Pankok, Bernhard (1872-1943), General Wilhelm von Blume, 1915

Bernhard Pankok(1872 Münster - 1943 Baierbrunn), General Wilhelm von Blume , 1915, aquatint etching, 34 x 29.5 cm (sheet size), 26 x 22 cm (plate size), signed in the plate at upper left, in pencil at lower right and dated in pencil at lower left.

- at lower left old collection stamp, at the right broad margin with a small spot, otherwise very good condition

- Visionary retrospective -

The 1915 aquatint etching of General Wilhelm von Blume is based on a 1912 oil painting in the LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur in Münster. A second oil portrait of the general by Pankok is in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. When Pankok painted the first oil portrait in 1912, the general had already been retired for 16 years. It is therefore a retrospective portrait. Accordingly, the orientation of his head is such that he is looking back in both the oil painting and the etching. Without fixing on anything in particular, he looks thoughtfully inwards and reflects on his life. Uniformed and highly endowed, it is his military activities in particular that he is reviewing attentively and, as his gaze reveals, quite critically.

Pankok has literally written the sum of his experiences on Wilhelm von Blume's face: The physiognomy is a veritable landscape of folds, furrows, ridges and gullies, all the more striking against the flat background. It is clear that each of the medals was also won through suffering. However, by breaking the boundaries of the picture, his bust appears as an unshakable massif, which gives the general a stoic quality.

The fact that the design of the portrait was important to Pankok can be seen from the different versions, the present sheet being the third and probably final revision, which Pankok dates precisely to 18 February 1915. Compared with the previous state, the light background now has a dark area against which the sitter's face stands out, the dark background in turn combining with the uniform to create a new tension in the picture.

Pankok's taking up of the portrait of the high-ranking military veteran and its graphic reproduction can also be seen in relation to the First World War, which had broken out in the meantime. In the face of modern weapons of mass destruction, Wilhelm von Blume's warfare and military writings were relics of a bygone, more value-oriented era.

About the artist

After studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1889 to 1891 under Heinrich Lauenstein, Adolf Schill, Hugo Crola, and Peter Janssen the Elder, Bernhard Pankok went to Munich in 1892, where he worked primarily as a graphic artist for the two major Jugendstil magazines "Pan" and "Jugend," which established his artistic success. Through this work he met Emil Orlik, with whom he had a lifelong friendship.

In 1897, he exhibited his first furniture, and in 1898, together with Richard Riemerschmid, Bruno Paul and Hermann Obrist, he founded the Vereinigte Werkstätten für Kunst im Handwerk. At the Paris World Fair of 1900, he was awarded the Grand Prix for the design of an oriel room.

His work as an architect also began with the construction of the Lange Haus in Tübingen in 1901. In the spirit of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Pankok was a "universal artist" for whom art was not divided into "high art" and "applied art," but represented something comprehensive that extended to everyday objects.

Also in 1901, he married Antonette Coppenrath, a sister of the landscape painter Ferdinand Coppenrath, and in the same year he was appointed to the Royal Teaching and Experimental Workshop of the Stuttgart Arts and Crafts School. With the completion of the new building of the Kunstgewerbeschule, which had been built according to Pankok's designs since 1908, Pankok became its director in 1913, a position he held until 1937.

In 1907 Pankok became a member of the Berlin Secession and the Deutscher Werkbund. He went on to design salons for steamships and cabins for zeppelins, as well as stage sets for operas. Pankok was one of the leading artists at the groundbreaking Werkbund exhibition in Cologne in 1914. Because of his reputation, he was made a foreign member of the Munich Secession in 1930, an honorary member of the Westphalian Art Society in Münster in 1932, and an honorary member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich a year later.

Although urged to do so, Pankok refused membership in the NSDAP and retired in 1937.

Selected bibliography

Birgit Hahn-Woernle / Hans Klaiber (Hrsg): Bernhard Pankok, 1872-1943. Kunsthandwerk, Malerei, Graphik, Architektur, Bühnenausstattungen, Stuttgart 1973.

Hans Klaiber: Bernhard Pankok. Ein Lebensbild (= Beiträge zur Geschichte der Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, 4), Stuttgart 1981.

Angelika Lorenz (Hrsg.): Bernhard Pankok. Malerei, Graphik, Design im Prisma des Jugendstils, Münster 1986.

Gudrun Wessing: Bernhard Pankok als Porträtmaler, Münster 1988.

Mechthild Heinen: Bernhard Pankok. Das gebrauchsgraphische Werk, Freiburg 1993.

Eva-Marina Froitzheim: Bernhard Pankok - Ein Multitalent um 1900, Böblingen 2006.

Andrea Richter: Vom Ideal, alle Künste gleichzeitig zu beherrschen. Das Gesamtkunstwerk bei Bernhard Pankok. In: Carla Heussler u- Christoph Wagner (Hrsg.): Stuttgarter Kunstgeschichten, von den schwäbischen Impressionisten bis zur Stuttgarter Avantgarde (Regensburger Studien zur Kunstgeschichte, 21), Regensburg 2022, S. 44–59.