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Recognized today as one of the finest landscapists of his generation, Herman Herzog was a prolific painter who amassed an impressive body of work. Over the course of eight decades of activity, he painted in a variety of locales, ranging from Europe and Scandinavia to New York, New England, Maine, and Florida. His discerning brush captured the grandeur and majesty of mountains, lakes, and wilderness scenery, as well as the tranquility of quiet rivers, coastlines, and forest interiors.
Born in Bremen, Germany in 1832, Herzog demonstrated considerable artistic aptitude as a boy. Indeed, his talent was such that by the age of fifteen, despite his lack of formal training, he helped support his family through the sale of his paintings.
In 1848, Herzog enrolled in the Düsseldorf Academy, a prominent art school that attracted Americans such as Worthington Whittredge and Albert Bierstadt. There, he came under the spell of Düsseldorf realism, as espoused by his teachers Andreas Achenbach and Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, painters of dramatic, mood-filled landscapes. Herzog also undertook private study with the Norwegian painter Hans Frederick Gude, whose depictions of the wild fjords and rugged mountains of his homeland inspired his concept of the romantic sublime.
From 1855 and into the late 1860s, Herzog travelled widely, painting landscapes in Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, France, Holland, and elsewhere. Upon returning from an 1855 trip to Norway, the Queen of Hanover purchased one of his canvases, assuring him of future patronage from European royalty, including the Grand Duke Alexander of Russia and England’s Queen Victoria. The artist gained further recognition when he won prizes at the Paris Salons (1863-64) and medals at exhibitions in Liege and Brussels.
At some point between 1869 and 1871, Herzog immigrated to the United States in order to avoid the imminent rule of Bremen by the Prussians. He settled in Philadelphia, which remained his home for the rest of his life. Throughout the 1870s, fascinated by the vastness of American scenery, he travelled and painted in upstate New York and New Hampshire (1871-72) and in the West (1873-74). He also painted views in rural Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
During the 1880s, Herzog began visiting Gainesville, Florida, where his son John Herman, had moved, and that state’s lush topography became one of his favorite motifs. Beginning around 1904, he started painting landscapes and marines in Maine, where his younger son Lewis, also an artist, had a summer home on North Haven Island in Penobscot Bay.
Although Herzog’s style remained rooted in realism and consistently displayed a concern for rendering mood, as well as light and atmospheric effects, he was a versatile artist who moved easily between three distinct approaches. Much of his work, especially from the 1850s, 60s and 70s, reflects the aesthetic precepts of the Düsseldorf School, with its emphasis on line, detail, and crisply delineated form. However, later in his career, in response to the impact of the Barbizon School and the more suggestive mode of painting that became popular among many American artists, he developed a more poetic manner based on the use of subtle hues and fluid brushwork, not unlike that of Tonalists such as George Inness. Herzog also worked in a more individualistic “autograph style” that involved the use of free, vigorous brushwork and brighter colors.
Following his move to Philadelphia, Herzog met with continued success, winning a bronze medal at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and exhibiting his work at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and at the National Academy of Design in New York. He remained a notable force in the art world until the early 1880s, when a lucrative investment he had made in the Pennsylvania Railroad assured his financial security. Thereafter, he stopped exhibiting in the national annuals and made little effort to sell his work. Indeed, although Herzog continued to paint regularly until his death at the age of 101, he remained out of the public spotlight. However, during the 1970s, he reemerged as an important turn-of-the-century landscapist. Exhibitions of his work were held in New York (1973) and Philadelphia (1979), and most recently at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania (1992). Herzog’s paintings have also been featured in many exhibitions and publications devoted to regional art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in relation to artistic activity in Pennsylvania and Florida.
Herzog is represented in many public collections throughout Europe and the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; The White House, Washington, D.C.; the Cincinnati Art Museum; New York Public Library; the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville; the Reading Public Museum and Art Gallery, Reading, Pennsylvania; the Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania; the Orlando Museum of Art, Florida; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachusetts.
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