USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Cincinnati > Cincinnati, the Queen City, 1788-1912, Volume II > Part 56
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The Frankenstein family, four brothers and a sister, were all talented artists. John P. and Godfrey N. Frankenstein were especially noted. Godfrey N. Frankenstein was a landscape painter, taking nature for his model. He in addition produced many portraits, such as those of Abbott Lawrence, Charles Francis Adams, George Ticknor and other eminent citizens of Boston. He was also a sculptor and executed the bust of Judge McLean, now in the United States district court room in this city. Francis and George Frankenstein are said to have painted a series of tablets for the pleasure garden of Jacob Reiss in 1828. The sister showed talent as an artist; she also became the first teacher in the German department in the public schools of this city. This family later removed to Springfield, Ohio.
William Sonntag was an art pupil of Godfrey Frankenstein. He was the son of a German chemist, a member of the drug firm of Allen and Sonntag. H. A. Rattermann, who produced an exhaustive essay on art in Cincinnati,
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wrote of William: "When Sonntag began to paint his pictures, they were so novel in their conception and rich in coloring, thoughi less delicate in their execu- tion, that they at once became the rage. Everybody wanted to have a 'Sonntag,' and Sonntag was not disinclined to please everybody; so he painted away, and every two or three days brought forth from his fruitful easel a new landscape, and into his pocket a new treasure of fifty, seventy-five, or a hundred dollars- and all sides appeared for awhile satisfied. Soon, however, it was ascertained that Sonntag's pictures were not at all scarce, but as plenty as blackberries ; and the parties that had measured the value of a picture according to the compara- tive scarcity of them, not in the point of real merit, became dissatisfied, and the Sonntag rage subsided." After this decline in his fortunes, Sonntag became very poor, until his friends bought him a railway ticket to New York and sent him away. In New York, he attracted much attention and made a great deal of money.
October 18, 1838, a Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts was founded by a number of artists, "in order that by their union they might obtain greater facili- ties for improvement in the various branches of the fine arts." The president was Godfrey N. Frankenstein, and John L. Whetstone, sculptor, was secretary. In 1839 an art exhibition, asserted to be the first of its sort in the west, was held in the Mechanics' Institute. There were on exhibition one hundred and fifty works of foreign and native artists. While it was not a financial success, it increased interest in art.
Of the period between 1840 and 1850, H. A. Rattermann says: "During this period art evinced more life, more vitality, more self-reliance, in Cincinnati, than at any other period. After 1850 it sank lower and lower. Not that the city then ceased to produce artists of genius. On the contrary, it raised in modern days more than ever, and comparatively more and greater ones than any other American municipality, not even excepting the 'Hub of the universe.' It is no bombastic puffery if we make this assertion. Our city was generally the starting point of American artists. We gave them birth and nourishment in their infancy; and when our artists were grown to manhood, then the east would come to woo and wed them, and boast of them as their own."
This academy of fine arts produced results by way of inspiration and stimulus but was itself destined to a brief existence.
The next step in art culture here was the establishment of a department of the fine arts in the Cincinnati Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge. Lectures on art were delivered by James H. Beard and E. P. and John Cranch. The department of fine arts of this institution was in care of John Cranch, P. S. Symmes, William Piatt and A. Baldwin. The lectures had an average atten- dance of five hundred persons. On account of lack of endowment this art move- ment fell by the wayside. John P. Foote said: "After the extinction of two academies and one section of fine arts, most of those who had been active in efforts for their encouragement and promotion thought best to let art stand on its own feet and be governed by the laws of trade or of taste-and flourish or fade according to those laws."
In 1846 there was established in New York city, the American Art Union. This soon stirred the art lovers of Cincinnati to action. The Western Art Union
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was formed on like lines. The location chosen for the union was at the corner of Fourth and Sycamore streets. The president was Charles Stetson. E. S. Haines, Marchant and the artist, Baldwin, lent themselves to its promotion. The room occupied for the purposes of the union was large and on several occasions three hundred pictures were there shown. One of Powers' statues of the "Greek Slave" stood in this hall for a time. The beneficent influence of this union was considerable ; it helped cultivate public taste here and in the west and south; but like its progenitor in New York, its existence was short.
A further effort toward advancing the interests of art here was the plan for establishing a gallery of national portraits. Rembrandt Peale had then, as part of his museum in Philadelphia, a famous collection of heroes of the revolution. This collection was purchased and put upon exhibition. J. P. Foote states : "The existence of this institution, however, was more brief than that of its predecessor. The paintings for some mysterious cause were taken away and the institution, like an unsubstantial pageant, vanished."
