Wilhelm Fritzel

Wilhelm Fritzel was an exact observer

Wilhelm Fritzel was born in Hamburg on 16 October 1870. He studied at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf from 1892 to 1895 with Hugo Crola, Peter Janssen, Olof Jernberg, Arthur Kampf and Adolf Schill, and was a master pupil of Eugen Dücker’s landscape class from 1894 to 1895. He found his artistic calling for landscape painting early on, with the Lower Rhine offering him most of his motifs. Wilhelm Fritzel also painted animals and other figures and felt connected to the Düsseldorf School of Painting his whole life, a situation which regularly led him to the Eifel. He was considered an exact observer who captured his motifs in an almost documentary manner but also avoided any static or monotonous feeling by the use of a strong colour scheme and a strikingly vivid depiction of the sky. Although Fritzel was extraordinarily productive, his choice of motifs was rarely repeated, and his paintings display a high degree of autonomy. 

A permanent fixture of the Düsseldorf art scene 

In the development of his painting style, Wilhelm Fritzel followed modern Düsseldorf models such as Heinrich Hermanns, Helmuth Liesegang and Eugen Kampf, but above all his teacher Olof Jernberg. Just like these trailblazers of Düsseldorf Impressionism, Wilhelm Fritzel also greatly valued the graphic elements of his pictures which were reflected in a careful structuring of the composition. In terms of contacts, he cultivated an artistic friendship with his fellow Düsseldorf painter Karl Wilhelm Dahl from the 1890s. Successful exhibitions in Vienna (1910), Barcelona (1911) and Düsseldorf (1911) brought Wilhelm Fritzel prizes and awards. He was a member of the Verein der Düsseldorfer Künstler (VdDK, Association of the Düsseldorf Artists) and sat for a time on the board of directors of the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (now the Alte Kunsthalle). 

Wilhelm Fritzel died in Ohrensen near Stade in 1943.