7451 - Arthur Illies (1870–1952) – The Market Square in Pinsk, circa 1916

Arthur Illies (1870–1952) – The Market Square in Pinsk, circa 1916 Oil on drawing board, unsigned, small chip in the lower left corner. A colorful depiction of the market square featuring German soldiers in field gray uniforms; in the background is the Pinsk monastery with its monastery school. Painting dimensions approx. 42 x 40 cm, frame dimensions 51.5 x 50 cm. Illies catalog raisonné no. 1131. Arthur Illies, the son of a Hamburg merchant, began an apprenticeship as a decorative painter in 1886 and took courses in figure and animal drawing. Beginning in 1889, he studied at the Royal School of Applied Arts, and from 1890 onward at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. In 1908, he became a lecturer at the State School of Applied Arts in Hamburg, where he was given a studio in 1914. He was regarded as one of the outstanding graphic artists of the turn of the century. Although exempt from military service, in 1916 he accompanied the “Hamburg” Infantry Regiment (2nd Hanseatic) No. 76 to the front lines in Jablon and Pinsk in 1916 and captured the regiment in paintings that were exhibited in 1918 in the auditorium of the Hamburg School of Applied Arts. In 1926, the Hamburg Senate appointed him a professor, and although his dismissal from that position following the Nazi seizure of power was a great disappointment to him, he was nonetheless represented at the Great German Art Exhibition between 1941 and 1944 with six paintings. Condition: II -