WASMANN, Friedrich - b. 1805 Hamburg, d. 1886 Meran

German painter. He was trained in Dresden and Munich, and spent several years in Rome, where he met famous artists such as Friedrich Overbeck, Joseph Anton Koch, Bertel Thorvaldsen and others. Returning to Germany in 18139 he settled in Meran where he worked as a portrait painter.

He produced a considerable oeuvre (the Hamburger Kunsthalle owns more than 1,000 of his works) in which not only the portraits and genre scenes, but above all his plein air landscape studies in oil and pencil represent a milestone. His popular autobiography (Walt Wasmann: A German artist’s life, depicted by himself. Leipzig 1915) is one of the most interesting depictions of artistic life in the 19th century.

Paul, Maria, and Filomena von Putzer

This group portrait is strikingly reminiscent of far earlier American portraits in which the clothes, poses, and settings were all prepainted by itinerant artists, made ready for the purchaser’s selection, with only the heads needing “filling in.” Surprisingly, such a modest method could result in sophisticated images, close to those of the three little Putzers.