Dear lilacrose,
Thank you very much for remembering me. Here is what I originally
wrote as an answer to your question:
After a long time of research in printed and online sources, I have
both good and bad news for you.
The good news first: I finally managed, with the help of a person
experienced in reading handwriting, to decipher the signature in the
lower left corner of the picture. It reads the following:
"Heinr. Wetteroth München gdr."
- "Heinr." is an abbrevation for the German given name "Heinrich".
- "Wetteroth" is a surname.
- "München" is the German city Munich.
- "gdr." is an abbrevation of "gedruckt" - "printed".
When I was able to read the signature, I did further research and
found out that the company "Heinrich Wetteroth" was a printshop in
Munich, in business at least between 1910 and 1925, possibly as early
as 1860. They were specialized in making high quality reproductions of
artist's original drawings as engravings, both as single artprints and
for use in books. "Heinr. Wetteroth München gdr." was their copyright
notation; it is also mentioned several times in an online source, a
Polish website on printed art:
Arkadiusz Dobrzyniecki: SLEZANSKIE KRAJOBRAZY, 2000
http://www.oss.wroc.pl/dobrzyniecki/dobrzyniecki.html
So now it is clear that the left signature does not refer to the
artist, but to the printshop that was responisble for reproduction.
This also means, it can't be an original ink drawing. No artist would,
on an original work, mention a printshop. But it is a reproduction of
a quality so high that one could believe it was a drawing.
Now to the bad news. I also found the artist's name. It is the small
signature in the lower right corner. If you look closely, you will
find the following there:
"p. Prötz No. VI"
- The "p" stands for Latin, "pinxit" - "painted"
- "Prötz" is, without any doubt, the artist's surname
- "No. VI" indicates that the prints of this drawing were individually
signed and numbered by the artist, so this is the 5th print of an
unknown, but most likely small number.
Unfortunately, there is not the slightest trace of this Prötz. I
consulted several German multi-volume art dictionaries, some from the
era the print dates from (I used fashion books to find out that the
woman on the left is dressed in a manner that fits with the years
1905-1912). But an artist named Prötz is not mentioned anywhere.
Under this circumstances, it is most probable that he (or she) was
either an artist of extremely limited, local prominence; or that Prötz
was not an artist at all but a private person who drew pictures as a
pure amateur and had money enough to have his pictures reproduced in
small numbers by a professional printshop, maybe for giving them as
personal presents to friends. So there is almost no hope of ever
discovering more on the person who created this street scene.
I sincerely regret that there is no better information anywhere.
Best regards,
Scriptor
Search terms used:
"heinr wetteroth"
://www.google.de/search?q=%22heinr+wetteroth%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=de&meta=
"wetteroth münchen"
://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&q=%22wetteroth+m%C3%BCnchen%22&meta=lr%3Dlang_de
"h wetteroth"
://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&q=%22h+wetteroth%22&meta=lr%3Dlang_de
"heinrich wetteroth"
://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&q=%22heinrich+wetteroth%22&meta=lr%3Dlang_de
prötz
://www.google.de/search?q=pr%C3%B6tz&hl=de&lr=lang_de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&start=0&sa=N
Additional source:
ZVAB - German Central Database of Antique Books
http://www.zvab.com/
Hope this is helpful!
Best regards,
Scriptor |
