Otto Frölicher

Path in the Countryside

Otto Viktor Frölicher (5 June 1840 in Solothurn – 2 November 1890 in Munich) was a Swiss landscape painter.

Life

His father worked for the local government. In 1859, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, and became a student of landscape painting under Johann Gottfried Steffan.[1] Four years later, he moved to Düsseldorf, where he came under the influence of Oswald Achenbach.[2] After going home to Solothurn, he found that he was unable to earn a living as a painter there and returned to Munich and discovered a new influence, Adolf Heinrich Lier.[1] In 1876, he travelled to Paris on the recommendation of Lier, but was not able to adapt to big city life and, a year later, returned to Munich which, at that time, had barely 200,000 people.

He was a member of several major artists' associations and served as a judge for exhibitions at the Glaspalast. Also, he was chairman of an organization devoted to the interests of Swiss artists residing in Munich.[2]

At the age of thirty-nine, he suffered a bout with diphtheria, which left him in permanent ill-health. Later, he was diagnosed with cancer.[1] Contemporary sources, however, give his cause of death as a "groin disease" (contracted while painting in the wild?) that led to jaundice.[2]

Selected paintings

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Frölicher, Otto". SIKART dictionary and database.
  2. 1 2 3 M. Gisi (1904), "Frölicher, Otto", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB) (in German), 49, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 177–179

Further reading

  • Roswitha Hohl-Schild: Otto Frölicher. Ein Schweizer Maler des 19. Jahrhunderts auf der Suche nach seiner Landschaft. Graduate thesis, University of Zürich, 1987.
  • Hermann Uhde-Bernays: Otto Frölicher. Sein Leben und Werk. Biography. Schwabe, Basel 1922.
  • Gottfried Wälchli: Otto Frölicher 1840-1890. Biography. Gassmann, Solothurn 1950.
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