Detlef Sammann
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609 DETLEF SAMMANN (1857-1938) was born on February 28th in Westerhever-Eiderstedt, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, and at the age of fifteen began a four-year apprenticeship with a local painter of interior decoration. Thereafter he traveled for three years in the Dresden area and worked under the court artist Lankau, a renowned muralist. In August of 1881 Sammann arrived in New York City aboard the S.S. Australia and worked for a year as a decorator before returning home.1 He had earned enough money to pay for a course of instruction under Wilhelm Georges Ritter at the Dresden School of Industrial Art.2 Two of his portraits, which were stylistically influenced by Rembrandt, were hung in the municipal museum in Vienna.3 On February 9, 1884 he married Anna Maria Bianka Schmidt, an Austrian native and a resident of Dresden. He returned to New York City with his wife and opened a studio where he created for the leading interior decorators elaborate designs with flowers. Their daughter, Katherine (Katie) Bertha Sammann, was born on September 10, 1884. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States on July 19, 1889 in Jersey City, New Jersey.4 His first American passport was granted October 4, 1889. At that time Sammann visited Dresden and studied tapestry painting in Paris. He returned to New York City in 1891 when he was elected a “manager” of the local Verein für Kunst und Wissenschaft, an organization of immigrant Germans who encouraged art and social reform.5 Later he became a co-founder of New York’s Albrecht Dürer Verein, a society that promoted industrial arts.6 He was also elected a member of the local Society of Art and Science. He received his second American passport on February 15, 1893 and visited Germany for four months. Back in New York City his submission for a competition to decorate a local courthouse was judged by the New York Times to be “a highly-finished and finely-composed design . by a very practical hand and carried out with the utmost care.”7 In 1899 the Los Angeles Times reproduced a demonstration painting of this mural.8 During Sammann’s tenure on the East Coast his tapestry paintings, which closely resembled the woven Gobelins of France, were included in the decorative scheme of the State Library and governor’s mansion in Albany as well as in the Frick residence at Pittsburgh. He decorated two rooms in the White House for President Harrison. The mythical scenes in the rococo dining room of Judge Hilton’s Saratoga mansion were among his famed productions.9 Due to his daughter’s delicate health he dispatched his family to Los Angeles in 1894 and followed a year later. Soon thereafter the Sammanns settled in Pasadena. According to the U.S. Census of 1900, his marital status was unchanged, but his second child had apparently died.10 The family resided at 200 West California Street and a “niece” was also in residence. At this time his studio was located on the Byrne Block.11 He was acclaimed in southern California with lengthy feature articles in the magazine section of the Times:12 . As a whole Mr. Sammann’s work proclaims the authorship of a great artist. It has that chaste and refined spirit which reflects true artistic instinct. It does not waver from the fixed purpose of subordinating the means to the end and accomplishes the highest attainable end in art, that of carrying the beholder beyond the material surroundings into the realm of spiritual cognizance, feeling and inspiration. In Los Angeles Mr. Sammann has met with success far beyond his expectation, . Some of his most beautiful designs are in private houses in Los Angeles and Pasadena. The large tapestry in 610 the music-room of W. F. Botsford, president of the California Bank, Manet and Monet . by breaking up color into its prismatic hues and the ceiling decoration in the reception-room, and the tapestry painted painting it without mixing. His three pictures of Catalina Island, painted in in the dining-room of the same building; the tapestry painted for the the morning, at noon, and in the afternoon, are fine examples of his staircase of H. C. Durand of Pasadena, and the decorations in the method.”34 In his second review in the Times Anderson marveled that “up houses of H. W. Hellman, C. E. Canfield, William Garland, J. F. to a year or two ago he painted in the orthodox way” and quickly perfected Francis of Los Angeles, and W. D. Ladd and D. F. Fenyes of the new aesthetic approach as exemplified in his Evening Shadows:”35 Pasadena, are perhaps particularly worthy of mention. one of the gems of the collection. Studied closely, The Los Angeles Times published his photograph and a drawing of one of indeed, it looks like a tray full of crushed opals, emeralds, amethysts, his angelic ceilings as well as a copy of the Durand tapestry painting.13 rubies and turquoises, placed upright against the wall. Note how