Wilhelm Trübner

Trübner was born in Heidelberg. He was the third son of a silver- and goldsmith, Johann Georg Trübner, and his wife Anna Maria.Bahns et al. 1994, p. 73. In 1867 he began training as a goldsmith in Hanau, and met classicist painter Anselm Feuerbach who encouraged him to study painting. In that year he began studies at the Kunstschule in Karlsruhe under Karl Friedrich Schick. He was influenced by artists he met in Karlsruhe, such as Hans Canon and Feodor Dietz.Ruhmer, E. (2003, January 01). "Trübner, (Heinrich) Wilhelm". Grove Art Online. In 1869 he began studying at the Kunstacademie in Munich, where he was greatly impressed by an international exhibition of paintings by Leibl and Gustave Courbet. Courbet visited Munich in 1869, not only exhibiting his work but demonstrating his alla prima method of working quickly from nature in public performances.Forster-Hahn et al. 2001, p. 155 This had an immediate impact on many of the city's young artists, who found Courbet's approach an invigorating alternative to the shopworn academic tradition.

File:Trübner Balgende Buben.JPG

In 1870 he made the acquaintance of Carl Schuch and Albert Lang. In August 1871, the three artists painted landscapes together during hikes in Hohenschwangau and Bernried, where they met Leibl. In 1872 Trübner met Hans Thoma, another German painter who greatly admired the unsentimental realism of Wilhelm Leibl. Together Trübner, Schuch, Lang, and Thoma formed the core of the group of artists known as the "Leibl circle".

File:1876 Trübner Zimmermannsplatz am Weßlinger See anagoria.JPG

The early 1870s were a period of discovery for Trübner. He travelled to Italy, Holland and Belgium, and in Paris encountered the art of Manet, whose influence can be seen in the spontaneous yet restrained style of Trübner's portraits and landscapes. According to art historian Eberhard Ruhmer, "Trübner reached his relatively brief artistic peak between 1872 and 1876, during which time he made some of the most important contributions to the Leibl circle’s achievement and produced the most effective examples of what he called 'purist painting'" – paintings in which formal concerns take precedence over subject. His works of this period, such as On the Sofa (1872) and Carpenters on the Banks of Wessling Lake (1876), depict prosaic scenes with a somber realism and subdued color. Subsequently, Trübner attempted to achieve greater success by brightening his palette, and he frequently painted historical and literary subjects.

He published writings on art theory in 1892 and 1898, which express above all the idea that "beauty must lie in the painting itself, not in the subject".Forster-Hahn et al. 2001, p. 154. By urging the viewer to discover beauty in a painting's formal values, its colors, proportions, and surface, Trübner advanced a philosophy of "art for art's sake". In 1901 he joined the recently formed Berlin Secession,Bahns et al. 1994, p. 76. at the time Germany's most important forum for the exhibition of avant-garde art. From 1903 until his death in 1917 he was a professor at the Academy of Arts in Karlsruhe, also serving as director from 1904 to 1910.Bahns et al. 1994, pp. 76–77.

Trübner's paintings are in many public collections, especially in Germany, including the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, and the Neue Pinakothek in Munich.

File:1872 Truebner Auf dem Kanapee anagoria.JPG|On the Sofa (1872)

File:Wilhelm Trübner Silber und Rosen.jpg|Silver and Roses (1873)

File:1877 Trübner Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant anagoria.JPG|Great Dane with Sausages: "Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant" (1877)

File:Wilhelm Trübner Dantes Hölle.jpg|Dante's Inferno (1880)

File:Wilhelm Trübner Tod Alexanders.jpg|The Death of Pope Alexander VI (1883)

File:Wilhelm Trübner Gorgonenhaupt.jpg|Gorgon (1891)

File:Wilhelm Trübner Ermatingen.jpg|Ermatingen am Bodensee (1894), gouache on paper

File:Wilhelm Trübner Bildnis einer Ordensschwester.jpg|Portrait of a Nun in a Summer Garden (ca. 1900)

File:Wilhelm Trübner Karl Haberstock.jpg|Karl Haberstock (1914)

File:Wilhelm Trübner Aussichtsplatz am Starnberger See.jpg|Aussichtsplatz am Starnberger See (1911)

{{Reflist}}

• Bahns, Jörn, and Wilhelm Trübner. 1994. W. Trübner: 1851-1917; [Ausstellungskatalog, für das Kurpfälzische Museum der Stadt Heidelberg]. Heidelberg: Braus. {{ISBN|3894661216}}
• Forster-Hahn, Françoise, et al. (2001). Spirit of an Age: Nineteenth-Century Paintings From the Nationalgalerie, Berlin. London: National Gallery Company. {{ISBN|1-85709-981-8}}

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• {{Internet Archive author |sname=Wilhelm Trübner}}
• [https://www.kunstbilder-galerie.de/kunstdrucke/kuenstler-wilhelm-truebner.html Wilhelm Trübner Studien zum Frühwerk und Gemäldeverzeichnis, bgs artMedia]
• [http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15324coll10/id/71300 German masters of the nineteenth century: paintings and drawings from the Federal Republic of Germany], a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on Wilhelm Trübner (no. 96)

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Category:1851 births

Category:1917 deaths

Category:Artists from Heidelberg

Category:People from the Grand Duchy of Baden

Category:19th-century German painters

Category:19th-century German male artists

Category:German male painters

Category:20th-century German painters

Category:20th-century German male artists