Edmund Steppes

Edmund Steppes has made a name for himself above all as a landscape painter whose innovative style was already discussed by art historians during his lifetime. It is not easy to force his work into the corset of a definition. Both impressionistic impulses and explicitly conservative ones can be found in his pictures. Steppes soon became famous in the course of his painting career, exhibiting his works throughout Germany as well as abroad and moving among the most respected artists of his time. In 1953 he was awarded the Cross of Merit on ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany for his services to landscape painting. After his death in 1968, however, interest in the artist Edmund Steppes almost dried up. Only two larger exhibitions, in 1973 at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe and 1991 at the Passauer Oberhausmuseum, were, like the associated catalogues, the only revisions, as the biographer Andreas Zoller argues in his biography of Steppes, published in 2000.

On July 11, 1873, Edmund Steppes was born in Burghausen, Upper Bavaria, the son of the Royal Surveyor Karl Steppes. In May 1882 the family moved to Munich, where the young Edmund went to school and, according to his own statement, enthusiastically took advantage of the offerings of the art museums there. Perhaps also inspired by the atmosphere of the art metropolis of Munich, where numerous secessionist movements emerged around the turn of the century, Steppes sought training as an artist. In preparation for his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, he entered the private school of Heinrich Knirr (1862-1944) in 1891. Already in November of the following year the talented student passed the entrance examination at the academy. There he visited the class of the painter Gabriel von Hackl (1843-1926) and after only half a year of teaching he exhibited two landscape paintings at an exhibition of the Munich Kunstverein. In his biography from 2000, Andreas Zoller speculates that the remarkably early exhibition of his works, which was actually only granted to master artists of the Academy, had led to displeasure among the artist's professors and ultimately to his early departure from the Academy. On the other hand, the self-confidence of the young painter, whose nature probably corresponded more to that of an autodidact, could also be read off from this. Not least, in his 1907 book "Die deutsche Malerei" (German Painting), Steppes deliberately deprecated the current teaching methods in art, which in his youthful enthusiasm he had understood more as inhibition than as education.

Career of an autodidact

After leaving the academy around 1894, Steppes therefore continued to pursue art through self-study, to acquire the technical aspects of painting and to draw according to nature. Accompanied by his friend Heinrich Reifferscheid (1872-1945), whom he had met at the academy, he soon went on study trips to the Swabian Alb and Switzerland. The first landscape of these in particular was to become Steppes like the Allgäu a second home and a “painter's refuge“.

Reifferscheid also connected the individualist Steppes to a certain extent with the Munich Kunstschule and established contact with the painter Emil Lugo (1840-1902), who in turn became a contact point for him with exhibitors and customers, but not least also with friends and teachers. In 1895 Steppes was drafted into one-year volunteer service in a Royal Infantry Regiment to which he had signed up in 1891. Even before the end of the year, however, he was dismissed as unfit for service, handed over to the replacement authority and ordered for a new medical examination only in the last months of the First World War in 1918. Despite Steppes‘ willingness to pursue a military career as an alternative to art after finishing school, he largely escaped the military service.

In the years up to the turn of the century, Steppes was able to establish himself in the German art scene and continue to be successful in the following decade. Numerous exhibitions ensured the increasing popularity of the young artist, who was able to sell his works to state museums as well as to private clients. He had made influential contacts in the art and cultural life of the early 20th century. Trained and supported by personalities such as Henry Thode (1857-1920), Hans Thoma (1839-1924) and Karl Haider (1846-1912), he also maintained contact with the Bayreuth Wagner Circle, the Munich Kunstverein and the Munich Secession. He soon also began to take root in his private life by marrying Anna Huber (1876-1951) in 1903, who gave birth to his daughter Erika Sophie Eleonore (1904-1993) the following year. His artistic style, which at the beginning of his creative period had followed the conventions of landscape painting, became increasingly individual in the period around 1905. More and more his works were also honoured abroad. On the occasion of an exhibition in Heidelberg in 1906, Steppes was even made the main representative of the artistic youth, whose ideal was oriented towards the symbolist art of Arnold Böcklin and Hans Thoma.

Edmund Steppes, like Böcklin and Thoma, also studied Old Masters and late Gothic art extensively. In his art theory paper “Die deutsche Malerei“, he promoted the idea of orienting himself primarily on the Old German and Old Netherlandish masters. Especially the works of the artists of the 14th and 15th centuries were exemplary and showed the “essence“ of German art. In an autobiographical manuscript, Steppes tells us that even as a boy he was very happy to visit the museums in Munich and emphasises that the works of Matthias Grünewald (about 1475-about 1530) and Albrecht Altdorfer (about 1480-1538) were particularly impressive. In addition, he later referred to the lasting impression Grünewalds Isenheim Altar had had on him. He had been able to visit this marvelous piece of art during several stays at his uncles and friends Dr. Fritz Schmidtmüller and his wife Christine von Schleich in Colmar. Consciously distancing himself from the religious aspect of this work of art, the pictures of Steppes‘ clearly show an orientation towards the partly bizarrely depicted landscape with mossy areas and steep rocks.