In 1851, William Wiswell had a picture gallery containing three hundred portraits. Some of these were by Kellogg, Beard, Rothermel, Read and other noted men. It contained a new bust of General Jackson, which Powers had just finished.
This same year, Mr. Cist counseled the founding of an academy of design, where should be gathered paintings and models, sculptures, carvings, engravings, engraved gems, original drawings, plaster casts and similar objects.
In 1855 there was an effort on behalf of a plan projected by Mrs. Sarah Peter. This was to form a ladies gallery of the fine arts. The scheme was to obtain copies by reputable artists of famous works of the old masters. Mrs. Peter made two visits to Europe in the interest of this plan, but for lack of encouragement the plan came to nothing of a permanent kind.
Among the notable artists of the period between 1840 and 1850, was Charles Soule, who began his work here in 1841. He executed portraits of many emi- nent citizens. His daughter, Clara Soule, demonstrated her talents as a painter of portraits and of flower and fruit pieces.
Mrs. Lily Martin Spencer, whose specialty was delineation of Shakespear- ean characters, was a popular artist here for a time, and later removed to New York.
J. Insco Williams, residing here after 1842, produced historical pictures that were popular. B. M. McConkey, living here in 1844, became a student of the Dusseldorf school. William Walcutt, who painted "The Battle of Monmouth," worked here in 1844, and afterward lived in New York. Herrmann M. Green- land was a singer as well as an artist. J. C. Wolf was a painter of historical and allegorical pictures ; his "Joseph and Potiphar's Wife" was for a long time on the walls of the St. Charles exchange. J. O. Eaton, who rose to great eminence as a portrait painter, was here in 1846 and later went to New York.
A. H. Hammill, painter of animals and birds, lived in Cincinnati from 1847 onward. Gerhard Mueller and Henry Koempel, historical painters, were work- ing in this city at the same period. Mueller, having studied in Munich, came to Cincinnati about 1840; some of his productions are in St. Mary's, St. Joseph's and other Catholic churches in this city. William, his son, who adopted Miller
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as the form of his name, was a miniature painter. Koempel came here in 1848; he made an adaptation of Guido's St. Michael, now the altar piece of St. Michael's church. Muckle, a native of Suabia, came about 1840. The specialty of this Catholic sculptor was saints and crucifixes.
Of C. E. Gidland, a veteran painter of Cincinnati, who began work here in the forties, Mr. Rattermann said: "His pictures are full of vivacity and, though sometimes roughly sketched, of striking color effect." T. D. Jones, sculptor, produced a very large number of portrait busts, among his subjects having been Clay, Cass, Corwin, Chase and other celebrities. It was he who modeled the bronze figure of the Soldier on Guard, which stands in the soldiers lot at Spring Grove cemetery.
Cist mentions additional portraits and landscape painters in Cincinnati be- fore 1851 ; C. R. Edwards, Jacob Cox, D. B. Walcutt, C. J. and Jesse Hulse, C. S. Spinning, George W. Philipps, P. McCreight, Ralph Butts, A. P. Bonte, George W. White, Jacob H. Sloop, and Miss S. Gengembre.
R. S. Duncannon, a colored artist, began his work here in 1843. The Anti- Slavery league sent him to Edinburg to study. He produced portraits, land- scapes, fruit, flower and genre pieces, and historical pictures. He executed portraits of Sumner, Birney and other prominent anti-slavery leaders. His most notable works were "The Trial of Shakespeare," "Shylock and Jessica," "The Ruins of Carthage," and "The Western Hunters Encampment."
Among later portrait painters have been John Aubrey, Dwight Benton, Anthony Biester, A. Gianini, E. D. Grafton, water color painter, Herman Gold- sticke. R. H. Hammond, J. A. Knapp, T. C. Lindsay, Israel Quick, Mary W. Richardson, Alexander Roeschke, Charles Rossi, Louis Schwebel, Raphael Strauss, Will P. Noble, Rudolph Tschudi, Michael Lendouski, T. C. Webber, Henry Mosler, Frank Duveneck.
Aubrey, in addition to portrait work, executed the much admired works, "Gloria in. Excelsis, "Prometheus," "Charon," and "Eve's Daughters."
