SKARBINA, Franz - b. 1849 Berlin, d. 1910 Berlin

German painter and illustrator. His portrayals of the fashionable Berlin were particularly popular.

Skarbina was the son of a goldsmith from Zagreb. From 1865 to 1869 he studied at the Academy of Art in Berlin. He travelled in Europe and moved to Paris in 1882. There he exhibited at the Salon in 1883. In 1892 in Berlin, together with Liebermann and Leistikow, he founded the Gruppe XI that resisted academic tradition.

In 1898 with Max Liebermann, he was one of the founding members of the Berlin Secession. He exhibited at the World Exhibitions of 1899, 1900 and 1901. In 1904 he became a member of the Senate of the Royal Academy of Arts. In 1905 he won the gold medal at the Großen Berliner Kunstausstellung. He died in 1910 at his home in Berlin.

The Girl on the Boardwalk

Berlin’s native son Franz Skarbina was both elegist and pop lyricist to the capital’s fin-de-si�cle prosperity. Like so many Prussian painters, he took much of his training in Paris. The successful artist soon received patronage as well as membership in two advanced groups, the Eleven and the Berlin Sezession. Skarbina’s two themes - the pleasures of the rich, and the changing face of Berlin - were usually in complete contrast to one another.

The first category is exemplified by the Girl on the Boardwalk, painted in 1883 at a chic Belgian seaside resort. Background details bear an uncanny resemblance to Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte which was painted two years later.