DOI issue:
No. 104 (October, 1905)
DOI article:Osborn, Max: Ludwig Dettmann
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26960#0375
Z,77%W^r ZW/7721%7777
silenced claims of native art. In particular a band
of Lowland German artists joined in this movement,
and Ludwig Dettmann was from the first one of
the foremost among them.
Dettmann was born at Adelbye, near Flensburg,
on July 2gth, 1865, and he remained a loyal son
of his quiet homeland. He went, indeed, to the
Academy in Berlin (where Paul Thumann and
Eugen Brecht were his principal teachers), and
took up his abode in the capital; but the Hats of
Schleswig, the life of its villages, the " Waterkant,"
with its lowly cottages and its taciturn inhabitants,
remained ever his favourite hunting-grounds for
the subjects of his pictures. The rude, keen
strength of the Lowland Saxons flourished in him,
and preserved him from falling into that characterless
and washed-out " modernity " which so easily over-
whelms weaker natures in Berlin, that mushroom
city so poor in aesthetic tradition. He learned —
not at the Academy, but in the vigorous artistic
life of Berlin, open to so many different stimulating
influences—to study with constantly renewed at-
tention the clear light of day, and the vibrations of
the atmosphere in which we breathe; to penetrate
into the secrets of the unstable fluid that permeates
our universe; to follow with observant glance the
sun's rays, which, sometimes unhindered, some-
times tempered by cloud-shadows into infinite
gradations of brilliancy, rest with an intricate play
of colour upon all natural objects. He learned
to recognise, with the certainty of a scientific in-
vestigator, the whole vast realm of shimmering,
wavering, infinitely variegated nuances, of richly-
coloured luminous chief-values, of half-tones and
transitional tones. He learned to make use of
every new method in order to interpret absolutely
aright the radiant transparency of our earth's
illumination, the drifting and undulating of its
atmosphere, and so to express in the language of
colour not only what visibly exists, but all the
inarticulate moods and sensations that slumber
beneath actual appearances.
At first Dettmann made his mark chiefly by
water-colours, little cameos from nature by which
"FISHER-FOLK'S COMMUNION SERVICE
280
BY LUDWIG DETTMANN
silenced claims of native art. In particular a band
of Lowland German artists joined in this movement,
and Ludwig Dettmann was from the first one of
the foremost among them.
Dettmann was born at Adelbye, near Flensburg,
on July 2gth, 1865, and he remained a loyal son
of his quiet homeland. He went, indeed, to the
Academy in Berlin (where Paul Thumann and
Eugen Brecht were his principal teachers), and
took up his abode in the capital; but the Hats of
Schleswig, the life of its villages, the " Waterkant,"
with its lowly cottages and its taciturn inhabitants,
remained ever his favourite hunting-grounds for
the subjects of his pictures. The rude, keen
strength of the Lowland Saxons flourished in him,
and preserved him from falling into that characterless
and washed-out " modernity " which so easily over-
whelms weaker natures in Berlin, that mushroom
city so poor in aesthetic tradition. He learned —
not at the Academy, but in the vigorous artistic
life of Berlin, open to so many different stimulating
influences—to study with constantly renewed at-
tention the clear light of day, and the vibrations of
the atmosphere in which we breathe; to penetrate
into the secrets of the unstable fluid that permeates
our universe; to follow with observant glance the
sun's rays, which, sometimes unhindered, some-
times tempered by cloud-shadows into infinite
gradations of brilliancy, rest with an intricate play
of colour upon all natural objects. He learned
to recognise, with the certainty of a scientific in-
vestigator, the whole vast realm of shimmering,
wavering, infinitely variegated nuances, of richly-
coloured luminous chief-values, of half-tones and
transitional tones. He learned to make use of
every new method in order to interpret absolutely
aright the radiant transparency of our earth's
illumination, the drifting and undulating of its
atmosphere, and so to express in the language of
colour not only what visibly exists, but all the
inarticulate moods and sensations that slumber
beneath actual appearances.
At first Dettmann made his mark chiefly by
water-colours, little cameos from nature by which
"FISHER-FOLK'S COMMUNION SERVICE
280
BY LUDWIG DETTMANN