Fritz von Uhde
1848 - 1911

German painter and army officer. Fritz Von Uhde was born in Wolkenburg in the kingdom of Saxony. He grew up in a wealthy family where his artistic talents were developed. After a useless year at the Dresden Art Academy, he joined the Saxon army, in 1867. As an officer he was engaged in several battles. A specialized battle painter taught him how to paint with oil paint.

Von Uhde left the army in 1878 and focused on painting. He studied the works of old masters in Munich and Paris. The Dutch Old Masters were his favorites, and in 1882 he made a journey to the Netherlands. After that trip he abandoned the dark chiaroscuro in favor of lighter colors.

Starting in 1884 Von Uhde also painted biblical subjects. 78 of his 285 works have religious subjects. His style was somewhere between naturalist and impressionist.

Von Uhde was married and had three daughters. He died in Munich in 1911.

Source:

Website of Art and the Bible, 2021

Uhde's artistic talent was encouraged early on by his equally talented father. Uhde's talent was confirmed by Kaulbach in Munich after some drawing samples were presented and Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld also agreed with him. So Uhde began in 1866 at the Dresden Art Academy.

However, his increasing displeasure with the repetitive academic teaching led to his leaving the academy and joining the military after only three years, which he had been toying with since 1866. From 1867 onwards he pursued a military career and became a professional officer until he gave up his active military career in 1878 and returned to the arts in Munich. But even during his time in the military, Uhde never completely abandoned art.

During this time he created oil paintings in which he experimented a lot with painting and was inspired by various models. He was to develop his own handwriting in the coming decades. However, Uhde did not later authorize a few loose, wiping oil studies, such as the present one with mother and child, for the catalog raisonné created by Hans Rosenhagen during his lifetime.

At the turn of the century, Uhde was finally a well-known, valued painter, but also controversial because of his realistic depictions of religious subjects. Uhde broke with the idealized salon painting of his colleagues, devoted himself over the years to an increasingly realistic method of representation and also turned to impressionism.

We thank Dr. Gerd-Helge Vogel for confirming Fritz von Uhde's authorship on the basis of a digital image (email 7 September 2020).