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Heinrich W Hansen |
| Birth Year : |
1854 |
| Death Year : |
1924 |
| Country : |
Germany |
Heinrich W. Hansen was born in Dithmarschen, Germany, and began his painting career in Hamburg, where he remained until 1876.
He spent the next year in London and then emigrated to the United States, to Chicago, to study at the Art Institute. In
1882, he moved to California and settled in San Francisco. His interest in western life led to several sketching trips to
various parts of the West. In 1901, at an exhibition of his paintings in San Francisco, his "The Pony Express", aroused
considerable attention. In general, his paintings proved very popular among private collectors during the early 1900's.
Principally a watercolorist, Hansen was especially given to painting horses. His work has often, and favorably, been
compared to
Remington's.
Hansen's work is illustrative, depicting lively figures set in
typical western settings of open prairie and purple
mesa. Whether in oil or in watercolors, details of costume are accurate, movement animated, facial expressions keenly
expressive and landscape touches bright and naturalistic. Hansen's understanding and love of the wild outdoors of his
adopted country helped to preserve landscapes and types of people in a kind of pictorial history for which we are all
grateful. By the time of his death, in Oakland, California in 1924, the automobile had replaced the horse almost completely
and the wide open spaces had begun to disappear.
"I can't work without a model. I won't say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true."
