Carl Thiemann (German, 1881 - 1966)

And now we finally come to the inscrutable Carl Thiemann. Always quite hard to know quite what to make of this artist but here goes. He spent his childhood in Karlsbad or Karlovy Vary as it's known in Czech. The town was then a part of Austria-Hungary, an empire that ran from the German border only a few miles from Karlsbad to Brasov in what is now central Romania. That would have meant very little to Carl who lost his father at the age of eight. What that meant was that instead of becoming an artist, he had to study business and help support the family. Even so, by 1905, when he was in his mid twenties, he was a student at the Prague Academy.

He followed the conventional course, studying painting, etching and lithography but when he met Walther Klemm at the academy all that went out the window. Colour woodcut came into his life - so much so he has come to exemplify the central European woodcut artist, period. How did he get there? Certainly Emil Orlik was of profound importance. He had passed on the Japanese technique to Klemm and in 1906 the pair of Karlsbaders set up together in a studio outside Prague and began on a collaborative book detailing the backstreets and allies of the old town. (See the first image). Subdued, subtle, he concentrates on the cramped life of the everyday. Staying with the elongated image, he introduces pattern, light and water and finally sets sail.

By 1907, he was creating image after image, some realist in a Japanese way, others like the one below far more dependant on the stylisation of art nouveau. These are landscapes of atmosphere where nothing happens. A sail is lowered, someone has left a washing basket in the street, and that's all.

What does happen though is that, as the year progresses, his palette finally begins to brighten and he starts to make the images for which he is now so famous. 'Birch trees in autumn' is, of course, a classic image by him, extraordinary for the vivid concentration and play of light. Others were more daring but no one made the Secession look as natural as he did. And this may help to explain why the following year he moved to the artists colony at Dachau some miles from Munich. It had been founded in the C19th but Thiemann and Klemm were among a second wave of younger artists (the Berlin secessionists like Max Liebermann and Lovis Corinth being among the first) who had revitalised the colony.

Klemm stayed for five years but Thiemann married, built a house (see below) and got a job at the Munich Debschitz school in 1909. He certainly looked harder at the natural world and the landscape around him. But with a wife and family to support, I suspect the businessman he had had to become came into play once again.

Look at the way he adapts the wildly symbolist landscape of the Munich painter Franz von Stuck. He dumps the academic rigmarole and fancy-dress von Stuck loved and gives us uncomplicated image after image. Highly prolific, he worked in both colour and monochrome, producing cheaper unsigned editions detailing the woodwork of medieval Germany as well as the stark trees and glamorous boats that set the collector's heart beating.

He produced this snowy road to nowhere in 1909 and was elected a member of the Vienna Secession the following year. Basically, his career had taken off, with a very recognisable style and successful exhibitions.

Interesting as well to see what Klemm was doing at the same time. His 'Great Horned Owl' of 1911 has the sense of delicacy and living things that Thiemann never really has.

But Thiemann is the ultra colourist, quite able to describe this azalea in its pot, ready to hang on the sitting room wall. Klemm's art is an art of the mind, in the end; his friend appeals to the eye, he aims to impress (and he succeeds).

I have to say I particularly like 'Stream in winter' from 1915. He takes a suprisingly raw and painterly approach and very much succeeds in getting across the density of the air and the coldness of the stream. It is decorative and all tone but this is also the real frozen world of war-time.

He was still only in his mid thirties here, moving from the lyrical colourism of the early century towards the deco of the post war period. This print of an absurdly colourful lake is as elegant as Erte but less effortful. I still remember my amazement when I found 'Abend' below in a junk shop - the intensity of the colour, the deeply stylised horizon, the dishevelled sails. It is cold and unlikely as a dream but utterly desirable.

I think he knew this. It is the only print I know by him which he printed with a different colourway. It may well have been for the market (it was also sold by picture dealers in England) but there is also the sheer flair and joy of pure printmaking here. I have it beside me now and I assure you reproduction doesn't communicate its impeccable sense of scale or the daring of the raggedy keyblock or the depth of colour. My best buy ever...

I'm not sure in what order the tragedies struck Thiemann but both his wife and daughter met early deaths. Certainly, I've never seen any work later than his Venice pieces of the twenties but he was famous enough into war time. The Anscluss had taken place in March, 1938, followed by the Sudenten crisis in April, and the annexation of the Sudetenland in 1939. A 6oth birthday exhibition with over 200 exhibits was organised in his home town of Karlsbad in 1942 which was by then part of greater Germany (See map). It was a normal thing for German-speaking artists and writers to move between countries - I wanted to describe the way Orlik, Bormann, Leschhorn and Klemm all did this. It strikes me that Carl Thiemman did it with conviction.