Rudolf Tewes, “Self-Portrait”, 1906, Oil on Canvas
Rudolf Tewes, born on September 3 of 1879, was the son of a respected merchant and consul. He studied at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, one of the oldest and most prestigious academies in Munich..After 1904, Tewes toured extensively in Italy, Spain, France and South America. He resided in Paris from 1919 to 1927, moving once again to become a resident of Berlin and a member of the Berlin Secession, a part of German Modernism and an alternative to the existing art conventions.
Tewew intensely studied the paintings of Vincent van Gogh. His self-portrait, seen above, was exhibited for the first time under an exhibition held by the Berlin Secession and clearly showed Van Gogh’s influence upon Rudolf Tewes. The parallels in the brushwork, choice of color and picture object led to a joint presentation of twenty Tewes paintings with seven paintings by Van Gogh in 1910 in the Kunsthalle Bremen, an atrt museum exhibiting French and German art from the 1800s to the 1950s.
In 1913 the Kunsthalle Bremen acquired Tewes’s “Self-Portrait” as a gift from the gallery association. Tewes moved to Bremen in 1939, living there until his death in 1965. The Bremen Kunsthalle dedicated a special exhibition to Rudolf Tewes in 2000 entitled. Rudolf Tewes- A Painter under the Late Impresssionism”.