Cultural Wednesday: Junghanns’ Plowing Farmer

Today’s featured artist painted primarily animals – farm animals, that is, and their farming families.

Julius Paul Junghanns, born on 8 June 1876 in Vienna, was the son of Saxon parents, and he grew up in Dresden, Germany.

Junghanns studied painting in Dresden and Munich, where his time with Heinrich von Zügel impressed and motivated him the most, it appears.  Having studied under von  Zügel also helped his career, for his teacher suggested him for a post as the professor of painting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the department for animal and landscape painting.  That was in 1904, when Junghanns was only 28 years of age and freshly married, very fittingly, to Maria Buchner, the daughter of a veterinarian.  She also happened to be the granddaughter of Johann Dominicus Quaglio who was the most significant German romantic painter, engraver, stage designer, and architect, and part of the large Quaglio pedigree of Italian artists involved in architecture, indoor fresco decoration, and scenography for the court theaters.

Junghanns’ paintings were very popular in his day, and his career was only interrupted two times, once when he was drafted into WWI, and once in 1945, when his professor-ship in Düsseldorf ended and he needed about four years to recover from a personal crisis.  In both cases he was able to eventually pick up his career again, and when he died on 3 April 1958 in Düsseldorf, he was 82 years old and full of days.

Calling himself Pictor antiquus at time (that is, Old Painter), Junghanns won international renown and his paintings can be seen in many places today.  Here in the USA, you will have to go to Pittsburgh, Chicago, or Boston to see his art.  In Europe, his work can be seen in art galleries in nine different German cities as well as in Vienna, London, Madrid, and Antwerp.

Here is another variation of the theme of the plowing farmer.  I surely like the way he portrays man and beast living and working together as a team, and the dynamic of his paintings.

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