{"title":"Mühsam, Fritz (1880–1946)","description":"\u003cp\u003eFritz 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThere 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDuring the Second World War Mühsam was interned in France. He died in Paris in 1946 following a heart attack.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"fritz-muhsam-blue-vase-with-flowers-still-life-early-20th-century-oil-painting-kb-186","title":"Fritz Mühsam, Blue Vase with Flowers Still life –early 20th-century oil painting","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn original early 20th-century oil painting, Fritz Mühsam, Blue Vase with Flowers Still Life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA wonderful floral still life painting, likely painted in the 1930s, by interesting modernist German artist Fritz Mühsam (1880–1946). Mühsam was born in Hamburg and later worked in Berlin and Paris, where he produced paintings with Cubist and Expressionist influences.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe juxtaposition of colours, applied in pure, gestural dabs makes this painting part-figurative still life, part-study in colour and form. The background is painted in a block of flattened blue, a colour very close to that of the vase (and in fact forming the highlights of the vase), giving the overall composition a post-impressionist, decorative quality, redolent of Van Gogh's sunflowers where the yellow vase melds into yellow background.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn oil paint on board.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eInscribed on the verso 'Mrs Lionel Fraser', suggesting that the painting was previously owned by the wife of Lionel Fraser (1895–1965), the British banker and self-made millionaire, whose son was the influential London art dealer Robert Fraser.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Somerset \u0026 Wood","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52021401682249,"sku":"KB-186","price":495.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0930\/4306\/5161\/files\/kb-186.jpg?v=1743520384"}],"url":"https:\/\/somersetandwood.com\/fr-eu\/collections\/muhsam-fritz-1880-1946.oembed","provider":"Somerset \u0026 Wood Fine Art","version":"1.0","type":"link"}