What Gustave Doré was to a past generation Herbert Schmalz is to our own. But there is one obvious difference between the masters, for while the great Frenchman used his brush and his imagination almost exclusively for depicting sacred personalities and places, Mr. Schmalz covers a wider field. All that is beautiful and good in To-day appeals to him with as much force as the happenings of Yesterday. His pictures of fair women have been as well received as his Biblical subjects, although his name is invariably associated with those of religious interest, and rightly so.... — Harold F.B. Wheeler, p. 209
Schmalz's reputation crashed after World War I. Although Leighton and the Pre-Raphaelites had a resurgence of interest from the 1960s onwards, Schmalz has yet to be rediscovered. Hannah Lund's championship [see the "Brief Biography" below] might lead to his revival. — Shirley Nicholson
Close-up of Mary Magdalene's head in The Return from Calvary,
engraved in the Review of Reviews, facing p. 472.
Biographical Material
- Herbert Gustave Schmalz (1856-1935): A Brief Biography
- Studio Houses on Holland Park Road (where the Schmalzes lived first)
- 49 Addison Road, N. Kensington (the Schmalzes' second home)
Works
Bibliography
"Art Notes: Messrs Dowdswell's Gallery." Illustrated London News. Vol. 99. Saturday 7 November 1891, p.600. Internet Archive.
Blackburn, Henry, ed. English Art in 1884. New York: Appleton, 1885. Internet Archive.
Blakemore, Trevor. The Art of Herbert Schmalz. London: George Allen & Company Ltd, 1911.
Chester, Austin. "The Art of Mr. Herbert Schmalz." The Windsor Magazine (1895): 701-15. Internet Archive, from a copy in the University of Michigan Library.
Dakers, Caroline. The Holland Park Circle. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. [This paints an unflattering portrait of Schmalz, describing him as "flamboyant, ambitious," commercially minded and questionable in his attitudes towards women, see pp. 215-17.]
"The Return from Calvary." The Review of Reviews. Vol. 4 (1891): 472.
Schmalz, Herbert Gustave. "A Painter’s Pilgrimage," published in The Art Journal Vol. 55 (1893): 97-102. Internet Archive.
Wheeler, Harold F.B. "An Apostle of the Brush: A Chat with Mr. Herbert Schmalz." Good Words Vol. 47 (1906): 209-215. Internet Archive.
Created 28 August 2024