Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Reconstructing a Creative Life
- Chapter 1 Beginnings, 1890–1914
- Chapter 2 Internment, 1914–19
- Chapter 3 Recovery, 1919– 24
- Chapter 4 Artistry I, 1924–39
- Chapter 5 Artistry II, 1939–50
- Chapter 6 Reflections, 1950–77
- Conclusion: Legacy
- Epilogue: In His Own Words
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 1 - Beginnings, 1890–1914
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Reconstructing a Creative Life
- Chapter 1 Beginnings, 1890–1914
- Chapter 2 Internment, 1914–19
- Chapter 3 Recovery, 1919– 24
- Chapter 4 Artistry I, 1924–39
- Chapter 5 Artistry II, 1939–50
- Chapter 6 Reflections, 1950–77
- Conclusion: Legacy
- Epilogue: In His Own Words
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In London of 1890, 26-year-old Blanche Lilian Galsworthy lived in 8 Cambridge Gate with her parents John and Blanche and her siblings: 23-year-old John, 21-year-old Hubert and 19-year-old Mabel Edith (Figure 1.1). One day, Lilian’s friend Frances Knight-Bruce visited the home accompanied by a handsome 24-year-old Bavarian painter named Georg Sauter. He had recently arrived in the city through the generosity of a patron of his promising artistic career begun at the Royal Academy and developed through work in various parts of Europe, including Holland, Belgium, France and Italy.
Frances had seen Georg in the National Gallery sketching Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne and was “struck by the excellence of the copy he was making.” She “opened conversation with him” and “soon became strongly impressed by his talent” and his determination “to stand on his own two feet and half-starved perhaps, but wholly indomitable [in his] fight for recognition in London.” Frances became interested to find him paid work, so she brought him to the Galsworthy’s home, hoping that the elder Galsworthy might let him paint his portrait.
The household into which Georg entered was “very ‘Victorian’ “ and likely had a “devastating effect […] on his art-loving eyes and soul,” beginning with “the vast conventional drawing-room [which] must have been a shock.” Therein, he saw “carpet and curtains […] of crimson velvet […] Buhl cabinets, white marble, consol-tables, gilt-edged mirrors, Dresden china ornaments, a Collard grand piano and water-colours by popular Royal Academicians.” At the same time, Georg likely made his hosts as “uncomfortable” as he felt in their orderly Victorian home, as he was
a somewhat uncouth figure […] clad in unconventional garments, but the head was striking…with rather long dark-brown hair, strong Wagnerian profile and keen blue eyes. He knew very little English as yet; but Lilian’s German was fairly equal to the occasion, though the translation of a philosophical work by Teichmüller on which, I remember, she was working at the time, was not, perhaps, the most useful preparation for colloquial conversation in homely German tinged with strong Bavarian dialect.
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- Information
- War and Peace in the Worlds of Rudolf H. SauterA Cultural History of a Creative Life, pp. 11 - 40Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2022