(American born Germany, 1832 - 1932)
Evening at Lake Lucerne
Oil on canvas, 14 x 21 inches
Signed at lower right: "Herman Herzog"
Inscribed on stretcher: "Evening in the Alps/Herman Herzog"
About the Artist
(American born Germany, 1832 - 1932)
For most of his productive eighty-five-year career, travel was Herman Herzog's greatest inspiration. Born in Bremen, Germany, Herzog entered the Düsseldorf Academy at the age of seventeen; Andreas Achenbach (1815-1910) was the teacher who had the most lasting impact on his painting style. Another teacher was the Norwegian artist Hans Frederick Gude (1825-1903), who encouraged the young student to visit Norway. Herzog's 1855 visit to that country awakened him to the sublime and wild aspects of nature. He exhibited widely on the continent, winning awards in Paris, Liège, and Brussels.
Disturbed by the political situation in Germany, Herzog immigrated to the United States sometime in the late 1860s or early 1870s, settling in West Philadelphia, where he and his wife raised two sons. Even before his arrival, his paintings had been shown in several of the annual exhibitions of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.
Herzog's first recorded American sketching trip took him through the Northeast in 1871. Trips like this one were an important aspect of his art, for it was his practice to refer back to his travel sketches, including those from his European years, throughout his career. Herzog traveled widely in the United States and was inspired by the great variety of scenery, painting many views of the Pennsylvania countryside, the West–especially its national parks, eastern coastal views as far north as Maine, and lush landscapes in Florida, where he often visited his son between the mid-1890s and about 1910.
Herzog's work was well received, and his profitable investment of the income from the sale of his paintings allowed him to stop selling his art, which remained largely in his family's possession. The Schwarz Gallery has been collecting paintings by Herzog for years and in December 1979 published a catalogue devoted to his work: Herman Herzog (1832 1932). The Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, mounted a major Herzog exhibition in 1992; the exhibition catalogue, American Paintings of Herman Herzog, includes an essay by Donald S. Lewis, Jr.
