Oscar Droege, North German lakeside landscape with trees, perhaps circa 1960.
Colour woodblock print, signed in pencil in the lower right margin. Framed and glazed.
The printed area measures 23.5 x 39.5 cm.
The print has not been examined out of the frame. There is some visible foxing, which I request the buyer to observe in the images.
My shadow appears reflected on the glass. I was not able to avoid this.
Paul Oscar Droege (1898 to 1982) was a German painter and printmaker. He was born in Hamburg, but when he was a small boy, his family relocated to a beautiful town beside Lake Müritz. He received painting and drawing lessons as a child. As an artist, he was inspired by the magnificent natural scenery he witnessed around him.
He enlisted in the German army in 1916 and served in France and Russia. After the First World War, he studied at art academies in Darmstadt and Düsseldorf. He also studied under Professor Hans Kohlschein at the Darmstadt Artists' Colony and in the early 1920s met Professor von Kalckreuth, a painter and graphic artist, who inspired him to turn to colour woodblock printmaking. He was clearly influenced in his technique and stylistic approaches by the Japanese tradition of colour woodblock printing.
In company with his friend and fellow artist Werner Lange, he travelled and sketched throughout Germany, France, and Scandinavia during the late 1920s. His preferred mode of transport was his bicycle. Although he drew material from his European travels, he was primarily moved to portray his own North German coastal and lake landscape, for which oeuvre he is best remembered today.
He served as a soldier again in the Second World War and was captured by the Russians. He languished in a Soviet POW camp until 1948 when he was finally released. From 1950, he recommenced his European cycling trips, and resumed his printmaking in real earnest. At the age of 65, he moved back to Hamburg, where he died twenty years later.