T. C. Webber painted historical pictures, such as "Rip Van Winkle," "The Rescue." Webber's large painting "The Underground Railway" hung for some time in the Chamber of Commerce building and was there during the great fire that destroyed that building in 1911, but the picture escaped without injury. Webber at that time was old and infirm; the value and interest of his picture was appreciated but no buyer had been found. A movement was begun for its purchase at ten thousand dollars. While this effort was in its incipiency Web- ber died. The future of this notable painting has not been decided at the present writing.
Henry Mosler, born in New York in 1841, removed with his family to Cin- cinnati in 1851 and to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1854. He studied wood-engraving and painting. He was draughtsman on The Omnibus, a Cincinnati comic weekly in 1855. He was a pupil of James H. Beard 1859-61. He was art cor- respondent with the western army for Harper's Weekly 1862-3. He studied in Dusseldorf and Paris 1863-6. He resides in New York. He has won wide re- putation, has received large prices for his work and has taken prizes and medals at exhibitions throughout Europe and America.
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Frank Duveneck, who resides in Covington, was born in that place in 1848. He studied in Munich under Dietz and others about ten years. At thirteen he was a pupil of Schmidt, in Covington. While studying with Schmidt, he also traveled here and there in the United States and Canada, and executed pictures of angels and saints for the Catholic churches. A Madonna which he produced won him much commendation for its originality. At nineteen he went to Munich and entered the school of Dietz. His portrait of his classmate Loefftz, after- ward a professor, is much admired and is now owned by Herrman Goepper in Cincinnati. His "Circassian" ranks among the masterpieces in the Boston Museum. He could not dispose of this picture in Cincinnati but sold it to a friend for fifty dollars. His friend took it to Boston to an art exhibition and there received for it eight hundred dollars. Duveneck executed the figures on the ceiling of the Grand Opera House. Duveneck after his residence in Munich spent several years in Boston, and after 1881 spent most of his time in Florence, Italy, painting and teaching. He was awarded a medal at the Chicago exposition in 1893. Duveneck is chiefly a head and study painter, but also notable as a sculptor. He produced and gave to the Catholic cathedral in Covington a beauti- ful sculpture in memory of his mother. He produced also a very beautiful re- clining monument to his wife. He modeled Emerson in bronze. Duveneck is also a teacher at the art school.
Alfred T. Branna, a graduate of the School of Design, and a pupil of Duve- neck, executed much admired pictures, a notable one being "A Garden Scene in Portugal."
Henry F. Farny is one of the most notable figures in Cincinnati and enjoys a world-wide fame, especially as a painter of Indians and of western scenes. Theodore Roosevelt exclaimed to Farny some years ago, in the hearing of sev- eral bystanders, "Farny, the nation owes you a great debt. It does not realize it now but it will some day. You are preserving for future generations phases of American history that are rapidly passing away." Farny was born in Erie county, Pennsylvania, of French Huguenot stock. As a child he learned the lore of the woods from Seneca Indians, who came from their reservation in New York state to hunt in the neighborhood where his father lived. In his boyhood he was fond of covering the walls of his father's board-house with pictures of animals, birds and Indians, which he scratched with nails or framed by aid of burnt sticks.
When Farny's family removed to Cincinnati, his father tried to make a clerk of him and obtained a job for him in an office. He sketched in the ledgers the faces and figures of visitors to the office, and his employer told his father he ought to make an artist of him, as he was useless as a clerk. The elder Farny had no artistic aspirations for any member of his family and endeavored to turn the youth from the error of his ways, but in vain.
Farny for some time after entering upon his artistic career devoted much time to the illustration of school books. It was by his genius that the whole method of such illustrating was revolutionized. Before his day, the school books had contained unreal and impossible pictures. He made real children, engaged in real amusements and labors. The children of Cincinnati soon came to know him in person and hailed him on the streets, to his delight, as the man who made Vol. II-29
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the pictures for their school books. Perhaps he has never enjoyed quite as thoroughly his great fame as a painter of pictures that are to be seen in public and private galleries as he did his reputation among the children. In 1880 he prepared beautiful and impressive illustrations for Professor Venable's poem "The Teacher's Dream," and this was highly commended. Farny for some time illustrated for the Harper publications.
He spent several years among the Indians, studying their mode of life and appearance, and he from time to time has made additional trips to the homes of Indian tribes. His specialty has been the plains Indians. One of his early paintings, "The Fugitives," sold for forty dollars in this city, and was carried to New York where five times as much was paid for it.
Farny's paintings are to be seen in many of the galleries of Europe and Amer- ica, private and public. The Kaiser of Germany owns one which he prizes greatly. Farny is married, has a young son, works regularly, and from time to time pro- duces a picture for which he does not need to seek markets. Competitors for his work seek him beyond his power to gratify them by the number of pictures wanted.
