Ernst Kolbe was born in West Prussia and spent most of his childhood and youth from 1883 onward in Stargard, Pomerania. At the age of nineteen he entered the studio of the painter Adolf Schlabitz in Berlin. From 1895 to 1899 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, where his teachers included Julius Ehrentraut and the landscape painter Paul Vorgang.

In 1899 Ernst Kolbe joined the studio of the landscape painter Eugen Bracht, whom he followed to Dresden in 1902 as a master student, together with Otto Altenkirch, Philipp Braumüller, Hans Hartig, Bruno Marquardt, Robert Meißner, and Alfred Oesteritz. A lifelong friendship connected him especially with Hans Hartig. Bracht’s collegial relationship with his students, as well as Kolbe’s encounters with the artists’ association Die Elbier in Dresden and later with the Berliner Secession, decisively influenced his turn toward Impressionism and shaped his style from then on.

Even during his studies, Kolbe’s works attracted public attention at major art exhibitions. In 1903 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Dresden Academy of Art. From 1900 onward he was represented in every Große Berliner Kunstausstellung, and in 1912 he was honoured with a special exhibition.

In 1906, after completing his studies, Ernst Kolbe returned to Berlin as a freelance artist and joined the Club Berliner Landschafter. In 1908 he became a member of the Verein Berliner Künstler, and in 1916 he was a founding member of the Pommerscher Künstlerbund based in Stettin. After his return to Berlin, Kolbe undertook numerous study trips, taking him to Sylt, Lübeck, Danzig, Pomerania, West Prussia, Tyrol, Bavaria, Silesia, and repeatedly to the Baltic Sea.

The 1920s and 1930s were among the most productive phases of Kolbe’s career, during which many of his major works were created. Characteristic features of his paintings from this period include a more expressive manner of painting, a lighter palette, impasto application of colour, and broad, confident brushstrokes.

Ernst Kolbe (1876-1945) born in West Prussia, was a German landscape painter, draftsman and lithographer. Kolbe studied around the fin de siècle at the Academy of Art in Berlin , after that he went to Dresden with his teacher Eugen Bracht. In 1906 he returned to Berlin and settled down in Steglitz. The artist traveled a lot, mainly along the Baltic coast, which had an important impact on his work: His favored subjects were winter scenes, landscapes, townscapes and the interiors of the patrician houses he visited on his journeys. Stylistically his oeuvre is characterized by Biedermeier according to the spirit of the time, which can be mainly seen in the interiors, later he was guided by the way of painting of the impressionists.

Ernst Kolbe was born in 1876 in Marienwerder. He was a landscape painter and lithographer. Ernst Kolbe passed away in 1945.