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Herzog, Hermann Ottomar
"Fishing Trawlers off the Coast" | Hermann Ottomar Herzog
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Herzog, Hermann
Hermann Ottomar Herzog was born on November 15, 1832, in Bremen, Germany. He is renowned for his contributions to both the European and American art scenes, specifically within the realms of Romanticism, the Hudson River School, and the Düsseldorf School of Painting.
His work is generally considered to be part of the Hudson River School, yet it is distinguished by its more realistic and less dramatic nature compared to his peers like Frederic Edwin Church or Albert Bierstadt. His brilliant atmospheric landscape paintings of Florida remain particularly sought-after.
Herzog's career as an artist began at the Düsseldorf Academy at the age of seventeen, where he was under the tutelage of notable artists such as J.W. Schirmer, Rudolph Wiegmann, Andreas Achenbach, C.F. Lessing, and Hans Gude. His early career was marked by travels and painting expeditions across Norway, which garnered him early commercial success and the patronage of affluent European clients.
In 1871, Herzog immigrated to the United States, settling near Philadelphia. He became a U.S. citizen in 1876 and traveled extensively throughout the U.S., spending a great deal of time painting scenes in Maine, and Florida. His works from these travels include a series of paintings of the Yosemite Valley and other American landscapes. Notably, his painting "Sentinel Rock, Yosemite" received an award at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition.
A careful steward of his finances, Herzog did not rely on his artwork for income, allowing him not only a degree of artistic freedom uncommon for his time but also the option of painting for his own pleasure. This allowed him to store up a vast number of canvases that he left to his family when he died on February 6, 1932, in Philadelphia.
Today, many prominent American and European museums feature Herzog's work in their collections. In 1992, the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, held a major exhibition of Herzog's work and more recently in the summer of 2023 a reference work on Herzog was published titled "Hermann Herzog: His Remarkable Life, Unrivaled Florida Work, and Rightful Place in American Art History".