Drawings of A. Von Menzel
By Pr. HW Singer
Excerpt
FOR two or three decades Menzel was a member of the Institut de
France and an Officer of the Legion of Honour, as well as a member
of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours and the Royal
Academy of London. Yet, outside his own country, he was scarcely
more than a name, except, perhaps, to the presidents and leading
officers of such bodies as I have mentioned. Not long ago I found a
French critic attempting to expound Menzel to his countrymen, and
he had so far misapprehended his hero that he tried to make him out
a sort of excellent German Meissonier. In England, too, he may be
put on a line with the League of Cambrai, the Peace of Munster, the
Cabal, and other such names, which you at once recognise as very
important when you hear them mentioned, but about which you cannot
for the life of you remember details and dates. Almost ninety years
ago, upon the 8th of December, 1815, Menzel saw the light of day in
Breslau. This city was for a long time the third largest of the
German Empire, without any attractions to match its size.
Menzel's father, originally principal of a girls' seminary, set up
a lithographic establishment, in which the lad at an early age
found an opportunity of coming into touch with the fine arts. His
parents decreed that he should become a scholar, but there were
many hindrances in the way of his turning student; and since he had
evinced a desire to draw as soon as ever he could hold a pencil, it
was easy to prepare him for the work of a practitioner in the
lesser arts, if not indeed for an artist.
When Menzel was fourteen years of age his father sold his business
at Breslau and migrated to Berlin. Here, too, he occupied himself
with lithographic work, in which he was assisted by his son. The
family had scarcely been a year and a half in the capital when the
father died - in January, 1832. Menzel, only sixteen years of age,
was now thrown entirely upon his own resources, and, moreover, had
to help towards the support of his nearest relatives. For the sake
of a living he executed vignettes for tradesmen's bills,
letter-headings, designs for stencils, bottle-labels and similar
hack-work, and a long period of privation and plodding began for
him.
What he did at that time gave indication of what there was in the
man. For where another would simply have satisfied the crude
demands of the trade, he strove conscientiously to do his best and
to give his customers more than their money's worth. Many of his
early invitation and congratulatory cards, title pages and
ephemeral designs are full of happy notions and clever allusions.
Instinctively he felt that black-and-white art is a medium that
lends itself to argument
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Windham Press is committed to bringing the lost cultural heritage
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We think these benefits are worth the occasional imperfection
resulting from the age of these books at the time of scanning, and
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