930 - Friedrich Reimann, Lion in a Rocky Landscape, Modern Animal Painting

Friedrich Reimann, Lion in a Rocky Landscape, Modern Animal Painting (1896 to 1991), oil on hardboard, signed lower right, a male lion stands on sandy ground and looks to the right, the mane modelled throughout in warm brown and ochre tones, the body in a calm side view, the right half of the composition articulated by stacked blocks of rock in grey and violet, at the left a bare shrub before a wide pale plain, in the foreground individual tufts of grass and stones, condition commensurate with age, small paint losses and scratches, image 37.5x50 cm (HxW), framed, frame slightly bumped, frame width 3.5 cm Friedrich Reimann is among the most important German animal painters of the 20th century. Born in Mariaschein in Bohemia and resident in Zeulenroda in Thuringia from 1908, he studied at the Staatliche Akademie fuer Kunstgewerbe in Dresden and remained faithful to a realistic manner throughout his life. He became known as the principal illustrator of Grzimek's Tierleben and through large-format museum dioramas; in 1996 he was made an honorary citizen of Zeulenroda.