Carl Vinnen Sold at Auction Prices

Landscape painter, Painter

Carl Vinnen (born August 28, 1863 in Bremen , † April 16, 1922 in Munich ) was a German painter . As a writer, he carried the pseudonym Johann Heinrich Fischbeck .

Until 1886: Carl Vinnen was born on August 28, 1863 as the son of the shipowner Johann Christoph Vinnen and his first wife Jenny Friederike, b. Westenfeld was born in Bremen. His mother died in 1870. His brother, who was five years his junior, was the shipowner and politician Adolf Vinnen . After finishing school, Vinnen worked for some time in the business of his father at the request of his parents.

1886 to 1893: At the age of 23, Carl Vinnen began studying with Heinrich Lauenstein and Hugo Crola at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and took private lessons with Eugen Dücker . [1] From 1888 he continued his studies in Karlsruhe continued. Carl Vinnen was influenced by his teacher Arnold Böcklin in his choice of motifs , he concentrated on melancholy landscape painting.

In Düsseldorf, Vinnen met Fritz Mackensen and Otto Modersohn in the artist association “ Tartarus ” . In the summer of 1889, the two of them visited him for a few weeks on their father's estate in Easter village, which Vinnen lived in (today a district of Beverstedt ). At this time, Mackensen and Modersohn founded the Worpswede artists' colony about 25 kilometers from Easter village . During later mutual visits to Worpswede and Easter village, Vinnen also made the acquaintance of Hans am Ende , Fritz Overbeck (1892), Heinrich Vogeler (1894) and Paula Modersohn-Becker. In addition to friendships with fellow painters of the same age, Vinnen also maintained contact with the elderly writer Hermann Allmers . Otto Modersohn's diary entries document disputes about artistic points of view between Vinnen and Modersohn during this time.

1893 to 1908: Although Carl Vinnen never lived in Worpswede, he was and is perceived as a member of the Worpswede artist community. Vinnen and his Worpswede colleagues founded the Worpswede Artists' Association in 1894 in order to better present and market their art to the public. The commercial training and organizational talent of Carl Vinnen turned out to be useful. [2] Now, his large-format (280 × 200 cm) oil painting Ruhe was shown in a joint exhibition by Worpsweder in the Bremen art gallery. This exhibition in Bremen brought only criticism and little recognition for the Worpswede artist community. In 1895 he was recognized by a critic on the occasion of the large exhibition ofMunich Secession in the Munich Glass Palace praised as “Leader of the young artists from Worpswede”; Vinnen was unable to take part in the exhibition because of a riding accident. Vinnen's preference for large picture formats and particularly bright colors in his landscape pictures is striking. But not all Worpswede colleagues liked Vinnen's style; For example, in 1894 Fritz Overbeck expressed himself very critically in a letter to Otto Modersohn about Vinnen's picture of calm on an early spring day . On the other hand, Vinnen's method of showing cut birch trunks in the foreground of his paintings was also taken up by his Worpswede friends in their own pictures.

He was one of the preferred selection of contemporary artists that the “Committee for the Procurement and Assessment of Stollwerck Pictures” suggested to the Cologne chocolate producer Ludwig Stollwerck to commission them with designs. [3]

Carl Vinnen owned a studio on the family's estate in Easter village . In order to be able to easily paint snowy landscapes in winter, Vinnen had a heated studio car built with large windows; for painting animals, he set up an animal model stable with horses and cattle on the estate. Vinnen employed his own "paint boy" who produced the paint for him. In the area around Easter Village, at that time a heather landscape, he didn't just paint, he rode and hunted too. There was no material shortage, Carl Vinnen could afford to travel: In Europe to Scandinavia, France, Spain, Holland, Belgium and Italy, but also to Asia and Africa. During a stay on the Belgian coast, Carl Vinnen was inspired by Belgian landscape painters to use even more intense colors. The use of strong cobalt blue, for example, was characteristic of Vinnen's night landscapes.

In 1902, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a book with monographs from Worpswede artists. In addition to Mackensen, Modersohn, Am Ende, Overbeck and Vogeler, Rilke also wanted to describe Vinnen in his work. But Carl Vinnen declined an essay about himself, despite requests from Rilke. Vinnen no longer saw the Worpswede artists at their previous level and in literary reviews the danger of "uncritical admiration". Rilke could not convince Vinnen and so the book was only published with monographs by artists who also lived in Worpswede. Vinnen also got engaged to Anna Lagemann in 1902, and the wedding did not follow until many years later. [4] In 1903 Vinnen received on theGreat Berlin art exhibition a small gold medal.

Carl Vinnen became an early member of the German Association of Artists, founded in 1903 . His name can be found in the catalog of the third exhibition in Weimar as early as 1906.

1908 to 1912:
Carl Vinnen broke away more and more from the Worpswede artist community. After Overbeck and Modersohn had left Worpswede, Vinnen decided in 1908 to move from Easter village to Cuxhaven . Now the focus was on maritime motifs in the Impressionist style. In 1911, Carl Vinnen and many other German artists signed a protest against the alleged infiltration of French art into German art collections. The occasion was the acquisition of the painting The Poppy Field [6] by Vincent van Gogh by the museum director Gustav Pauli for the Kunsthalle Bremen . In a warning in the Bremer Nachrichtenwas published, Vinnen turned against a "great invasion of French art", the German artists lost large sums of money on the German art market, in Vinnen's opinion. Vinnen turned against the French avant-garde , against Fauvism and described the Expressionists as decadent and inferior. There he turned against the rediscovery of El Greco and its reassessment by Meier-Graefe . Vinnens article was to initiate a polemic recorded [7] German publication "A protest artist. With an introduction by Carl Vinnen “in 1911. The answer appeared in July 1911 inPiper Verlag the brochure “In the fight for art”. The controversy became known as the Bremen Artists' Dispute .

1912 to 1922: Before the First World War , Carl Vinnen moved entirely to Munich, where he had long had a second home. In 1919 Vinnen married his long-time partner Anna Lagemann. No children grew out of this relationship. Shortly after the marriage he suffered a stroke, and on April 16, 1922, he died in Munich from the consequences of another stroke. [8] His urn is in the private cemetery of the Vinnen family in Easter village.