3819 - Paul Herrmann, Oriental Scene

Paul Herrmann, Oriental Scene A young, scantily clad woman on a chaise longue, playing with a little monkey, with a servant playing music at her feet; a richly nuanced etching printed in dark brown on delicate handmade paper, circa 1900, signed ‘Paul Herrmann’ in lead below the image on the right, minimal signs of ageing, framed under a passe-partout and behind glass, passe-partout dimensions approx. 45.5 x 37.5 cm. Artist information: actually Paul Lorenz Otto Heinrich Herrmann, also known as Henri Héran, German painter and printmaker (1864, Munich - 1940, Berlin), grew up in the circle of his uncle Paul Heyse, intended to study architecture, took painting lessons in secret and fell out with Heyse, later a pupil at Max Ebersberger’s painting school and, for two years, a pupil of Ferdinand Barth; briefly enrolled at the Munich Academy in 1883; later worked as a panorama painter and restorer of frescoes in Bavaria and Swabia; subsequently spent several years in New York and Chicago (World’s Fair 1893), moved to Paris in 1895 and adopted the artist’s name “Henri Héran”, where he moved in the circle of friends around Edvard Munch, Strindberg and Oscar Wilde; in 1906, he moved to Berlin, where he created, amongst other works, ceiling paintings for the Adlon and Eden hotels, and worked for the magazines “Pan” and “Le Centaure”; received various honours, including the Berlin Golden State Medal and, in 1914, the Saxon State Medal as well as the Grand Honorary Prize of the City of Leipzig; member of the Association of Berlin Artists, the Free Association of Graphic Artists in Berlin and the Munich Secession, Source: Thieme-Becker, Singer, Dressler, register of the Munich Academy, records of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts in Berlin and the internet.