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Karl Hagedorn
(1889 - 1969)
Village Street
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Karl Hagedorn (1889 - 1969)
Self-portrait with Pipe, c.1915
Oil on canvas laid down on board
Size:
Height – 53.5cm
Width – 46cm
Literature: Llewellyn, Sacha, and Paul Liss. Portrait of an Artist. Liss Llewellyn, 2021, p.324.
Exhibited: Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchseter, 1994, Manchester’s Modernist.; Pallant House Gallery, Chchester, 2018.
This self portrait might well have been inspired by Derain’s portrait of Matisse – an artist that Hagedorn much admired and whom he had contact when he moved to Paris in 1912.
Hagedorn exhibited widely – it is possible that this self-portrait, which shows the artist in his mid 20’s, was included in one his Salon exhibitions in Paris where Hagedorn was a regular participant: The Salon des Independents in Paris, (where he exhibited from 1912-24), and The Salon d’Automne in Paris, (where he exhibited from 1914-24).
Other possibilities include The Society of Modern Painters Manchester and The New English Art Club both of which to Hagedorn submitted work in 1916.Interesting 1915 is the year that Hagedorn married – it is perhaps tempting to link the extraordinarily self confidence of this self-portrait as his way of marking the occasion.
Painter, born in Berlin, Germany, who moved to England in 1905, later adopting British nationality. He went to Manchester in 1905 to train in textile production and also studied art under Adolphe Valette at the local Manchester School of Art and then at The Slade School of Fine Ar, followied by two yearss in Paris, in 1912-13, when, working under Maurice Denis, he absorbed a range of avant-garde styles. On his return to England, he made a consciously pioneering attempt to introduce Modernism into Manchester through his work as both painter and designer. He became a British subject in 1914 and served as a Lance-Corporal in the Middlesex Regiment during World War I.
He exhibited at the Manchester Society of Modern Painters, RA, RBA, RSMA and with the NEAC. In 1925 he received the Grand Prix at the International Exhibition of Decorative Art, Paris and in 1935 he was elected RBA. He exhibited at a number of leading galleries in London and the provinces, and was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists, the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, the Royal Society of Marine Artists, the New English Art Club and the NS. In 1995, the Chris Beetles Gallery hosted ‘Manchester’s First Modernist’, an important retrospective exhibition of the work of Karl Hagedorn organised in conjunction with the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. It was accompanied by an illustrated biographical catalogue. His work is in the collection of the Atkinson Art Gallery, BM, GAC, Manchester City Art Gallery V&A and the Wellcome Library.
With thanks to artbiogs.co.uk