L. H. Meakin is in the front rank, one of the best of western landscape painters. He teaches in the Art school and is president of the Western Art Association.
John Rettig paints very excellent pictures of Holland.
Clement Barnhorn is a sculptor of high rank. He teaches at the Art school.
Henry Sharp is a remarkable painter of Indian portraits. Much of his work has been and is being done for Leland Stanford University.
John Tochtmann, deceased, left a reputation that is steadily increasing from year to year. Many critics consider him one of the foremost of modern painters. One of his pictures now in the art museum was purchased by that institution for $300, and it is now easily marketable at $3,000.
George Debereiner paints Holland scenes, especially pictures of Rothen- burg, a town that has had no new buildings for five hundred years and is off the lines of travel.
John Hanser is an excellent Indian painter. Dixie Selden, Caroline Lord, and Mary Spencer are among the women artists of talent and growing repute.
W. H. Fry is a first class wood carver. George Meinshausen is a wood engraver, whose work is artistic. L. C. Vogt is a young man of much talent.
E. T. Hurley is a painter of Cincinnati atmospheric street effects that are much admired. Paul Jones is a good painter and lithographer.
CINCINNATI ARTIST HONORED.
Honors continue to be heaped upon Miss Elizabeth Nourse, Cincinnati artist, who has made her home in Paris for some years past. Her painting, "The Win- dow. Shutter Closed," was in 1910, purchased by the French government, pre- ceding the opening of the salon. The painting was on private exhibition in the Luxembourg Gallery and was viewed by the president of the republic. Miss Nourse's father was a prominent Cincinnati banker.
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Other notable Cincinnati artists of the present are Henry E. Tausend, L. C. Vogt, Mrs. Frances Wiley Faig, Ben Faris, William Graef, Charles C. Svend- sen, Carl van Buskirk, S. T. Trounstine, Rudolph Tschudi, Mrs. Irene Bishop Hurley, Mrs. Lavina Grey Perin, and others.
William Lamprecht was a well known historical painter of Cincinnati for a number of years. He executed while here "Fenwick, the Apostle of Ohio," a portrait of the first Catholic bishop of Cincinnati; "Marquette's Discovering the Mississippi," and "The Crowning of St. Mary's." The last is in St. Mary's church, Cincinnati.
Mr. Lang made a specialty of architectonic painting. Some of his work is in St. Ludwig's church. He afterward went back to Germany.
A miniature painter, Philip Walter, who was also a gifted musician and conducted the Cincinnati Saengerfest in 1870, lived and worked here for a time. He afterward removed to Baltimore.
Mr. Kemper, of Philadelphia, also had a studio here for a time, as did a young man named Dennis, a native of Antwerp, Belgium.
Thomas S. Noble. who executed "The Hidden Nemesis," and "Forgiven" was the principal of the School of Design.
Charles Bullitt, sculptor, had for a time a studio here before the Civil war, and engaged in executing portrait busts and medallions. G. Fazzia, an Italian, at the same period engaged in making clay and plaster portraits and statuary.
Moses Ezekiel, one of the world's most famous sculptors, was born in Vir- ginia in 1844. He came to Cincinnati in 1868. In 1869 he went to Berlin and studied at the Royal Art Academy. He was admitted into the Berlin Society of Artists after he had executed a colossal bust of Washington. He was com- missioned in 1874 by the Sons of the Covenant, a Jewish order, to execute a marble group representing Religious Liberty, for the Centennial Exhibition. This work is now in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. He has produced notable busts of Liszt and Cardinal Hohenloche, Eve, Homer, David, Judith, Christ in the Tomb, Faith in the cemetery at Rome, a Madonna for the church in Tivoli, Apollo and Mercury in Berlin, Robert E. Lee, the Homer group for the Uni- versity of Virginia, Virginia Mourning Her Dead, at Lexington, Virginia, Napol- eon the First at St. Helena, and many other famous works. He visits Cincin- nati occasionally, retains his interest in this city where he has relatives, but he resides chiefly in Rome.
The "Auld Lang Syne" of August Mundhunk was exhibited at the Centen- nial Exposition in Philadelphia and received praise. He and his partner, Konrad Hoffman, introduced zinc-cast statuary in Cincinnati.
Frederick and Henry Schroeder were sculptors in wood. They produced chiefly altars and pulpit ornaments.
