Biography
Robert Heinrich was a German painter and draughtsman known for landscapes, portraits and observational studies. Based in Berlin for much of his long career, he painted the city and its surrounding countryside for over six decades, inadvertently preserving a record of places transformed by Berlin's extraordinary expansion.
Born in Berlin in 1864, Heinrich received an academic artistic education and was evidently an accomplished draughtsman from an early age. A self-portrait dated 1884 demonstrates his interest in portraiture, while numerous surviving head and figure studies reveal a confident understanding of anatomy and character. An early drawing from 1883 bears his later professional stamp identifying him as an “Akadem. Maler” (academic painter) and giving his address as Rönnebergstrasse 16 in Berlin-Friedenau.
Yet landscape appears to have provided the enduring thread throughout Heinrich's career. During the 1880s, while still in his twenties, he began recording the semi-rural districts surrounding Berlin with remarkable specificity. Titles such as Alt Berlin (Am Krögel, die in der Spree befindliche Färberei, vom Mühlendamm gesehen) (1885), Alt-Schöneberg (1886), Wo heute das Rathaus Schöneberg steht (1886), and a natural study made beside the Lietzensee in 1888 locate his easel precisely within a city undergoing profound change.
These early works have acquired an historical importance that Heinrich himself may never have anticipated. During his lifetime, Berlin expanded at tremendous speed, absorbing villages, fields and lakes into an increasingly metropolitan landscape. Heinrich painted old farm buildings, waterways, tracks, factories and undeveloped land before many disappeared beneath streets and suburbs.
His approach was direct and observational. The words Studie and Naturstudie recur in titles and inscriptions, suggesting an artist accustomed to working before his subject. Even industrial scenes interested him. His Gaswerk bei Schmargendorf, painted around 1900, reduces the gasworks to a dark geometric silhouette beneath a vigorously handled, smoke-filled sky. Elsewhere, fields, woodland, lakes and distant buildings are described economically with increasingly broad and confident brushwork.
The countryside of the Mark Brandenburg became another recurring subject. Heinrich painted it throughout the seasons, producing numerous groups of studies depicting meadows, lakes, woodland paths and agricultural land. Works such as Herbst in der Mark Brandenburg, Kartoffelfeld am Lietzensee, Landschaft mit Erdhügel (1912) and Aufziehendes Gewitter (1914) reveal his fascination with changing weather, light and season rather than dramatic narrative.
He also travelled beyond Berlin and Brandenburg. A surviving oil study of Koserow on the Baltic island of Usedom is inscribed by the artist “Rob Heinrich / Studie / Koserow 1920”, while later works record the Blümlisalp near Kandersteg in Switzerland. Remarkably, Heinrich was still painting such subjects in the 1940s, when approaching eighty years old. Waldsenke mit kleinem Weg und Holzgeländer, dated 1945, demonstrates the longevity of a practice begun more than sixty years earlier.
Portraiture remained important alongside his landscapes. His surviving studies include elderly men, military figures and highly expressive heads, often painted with considerably greater freedom than might be expected from his academic background. A 1914 etched portrait identified as the artist's daughter has also appeared bearing old exhibition labels relating to the Munich annual exhibition of 1914 and the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung of 1917.
Heinrich died in his native Berlin in 1950. He became not only a painter of Berlin and Brandenburg, but an inadvertent chronicler of a landscape disappearing around him.
Lived In
Berlin
Timeline
1864
Born in Berlin, Germany.
1883
Produced a surviving landscape drawing, demonstrating his early interest in working from nature.
1884
Painted a self-portrait.
1885
Recorded old Berlin and the buildings beside the Spree at Krögel.
1886
Produced several studies of old Schöneberg, including the site upon which Schöneberg Town Hall would later stand.
1888
Painted a natural study beside the Lietzensee.
c. 1900
Painted the gasworks near Schmargendorf.
1912
Painted Landschaft mit Erdhügel.
1914
Painted Aufziehendes Gewitter and landscapes in Brandenburg. An etched portrait of his daughter is associated with the Münchener Jahresausstellung of this year.
1917
A work was associated with the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung.
1920
Worked at Koserow on Usedom, where a surviving oil is inscribed Studie.
1920s
Continued painting landscapes throughout the Mark Brandenburg.
1929
Painted Am Stadtkanal in Potsdam.
1932
Painted Mann in Tropenuniform an Zelteingang.
1942
Painted views towards the Blümlisalp at Kandersteg, Switzerland.
1944
Painted Klatschmohn.
1945
Painted Waldsenke mit kleinem Weg und Holzgeländer, more than sixty years after his earliest known studies.
1950
Died in Berlin.