Eugen Bracht
1842–1921 · German landscape and history painter, university professor
Eugen Bracht (Morges, 1842 - Darmstadt, 1921) was a German painter of landscapes and historical subjects, and also a professor. His work sits at the transition between nineteenth-century academic painting and the more modern currents in Berlin, and his career illustrates the path of an artist trained in Düsseldorf and Karlsruhe.
After an early period in Düsseldorf as a pupil of Hans Fredrik Gude, he gave up painting in 1864 and worked in the wool trade, a venture that ended in bankruptcy. He returned to art in 1876 with his dune paintings of the Baltic coast and the Lüneburg Heath, praised for their atmospheric solitude. After a study trip to Syria, Palestine and Egypt in 1880-1881, he produced a cycle of Oriental works, among them Dusk on the Dead Sea and Sinai, and in 1882 he took up a professorship at the Berlin Academy.
In Berlin he worked with Anton von Werner on the panorama The Battle of Sedan (1883). Around 1892 he distanced himself from the traditionalists by protesting the early closing of an exhibition of Edvard Munch. In 1901 he moved to Dresden to lead the landscape studio of the Academy, and after retiring in 1919 he lived in Darmstadt, where he died in 1921. His legacy is tied above all to teaching and to the move toward modern art.
Works (2)
Large horizontal oil on canvas dated 1889, whose title places the scene on a shore associated with oblivion. No reference texts clarify what is depicted, so any reading rests on the title and the wide canvas, which invites a slow, contemplative look. Any more specific interpretation of its meaning would be conjecture.
Where to see the work
- Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe Karlsruhe · 1
- Hessian State Museum Darmstadt Darmstadt · 1
Teachers and pupils
Studied with
- Hans Gude 1825–1903
Pupils
- Vartan Makhokhian 1869–1937