibliographic centre for the Federal Republic of Germany. It is one of the largest libraries in the world. Its task is to colle ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tesdorpf, Ebba German illustrators German watercolourists 19th-century German artists Artists from Hamburg 20th-century German artists 1851 births 1920 deaths 19th-century German painters 20th-century German painters German women painters 19th-century German women artists 20th-century German women artists Women watercolorists

Life

References

Further reading

External links