Landscape, Louis Lejeune, 1900

Subject: landscape, water feature in forest

Substrate: oil on parqueted wood panel

Frame dimensions: 81 x 68 cm

Painting dimensions: 62 x 47.5 cm

Era: dated 1900

Condition: good condition see photos

Signed Lejeune lower left

Louis Ignaz Paul Lejeune (born February 10, 1877 in Berlin; died March 2, 1954 in Niederlungwitz) was a German painter.

Louis Lejeune was born on Wilhelmsplatz in Berlin-Charlottenburg. His mother, Thérèse, née Tomiček, was a singer, and his father, Jean Paul, an actor. Born into a Huguenot family that immigrated to Prussia in 1685, he attended the humanist Kaiserin-Augusta-Gymnasium in Berlin-Charlottenburg until his final year. At the age of 17, in 1894, he entered the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts, then directed by Anton von Werner. After attending Lovis Corinth's nude drawing classes, he joined Eugen Bracht's master class in landscape painting in 1897, until Bracht accepted a professorship at the Dresden Academy in 1901. Around 1904, he taught painting at the Academic School of Fine Arts (Akademie Fehr), founded in 1890 in Berlin, at 6 Nollendorfplatz.

From 1900 to 1943, he took part in all the major art exhibitions in Berlin, Dresden (1902 International Art Exhibition), Munich, Düsseldorf and at the Venice Biennale, presenting mainly large-format landscapes. His works were also exhibited by art associations and dealers, notably in Chemnitz, Leipzig and Prague. Lejeune also became a member of the Berlin Masonic Lodge.

On November 27, 1909, Louis Lejeune married Eva Bieler, the youngest daughter of a landowner, in Oliva (West Prussia). He moved into an apartment on Berlin's Kurfürstendamm. They had three daughters.

From 1915 to 1918, he served as a soldier in the First World War, starting in 1916 in Romania. On November 22, 1943, his studio and apartment at 6 Schleswiger Ufer in northwest Berlin were destroyed in a bombing raid. Until September 1944, he lived with relatives in Karlshöhe, near Neidenburg (East Prussia), before being deported to Niederlungwitz. His last address was 11b, Mühlenstraße. In 1946, he had his first exhibition at the Glauchau Castle Museum, his new workplace. Louis Lejeune died in Niederlungwitz on March 2, 1954.