Gustav Bauernfeind

Gustav Bauernfeind (4 September 1848, in Sulz am Neckar – 24 December 1904, in Jerusalem) was a German painter, illustrator, and architect. He is considered to be one of the most notable Orientalist painters of Germany.

Education and early career
Bauernfeind's father was a pharmacist who converted to Catholicism from Judaism. After completing his architectural studies at the Polytechnic Institute in Stuttgart, he was in the architectural firm of Professor Wilhelm Bäumer and later in that of Adolph Gnauth, where he also learned painting. In his earlier paintings, Bauernfeind focused on local views of Germany, as well as motifs from Italy.

Painting the Levant
During his journey to the Levant from 1880 to 1882, he became interested in the Orient and repeated his travels again and again. In 1896 he moved with his wife and son to Ottoman Palestine and subsequently settled in Jerusalem in 1898. He also lived and worked in Lebanon and Syria.

His work is characterized primarily by architectural views of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. The oil paintings of Bauernfeind are mostly meticulously crafted, intricately composed and almost photographically accurate cityscapes and images of known edifices. In addition, he produced landscape scenes and watercolours.

Bauernfeind had a heart defect that resulted in poor health and eventually death by heart attack at age 56. His wife, Elise, died three years later.

Reception
During his lifetime he was the most popular Orientalist painter of Germany, but would fade into irrelevance after his death. However, since the early 1980s, Bauernfeind was gradually rediscovered, with his paintings appearing at auctions with high prices. Thus, his oil painting The Wailing Wall was sold at Christie's in London for the equivalent of €326,000 in 1992. The same painting would reach at Sotheby's in London the equivalent of €4.5 million in a later auction in 2007. In 1997, another oil painting of Bauernfeind, The Port of Jaffa, was sold at the Van Ham Kunstauktionen in Cologne for 1,510,000 DM, thus becoming the most expensive 19th-century painting ever sold in Germany.

Legacy
At his birthplace in Sulz am Neckar, the life and work of the painter is commemorated by the Gustav Bauernfeind Museum with a large permanent exhibition.



Select list of paintings

 * Castel Gandolfo am Albaner See, 1864 (Drawing)
 * Markt in Jaffa, 1877 (Oil painting)
 * Der Hafen von Jaffa, 1888 (Oil painting)
 * Straßenszene in Damaskus, um 1887 (Oil painting, 51 × 68 cm)
 * Jaffa, Einziehung der türkischen Landwehr in Palästina, 1888 (Oil painting)
 * Die Klagemauer, Jerusalem, 1890 (Oil painting, 130 × 101 cm)
 * Straße in Jerusalem (Oil painting, 109 × 82 cm)
 * Ansicht der deutschen Kolonie in Haifa, 1898 (Oil painting)
 * Jerusalem, Blick von unten auf den Felsendom (Oil painting, 109 × 82 cm)
 * Eingang zum Tempelberg, Jerusalem (Oil painting, 102 × 70 cm)
 * Forecourt of the Umayyad Mosque, Damascus (Oil painting on panel, 47 ¼ x 36 ¼ in. (120.8 x 92.2 cm.) Painted in 1890.)

Books

 * Die Reise nach Damaskus. 1888/89. Tagebuchaufzeichnungen des Orientmalers, herausgegeben von Hugo Schmid unter Mitarbeit von Otto Höschle, Tübingen und Basel 1996 (ISBN 3-7720-2163-8)