Sammann was praised for the detailed allegorical compositions, baroque brilliant the sunlight is, as it lies on the oaks. Then see how the artist putti and decorative flowers in his murals on the ceiling and walls of Ralph got this sunlight by a careful juxtaposition of grays made so as to Granger’s music hall in San Diego.14 Most of these designs were “in the bring out the yellows and reds. style of the modern French renaissance.” At the turn of the century he was Sammann spent several weeks during the summer of 1911 in Carmel and so widely recognized as a master decorator that he was given an entry in exhibited at the Del Monte Art Gallery in the fall.36 Two of his 1912 the prestigious National Cyclopedia of American Biography.15 In 1900 he contributions to that venue, The Arroyo Seco and Near Banning Beach- moved to San Francisco where he was hired to paint murals.16 There he Catalina Island, were painted in southern California.37 registered to vote and gave his address as 1121 Scott Street.17 When On January 1, 1912 he opened a Los Angeles exhibition of Sammann applied for a passport to visit Germany in March of 1904 he sixteen landscapes at the Daniell Gallery and included several of his listed San Francisco as his “permanent residence.”18 On his application he noteworthy pictures of Carmel, “that place of cultural and natural was described as five feet seven inches tall with blue eyes, light brown hair, enchantment,” entitled Evening on the Carmel River, Sand Dunes near a bearded chin and fair complexion. He returned to northern California in Carmel and Gray Morning on the Carmel River.38 The latter canvas, which October of 1905 with his family.19 was painted on the same spot as the Evening picture but with a sky of As commissions for large scale projects began to wane, “silvery gray” and “hints of pale pink and lavender in the clouds,” had been Sammann painted and exhibited landscapes in watercolor and oil. He hung earlier in the California Club. That year he established a summer claimed that landscapes allowed for more freedom of expression than the home in Carmel. In December he displayed almost twenty paintings “full of “exact and severe” demands of figure work that was dictated by public sparkling vitality” at the Steckel Gallery in Los Angeles.39 He moved his tastes.20 One of his earliest shows was his 1906 solo exhibition of primary studio-residence to Pebble Beach in July of 1913 and became, watercolors at Blanchard’s Gallery in Los Angeles.21 The following year he according to the New York Times, a “notable” painter in the local art and his wife traveled to Europe, ostensibly “to spend the winter,” but stayed scene.40 At his new digs he received as guests several prominent painters almost two years.22 By October of 1909 the Sammann family had returned from the south, including Jean Mannheim.41 On Sundays he maintained an to New York and quickly resettled in Pasadena.23 There he established a open house for local visitors at his sea-fronted studio which he named studio at 337 South Lake Avenue.24 While abroad he had mastered the “Waldeck” because of its location in a forest.42 He contributed to the “iconoclastic” techniques of French Impressionism and along with Helena Peninsula Artists Exhibition in Pacific Grove in the summer of 1913.43 That Dunlap and Browning Smith helped to change the artistic tastes of southern year in Los Angeles he displayed Cypress Trees in Evening Glow at the California. Sammann continued to exhibit at Blanchard’s where in Fourth Annual of the California Art Club and several Carmel works at the February of 1910 he assembled forty oils and watercolors.25 In the Los Art Students League.44 In December the California Art Club exhibit was Angeles Times’ review it was noted that he “has followed the tenets of the transferred to the galleries of the San Francisco Institute of Art.45 Early in impressionists, . light and air, brilliancy and movement, . [are] certainly 1914 two of his Monterey Peninsula landscapes appeared at the Los found in such canvases as Before the Rain, Spring, Birch Trees, and Oaks Angeles Fine Arts Gallery in Exposition Park.46 That spring Sammann – one can almost hear the leaves whisper their sylvan secrets.”26 The became president of the short-lived Society of Monterey Artists and Times reproduced his canvas Birch Trees. Alongside his “modern” donated the prize money for its exhibition that year.47 His painting Wind landscapes were exhibited seven works by “Old Masters” which he had Swept Oaks was reproduced in the article by Josephine Blanch on the copied in Dresden.27 In her review for the Los Angeles Herald Elizabeth exhibitors at Del Monte.48 He was also awarded the first prize of one Waggoner declared that his exhibit at Blanchard’s “was so comprehensive hundred dollars for his Carmel landscape, Survival of the Fittest, by the as to give a fair measure of the ability and versatility of the artist” and she California Art Club.