THE SHOCK OF TRUTH

AN INTRODUCTION BY JAMES GURNEY

Adolph Menzel's drawing supplies accompanied him everywhere, whether on a short walk or a long journey. He was always prepared to draw. One of his overcoats had eight pockets, each filled with sketchbooks of different sizes. On the lower left side of his coat was an especially large pocket which held a leather case with a big sketchbook, some pencils, a couple of shading stumps, and a gum eraser.

His personal motto was "Nulla dies sine linea" ("Not a day without a line"). He drew ambidextrously, alternating between the left and the right, sometimes on the same drawing. If he was ever caught without drawing paper, he sketched on whatever was available, even a formal invitation to a court ball. Whenever he was spotted at a social event, the whispered word went abroad that "Menzel is lurking about."

He was known to interrupt an important gathering by pulling out his sketchbook, sharpening his pencil, casting an eye around the room, and focusing on a coat, a chair, or a hand. This sometimes brought the proceedings to a halt until he finished. He preferred to draw people unawares, often catching them in unflattering moments of eating, gossiping, or dozing. Once his friend Carl Johann Arnold awoke from a nap to find the artist busily drawing his portrait. "You just woke up five minutes too early," Menzel told him.

Menzel's long life spanned most of the nineteenth century. His drawings filled over 100 sketchbooks and thousands of individual pages. "They are my memories," he said. "They contain things that are extremely personal to me." Rarely seen by other artists during his lifetime, his drawings came fully to light only after his death. At his memorial exhibition there were thousands of drawings displayed together with paintings and other works. Among his admirers was Edgar Degas, who attempted to copy some of his works from memory. According to Max Liebermann, Degas considered Menzel to be the greatest living artist. But today Menzel's drawings are not well known outside of Germany.

This book redresses that problem by presenting a sampling of Menzel's drawings from the bountiful German archives of the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin and the Museum Georg Schäfer. Some of Menzel's finest graphic works appear in this volume. Many others have never before been reproduced. The focus is on works in dry media and water-based paint, including drawings, engravings, pastels, watercolors, and gouaches (opaque watercolor), leaving aside only his oil paintings, which are more frequently reproduced.

MENZEL'S BEGINNINGS

Menzel was born in 1815 in Breslau, Germany. His father, a lithographer, moved the family to Berlin in 1830. His father's death in 1832 forced young Menzel, just sixteen years old, to take over the family lithography workshop in order to support his mother and his younger sister and brother.

Despite these obligations, Menzel managed to attend classes at the Berlin Academy of Art, making drawings from plaster casts of antique statues. But he became disenchanted with the education available there. At a perspective class, he felt too much time was spent on unimportant issues. Instead, he asked a renowned architect to explain the principles, which he completely absorbed in just a few days. He had no objection to the rigid demands of the academic curriculum. Such work had its place, but he preferred to apply his close observation to real objects in the world around him. Later, when asked by art students about the value of drawing from plaster casts, he wrote, "alles Zeichnen ist nützlich, und Alles zeichnen auch" ("All drawing is useful, and to draw everything as well.")

Menzel stubbornly taught himself how to draw and paint. He made his own study of the old masters, developing a particular fondness for Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt van Rijn. Menzel once said "Our task is now to do in our time what this Phoenix [Dürer] did in his own." He especially admired their honest portrayal of commonplace subjects. "Your everyday surroundings should be studied best and most thoroughly," Menzel said. "Those are the lines on which Art in former times proceeded to glory."

As a commercial printer, he threw himself into the task of producing decorative illustration work, such as menus, letterheads, greeting cards, and invitations. Anyone else might have written off such jobs as menial. For Menzel, to produce anything less than a sincere effort would be to "throw one's cake in the water." He told admiring students that it was essential to do justice to every assignment, and to accept everything as a genuine artistic challenge. "You will then cease at once to consider anything unworthy of your powers," he said.

ROYALTY AND HISTORY

In 1839 he accepted an assignment to produce 378 woodcut illustrations for Franz Kugler's history of Frederick the Great (1712–1786), a project that took him nearly four years. He thoroughly researched the life and times of the Prussian ruler and military leader. His illustrations showed a psychological penetration and a creative verve that have made them classics of the art of illustration. Not satisfied with thestandard of the French wood engravers usually employed for such work, he built up his own team of engravers, who established a high standard of craftsmanship. Frederick was a subject that was to occupy him for many other works, including the famous oil painting The Flute Concert.

In 1861 he was commissioned to paint the Coronation of William I in Königsberg. This large oil was his most ambitious single work, four years in the making. The painting garnered him honors and acceptance into high society. The preparatory work involved individual studies from life (Plates 13–15 and 17) to inform the 132 portraits that appear within the painting. These studies were made in pencil and gouache on toned paper directly from models dressed in their proper costumes. Even the king himself posed with a sword upraised. A few subjects, such as the queen, declined to pose. Others were unavailable or had died. For those, he reluctantly relied on photographs.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND IMPRESSIONISM

Menzel rejected the use of reference photography unless it was absolutely necessary. The use of photography "is diametrically opposed to my belief in the responsibility of the artist to art and his self-confidence; and even the continuation of such a method must necessarily lead to the loss of discipline in certain important powers of the eyes, the hand, the memory, and the imagination concerning animated nature."

Such attitudes may have seemed old fashioned to many of Menzel's contemporary artists, who by the late nineteenth century were beginning to rely on photography's documentary powers. In fact, Menzel was keenly interested in the new invention. Starting in 1864 his brother Richard ran a successful photography business, which produced reproductions of Menzel's work. After Richard's death, Menzel advised his sister-in-law in the running of the business. According to Max...