Frank Simon Hermann (1866-1942) American, Serigraph. Titled diagonally on bottom left: "To Market To Market." Signed below title.

Provenance: Ocean Liner President Wilson, Stateroom #44. Depicts figurative Brooklyn cityscape.

Depth: 1 in.

Overall size: 25 X 20 1/2 in.

Sight size: 22 3/4 X 18 3/4 in.

#1508 .

Frank Simon Hermann was born in New York City in 1866, and in 1895 he moved to Munich, Germany. Creating work that branched Beaux-Arts Academic Realism into Impressionism, he was a founding member of two important groups of the German avant-garde: the Munich Secessionist Group, SEMA, that included his friend Paul Klee, and the New Secession of German Artists, led by Wassily Kandinsky. Hermann was also closely associated with Alfred Stieglitz, with whom he had gone to college in New York City and traveled with around Europe in the early 1890s. Early on Hermann used primarily gouache, and was dubbed “the tulip field painter” by fellow artists for his impressionist landscapes. After World War I he returned to the United States in 1919 and lived out the rest of his days in his family mansion in Elberon, New Jersey. He briefly traveled to Lake George at the invitation of Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe, who also encouraged him to visit California, Arizona and New Mexico. At age 61 he had a solo exhibition in New York City at Babcock Galleries. His primary representative was J.B. Neumann’s New Art Circle, and his work was usually grouped with New Objective painters that included Max Beckmann. Hermann had one daughter, Eve Hermann, who was an expatriate caricaturist. Very prolific, producing thousands of works, he often signed his work F.S. Herrmann, although tragically much of his art was lost between the destruction of the two World Wars. He died in Long Branch, New Jersey in 1942.

Location BF