Herman Allard, who had been a pupil of Achterman at Minster, executed the same kind of art work. One of his noted works is "The Death of St. Joseph." He produced "Germania, the Protectress of Art and Science," and a life-size statue of an Indian in war costume. He executed a statue of St. Paul which was shown at the exposition in 1873.
Joseph Libbel executed "Always My Luck," "Asleep," "Caught," and other excellent statuary.
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Louis T. Rebisso taught sculpture at the University School of Design, and modeled the equestrian statue of General McPherson, Washington, D. C.
Charles L. Fettweis, Jr., was born in Cincinnati and studied in Rome. He executed "The Castaway," "The Italian Shepherd Boy," "Germania," and the bust of General R. L. McCook, in Washington Park.
Francis X. Dengler was the sculptor of "Imelda and Azzo," "Blind," and "Damroschen." Lamprecht declared "Imelda and Azzo" the greatest work of American art. "Damroschen" won a gold medal at the Art Academy of Munich.
Architecture has grown with the growth of Cincinnati. In 1800 this was chiefly a village of log houses. A little later came frame houses. Then brick and stone became common. In 1815, two per cent of the houses were stone and twenty-three per cent were of brick. In 1819 two-ninths of the whole number of houses were of brick and stone. In 1826 three-eighths of all were made of these materials.
The German population was specially fond of brick houses. In the first fifty years architects were dispensed with in the erection of buildings in Cincin- nati. More than that, the building plans were not formally drafted. The first builders drafts, when their day did arrive, were made on a board or shingle.
There were no plans or specifications drawn up for the erection of the First Presbyterian church, in 1792.
In 1824, Michael Scott, until that time a carpenter, appears in the directory as a professional architect. In 1825 he drew up plans for the old St. Peter's cathedral, on Sycamore street, where now stands St. Xavier's church.
Scott appears to have had no competitor. He died, and in 1834 Seneca Pal- mer came from Albany and became the second architect of this city. He was the architect of the first buildings of Lane Theological Seminary. It was he who designed the Western Baptist Theological Seminary in Covington. It is also asserted that he was the architect of the Lafayette Bank building on Third street. John Jolasse, a German in Palmer's employ, is credited with some of the best plans sent out by Palmer.
It was not always the fault of the architect that the buildings constructed were severely plain. The lack of means among property owners of the day was largely responsible.
The efforts at ornamentation, when these were made, were sometimes a mixture of various styles of architecture. The old Trust Company's building is said to have had a colonnade of Doric pillars with Ionic capitals.
"Trollope's Folly," or the Bazaar building, erected in 1829-30, was a com- bination of Oriental and Western styles. Tourists made sport of it, and citizens of Cincinnati mourned. Hervieu, a Frenchman, who came to Cincinnati with Mrs. Trollope, is said to have been the architect.
Another of the early architects was Francis Ignatz Erd, who designed St. Mary's Catholic church on Thirteenth street.
Henry Walter was the architect of the old Second Presbyterian church on Fourth street, since removed. This was in the Greco-Doric style. Walter was also the architect of the much admired St. Peter's cathedral, at Ninth and Plum streets. His were also the plans for the House of Refuge, a Norman-Gothic structure. This last work passed, at the death of Walter, into the hands of his
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partner Joseph W. Thwaites and his son William Walter. The latter became an eminent architect of the city.
Isaiah Rogers, who became one of the best known architects in the west, came to Cincinnati for the planning and construction of the Burnet House. He also designed the Longview Hospital.
As wealth increased and taste developed, many architects were attracted to this city. In 1848, there were among the architects B. L. W. Kelley, Robert A. Love, James O. Sawyer, George W. Stevenson, James K. Wilson. In 1850, Joseph J. Husband was added to the number. In 1851 John Bast, in 1853 J. R. Hamilton, J. B. Earnshaw, Joseph Gottle, Otto G. Leopold, James McClure, Robert Hailes, William H. Bayless, Hudson B. Curtiss, William Tinsley and Son, E. C. Schultz, Stephen Reddick, were among the number.
In 1855, such architects were here in addition as Charles B. Boyle, Adrian Hagemann, and William S. Rosecrans, afterwards a general in the Union army. In 1858 James W. Mclaughlin, Edwin A. Anderson, Carl Victor Bechmann, Samuel Hannaford were engaged in architectural work. In 1859 Anthony and Louis Piket, and George Willmer; in 1863, Charles P. Dwyer, John Mieren- field and Francis W. Moore were included in the list.
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