Hans Unger

Hans Unger
Selbstbildnis im Sweater, around 1899
Born	Carl Friedrich Johannes Unger August 26, 1872 Bautzen
Died	August 13, 1936 (63 years old) Dresden
Nationality	German
Education	Painting Class in the Royal Dresden Court Theatre Dresden Academy of Fine Arts Académie Julian
Known for	Painting Etching Drawing Mosaic Stained glass
Notable work	Die Muse Das Welken Mutter und Kind
Movement	Art Nouveau Symbolism
Awards	bronze medal at Paris World's Fair 1900 title Professor in 1904 bronze medal at St. Louis World's Fair 1904
Patron(s)	Friedrich Preller the Younger Hermann Prell

Hans Unger (August 26, 1872 – August 13, 1936) was a German painter who was, during his lifetime, a highly respected Art Nouveau artist. His popularity did not survive the change in the cultural climate in Germany after World War I, however, and after his death he was soon forgotten. However, in the 1980s interest in his work revived, and a grand retrospective exhibition in 1997 in the City Museum in Freital, Germany, duly restored his reputation as one of the masters of the Dresden art scene around 1910.

Unger was a portraitist and a landscape painter but his reputation stems from his paintings, most of them nearly life-size, of "beautiful women dreaming of Arcadia". In fact, it was always the same woman being portrayed: his wife in real life, his muse. Later, his daughter Maja came to share her mother's privileged position. The background to his "Arcadian woman" was quite often a pastoral landscape with high cypresses, a garden or a seaside scene.

In his work he was influenced by some important 19th-century and contemporary artists, among who were: Puvis de Chavannes ("beauty as religion"), Gustave Moreau, Josephin Péladan (the androgyne type), Fernand Khnopff (sphinx-like women, although Unger omitted the lascivious eroticism of Khnopff), William Strang (a British engraver whom Unger met in 1895 in Dresden, and later visited in London) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Other important influences were Edward Burne-Jones, Arnold Böcklin (especially his landscapes) and Max Klinger.

Hans Unger was born into a lower-middle-class family in Bautzen, in the Lausitz in the southeast corner of Germany near Poland and the Czech Republic. His father quickly recognized his son's artistic talent, but since he did not think painting would be a thriving occupation for young Hans, he sent him to trade school. This was not a success and quite soon Unger became a house painter (Anstreicher). In 1887 he took up a training position as a decoration-painter in his home-town. From 1888 to 1893 he was a student in the Painting Class (Malsaal) in the Royal Dresden Court Theatre.

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