Study of Old Masters

In the period after the First World War, which had also slowed down the art production of Edmund Steppes, until the early 1920s, the artist could not directly build on the rapid success of his early career. Rather, a period of saddling became apparent in his work, during which the relatively small number of paintings and, in contrast, a large number of student research projects emerged. Until around 1923, the artist dealt remarkably intensively with the medium of drawing and with detailed observations of nature. With a sensitive eye for even the smallest details, he transformed his impressions into mainly small-format drawings and watercolours. During the examination of late gothic drawings, the craft aspects of drawing also formed an ideal to emulate. While studying Wolf Huber's nature and landscape drawings (c. 1485-1553), he strove to achieve the highest possible level of understanding of drawing techniques and offered to make highly accurate copies. He paid particular attention to quillwork and even began his copying work with his own cutting of quill feathers, which were to come as close as possible to the medieval drawing instrument. In some cases, he also applied the paper over the entire surface or along its edges, giving the sheet some artificial signs of aging. In the course of his practical experiments he also drew on a technique by Martin Schongauer (1448-1491), who did not freshly study the botanical models for plant ornaments but first dried the plants and only sketched the solidified form. Especially in Steppes‘ drawings of thistles and mosses one can imagine the use of similarly prepared plants.

However, the majority of the drawings he has compiled here clearly speak the language of direct nature study. Individually highlighted flowers, especially the meadows, were drawn on site and show the plants in full freshness and firmly rooted. Steppes had already begun excursions to the Swabian Alb and the Allgäu during his short studies at the Munich Academy. The surroundings from Munich to the Staffelsee also offered him endless possibilities for numerous excursions, which can be traced above all in the sketches and studies made there. Not unlike the German Romantics of the 19th century, Edmund Steppes still roamed the predominantly German landscape with sketchbook and drawing material and captured the most remarkable discoveries on paper. Only the more elaborate watercolour paintings and the often remarkably precise final artwork were allowed to take place in a second work step at home. He mainly drew plants, areas and striking rock formations and experimented with different ink and ink formulations. Thanks to the exact dating of the leaves with the artist's characteristic calligraphic signature, the collection of the studies can be systematically compiled and examined for stylistic development.

Mystification of nature

Particular attention is paid to the almost animal or human-like tree representations. With their often seemingly anthropomorphic features, the gnarled and twisted tree trunks seem like monstrous creatures. Zoller uses the apt term “tree corpses“ to describe the beings, which often seem too grotesque to be drawn after nature after unaltered model. The influence of symbolism and fantasy, which can be found in Steppes‘ painting until the mid 1920s, cannot be deduced from a naturalistic depiction. In addition to direct observation, the draughtsman could also be accused of an almost moonily occupation with nature. It is precisely the influence of his friend Thode, who, not least through his characterization of German art as an emotional and nature-oriented counter-model to French Impressionism, also expressed the intellectual attitude of Edmund Steppes. Steppes himself regularly hosted meetings between 1919 and 1923 of a group of Germans who shared the enthusiasm for a modern Germanic nature religion and the mystification of nature.

Steppes, who was actually rather critical of religion and, according to Zoller, was mainly looking for the sociability of the group, did not allow himself to be infected by the religious claim of the “Nature Apostle“, but rather exchanged ideas about the mysterious, mystical essence of nature in painting. In contrast to the botanical study drawings of various meadow flowers, the tree figures express such a profound aspect of the flora without appearing overly religious. In his “Bekenntnis zur Kunst“ (commitment to art) Steppes continues to emphasize the experience of dreamlike experiences for his paintings, which would have been bestowed upon him through literature and music. It is precisely in view of such dream worlds as moments of inspiration that one might be able to explain the emergence of the tree creatures, whose form lies between intimate study of nature and dream formations.

While the landscapes, plants and rocks in Steppes‘ drawings suggest a close-up view of the artist, in which one can imagine him lying almost on his stomach on the ground in the spirit, the landscape sections show a sense for the perception of the natural space as a whole. Almost in extracts, but nonetheless with a far-reaching view, in some cases Steppes‘ landscapes, valleys, hill ranges and waters even have atmospheric dynamics. Thus, individual drawings give the impression of calm summer mountain landscapes, while others show strong winds and air movements due to rapid swings of the ink pen and the corresponding application of white hightening. As in the later light and cloud studies, a fleeting moment is recorded, which was certainly quickly put to paper with fresh memories.