Studio: international art (36.1906)

Heinrich Wirsing

than he under the ban of the tradition of
earlier times ; yet he is an individuality, and his
works appear to one as the inevitable expression of
a universal outlook, for there exists within them
that metaphysical perfection which makes them
akin to the great and everlasting productions of
art. It was by no mere chance that Hildebrand
came to spend many years of his life in Florence,
nor was it by chance that in the end he settled
down in Munich. While living in Florence his
imagination was profoundly and significantly in-
fluenced by antique sculpture, and by that of the
Florentine Renaissance, and in his art we find
evidence of a sympathy both with the spirit of the
Hellenic style and with the creations of Jacopo
della Quercia, Verocchio, and Donatello. Hilde-
brand, however, never allowed himself to become
subject to any one of these many-sided influences;
he simply studied them all, and utilised their
teaching in the light of his modern spirit. In
Munich, which is midway between the harsh
north and the warm, lively south, Hildebrand’s
art was from the first appreciated at its proper
worth. There the lively tradition of an old artistic
culture—a reflection of Italy’s richest and ripest
period — offered a fruitful soil for his genius.
Soon there collected around the master an im-
posing group of pupils, of whom many to-day
can boast of celebrity.

Among the circle of young sculptors who
flocked round Adolf Hildebrand was Heinrich
Wirsing, who is deserving of notice on other
grounds besides the fact that he was one of the
master’s pupils; at the same time it must be said
that in the course of his artistic developments
he was beholden for much valuable inspirations
from Hildebrand. Heinrich Wirsing was born
in 1875, the son of a jeweller of Frankfurt-am-
Main. For generations past the goldsmith’s art
had been the traditional calling of his family;
accordingly the father intended that his son
should follow the same craft, in order that he
might be competent later to carry on the old
family business. So from 1892 to 1898 Heinrich
Wirsing received the necessary training. He
attended the Applied Art School in Frankfurt,
worked with distinction in the jewellery class of
the stamp school at Flanau, and soon the young
jeweller made journeys to France and England.
But already he had grown dissatisfied
with his trade ; above all, he could not bring
himself to take interest in the commercial
side of the goldsmith's calling. He felt im-
pelled to higher things. During his stay in

France and England he was a constant visitor at the
art galleries, his object being to train his eye and
his mind on the works of the old masters; in his
leisure hours he worked assiduously with his pencil,
and thus made further progress in the direction of
art. Bat the young artist could not long endure
this life of bodily and spiritual servitude. In the
year 1898 he freed himself entirely from his trade,
and became a student in the Stadel Institute,
Frankfurt, where he worked for a year under Pro-
fessor Fritz Hausmann. In 1899, attracted by the
personalityof Adolf Hildebrand he settled in Munich,
and in 1901 went for purposes of study to Rome
and Florence. In Florence he gained the personal
recognition of Hildebrand, who gave the young
artist many a valuable hint. .

In Wirsing’s earliest plastic productions we find
unmistakable traces of his goldsmith’s work. The
accomplished goldsmith reveals himself in the

PORTRAIT BUST BY HEINRICH WIRSING

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