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Molly Cramer (25 June 1852 – 18 January 1936) was a German flower, landscape and portrait painter. Trained in the old Dutch tradition, she turned to
Definition of ''Makart-Stil'' on the website of the ''Ketterer Kunst''
Molly Cramer (25 June 1852 – 18 January 1936) was a German flower, landscape and portrait painter. Trained in the old Dutch tradition, she turned to Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...
in her later years.
Life
Cramer came from a wealthy merchant family inHamburg
Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...
. Along with her sister, the painter Helene Cramer, she could begin training as a painter only after her father's death in 1882. Her first teacher was the Hamburg artist Theobald Riefesell, followed by the painters Carl Rodeck and Hinrich Wrage. In 1890, she went to Antwerp
Antwerp (; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of Antwerp Province, and the third-largest city in Belgium by area at , after ...
to train under Eugène Joors
Eugène Joors (20 February 1850, Borgerhout - 23 October 1910, Berchem), was a Belgian painter in the realistic style.
Life and work
He studied from 1865 to 1870 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp, where his teacher were Polydore ...
, who taught in the tradition of the Dutch school. She primarily painted floral still life
A still life (: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, human-m ...
s with him.
Back in Hamburg, she attracted the attention of the art gallery
An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The long ...
director 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 ...
as a painter of flowers and fruit. In line with Lichtwark's intentions, she worked primarily with the local flora rather than reproduce the overly popular, formulaic ''Makartbouquets'' (bouquets of artificial or dried flowers used for decoration, popular in Hans Makart
Hans Makart (28 May 1840 – 3 October 1884) was an Austrian academic history painter, designer and decorator. Makart was a prolific painter whose ideas significantly influenced the development of visual art in Austria-Hungary, Germany, and other ...
's style of interior design).Munich
Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...
Cramer exhibited her work at the Palace of Fine Arts
The Palace of Fine Arts is a monumental structure located in the Marina District of San Francisco, California, originally built for the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition to exhibit works of art. Completely rebuilt from 1964 to 197 ...
and The Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, was a world's fair held in Chicago from May 5 to October 31, 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The ...
in Chicago, Illinois.
From 1898, Cramer turned her attention to new subjects and worked on landscapes
A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...
and portraits
A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face is always predominant. In arts, a portrait may be represented as half body and even full body. If the subject in full body better re ...
. Her style now became impressionistic
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...
. Nevertheless, floral still lifes still remained the focus of her work.
Via Lichtwark Cramer and her sister became acquainted with younger painters in Hamburg such as Ernst Eitner, Arthur Illies, and Paul Kayser, who founded the Hamburg Artists' Club in 1897. Both Cramer sisters exhibited their paintings together with them, but were not part of the Artists' Club.
In return, the Cramers' house became a meeting place for artists and art lovers. In addition, Molly Cramer promoted young artists by buying their works and also funded study tours for Ernst Eitner.
Cramer exhibited her paintings in Moscow
Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...
, Budapest
Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...
, London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
, and Chicago
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
.
Towards the end of her life, she suffered a decline in her standard of living and was forced to sell paintings from her collection. She eventually lived with a younger relative and died on 18 January 1936 in Hamburg. The tombstones of Helene and Molly Cramer are at the Hamburg Ohlsdorf Cemetery
Ohlsdorf Cemetery ( or (former) ) in the Ohlsdorf, Hamburg, Ohlsdorf quarter of the city of Hamburg, Germany, is the biggest rural cemetery in the world and the fourth-largest cemetery in the world. Most of the people buried at the cemetery are c ...
in the Garden of Women.
Selected works
* ''Goldlack und Primeln'' ("Wallflowers
''Erysimum'', or wallflower, is a genus of flowering plants in the cabbage family, Brassicaceae. It includes more than 150 species, both popular garden plants and many wild forms. ''Erysimum'' is characterised by star-shaped and/or two-sided) tr ...
and primroses"), 1899, Oil on canvas (Kaiser Wilhelm Museum Krefeld
Krefeld ( , ; ), also spelled Crefeld until 1925 (though the spelling was still being used in British papers throughout the Second World War), is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, in western Germany. It is located northwest of Düsseldorf, its c ...
)
See also
*List of German painters
This is a list of German painters.
A
> second column was into info box -->
* Hans von Aachen (1552–1615)
* Aatifi (born 1965)
* Karl Abt (painter), Karl Abt (1899–1985)
* Tomma Abts (born 1967)
* Andreas Achenbach (1815–1910)
* Oswald ...
Footnotes
References
* Susanne Geese: ''Molly Cramer''. In '' Hamburgische Biografie'' (Hamburg Biography), Volume 2, Hamburg 2003. . S. 94–95. * Petra Wiechens: ''Hamburger Künstlerinnen der Avantgarde'' (Avant-garde Hamburg artists). Hamburg 2006. . S. 8–9.External links
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cramer, Molly 19th-century German painters 20th-century German painters German Impressionist painters German still life painters Artists from Hamburg 1852 births 1936 deaths People from Hamburg-Nord 20th-century German women painters 19th-century German women painters