Anna Elizabeth Klumpke

Infobox Artist
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name = Anna Elizabeth Klumpke


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birthdate = birth date |1856|10|28|
location = San Francisco, California
deathdate = 1942
deathplace = San Francisco, California
nationality = American
field = Genre works, Painting
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Anna Elizabeth Klumpke (October 28, 1856–1942) was American portrait and genre painter born in San Francisco, California, United States. She is perhaps best known for her portraits of famous women including Rosa Bonheur and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1889). [ [http://www.glbtq.com/arts/am_art_lesbian_19c,3.html "American Art: Lesbian, Nineteenth Century"] , glbtq, Inc.]

Life and career

Her father, John Gerald Klumpke, born in England [Julien Bogousslavsky, [http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion=ShowPDF&ProduktNr=223840&Ausgabe=230918&ArtikelNr=85554&filename=85554.pdf "The Klumpke Family – Memories by Doctor Déjerine, Born Augusta Klumpke"] , "European Neurology", 2005;53:113–120] or Germany [David Rogers, [http://www.ventanawild.org/news/se00/klumpke.html "John Klumpke's "Homestead" on Pine Ridge"] , "The Double Cone Quarterly", Spring Equinox 2000, Volume III, Number 1] , was a successful and wealthy realtor in San Francisco. Her mother was Dorothea Mattilda Tolle. Anna was the eldest of eight children, five of whom lived to maturity. Among her siblings were the astronomer Dorothea Klumpke-Roberts, the violinist Julia Klumpke, and the neurologist Augusta Déjerine-Klumpke.

At age three, Anna fell and suffered a fracture of her femur. She fell again at age five and suffered osteomyelitis with purulent knee arthritis. It handicapped her, and her mother took extraordinary means to remeded the problem by taking Anna and three siblings to Berlin for treatment by Dr. Bernhard von Langenbeck.

The treatments lasted 18 months, including thermal baths at Kreuznach, but unfortunately they were not successful, and she would remained hobbled all her life. While in Europe, her mother ensured that all of her children had excellent tutoring.

The time away in Europe placed a strain on the relationship of her parents. When Anna was fifteen, her parents divorced. She and her siblings (now numbering five) moved with their mother to Göttingen, Germany, where they lived for a time with Mattilda's sister, who had married a German national. Anna and her sister Augusta were sent to school at Cannstatt, near Stuttgart. At age seventeen, the family moved to Clarens, near Lake Geneva in Switzerland where she spent two years in boarding school. She studied art at home for the next few years, and in October 1877, moved with her family once more to Paris, where she was later enrolled in the Julian Academy (1883-1884), under the tutelage of Tony Robert-Fleury and Jules Lefebvre. At one point she also studied under Vuillefroy. She presented her first work at the Paris Salon in 1884, while still at the Academy, and she won the grand prize for outstanding student of the year. She showed regularly at the Salon for several more years.

After her schooling she returned to the United States for a few years and taught in Boston. However, by 1889, she was back in Paris. As a girl, Anna had been given a "Rosa" doll, which had been styled after the French animal painter Rosa Bonheur, who was so famous at the time that dolls were made in her image. So from early childhood, Anna was fascinated and inspired by Bonheur.Lawrence J. Cantor & Company, [http://www.fineoldart.com/browse_by_essay.html?essay=333 "Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, (1856-1942)"] ] Intent on painting the great artist's portrait, on October 15, 1889, under the pretext of being the interpreter to a horse dealer, she met Rosa Bonheur. The two soon resided together at Bonheur's estate in Fontainebleau until the death of Rosa Bonheur in 1899. Klumpke was named as the sole heir to Rosa Bonheur's estate and she oversaw the sale of Bonheur's collected works in 1900. She founded the Rosa Bonheur prize at the Société des Artistes Français, and organized the Rosa Bonheur museum at the Fontainebleau palace.

She was a meticulous diarist. In 1908, she published a biography of Bonheur, "Sa Vie Son Oeuvre", based on her own diary and Bonheur's letters, sketches and other writings. In the book, which was only published in English in 1998, Klumpke tells the story of Bonheur's life and relates how she met Bonheur, how they fell in love and how she became her official portraitist and companion.

Following Bonheur's death, Anna divided her time between France, Boston and San Francisco, finally settling in San Francisco in the 1930s. During World War I, with her mother she established up a benevolent hospital at her home in Fontainebleau, receiving wounded soldiers for convalescence. Her mother died at her home in 1924.

In 1940, at the age of 84, Anna Klumpke published her own autobiography "Memoirs of an Artist". Anna Klumpke died in 1942 at the age of 86 years in her native San Francisco.

tyle

She was a genre painter, often painting pastoral scenes featuring static figures, usually female. The painting, "Catinou Knitting" was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1887. It is a sentimental image that proved highly popular in reproduction, and which is still sold as hand-painted copies.

Honours include

* Silver medal of the ‘Reconnaissance Française’ (France)
* Légion d’honneur (France 1924)

Publications

*"Sa Vie Son Oeuvre" (1908), published in English as "Rosa Bonheur: The Artist's (Auto)Biography" (Gretchen van Slyke, translator), 1998
*"Memoirs of an Artist" Boston: Wright and Potter Printing Company, 1940

References