Fritz Mühsam (1880–1946) was born in Hamburg but spent his youth in Berlin, where his father owned an oil painting factory. He studied painting in Berlin and Munich, after which he worked as a professional artist in Berlin, where he produced paintings with Cubist and Expressionist influences. In 1927 he participated in the group exhibition 'European Art of the Present' in Hamburg. He was a full member of the Deutscher Künstlerbund (a group which included artists such as Max Klinger and Max Liebermann), with which he exhibited three times between 1928 and 1931.
In 1831 Mühsam moved to Paris. In Paris he taught painting, with pupils including the German dancer, sculptor and painter Olga Bontjes van Beek. He was also a friend of Kathleen Garman, the glamorous muse and mistress of Jacob Epstein. Garman moved in the Bloomsbury Group artistic circles and was mother to three children by Epstein in the 1920s. Mühsam painted portraits of two of the children, Esther and Theo, in 1934, now in the collection of the New Art Gallery Walsall. There are also two letters from Mühsam to Kathleen Garman in the Walsall collection.
There is not a great deal of information about Mühsam's personal life available. Mühsam was Jewish and it appears that he married Eva Pächter (1886–1924), whose father, Hermann Pächter, ran Kunsthandlung R. Wagner in Berlin in the 1880s. Pächter had made a name for himself as agent for Adolph von Menzel and in 1895 also briefly took Max Liebermann under contract. Pächter was an enthusiastic art collector with a collection that included paintings by French Impressionists and works by Menzel, who was a very close friend. His collection also included East Asian art and he was the first to show Japanese images and other artefacts at his gallery. In 1924 Mühsam's wife Eva committed suicide.
During the Second World War Mühsam was interned in France. He died in Paris in 1946 following a heart attack.
