Emma Elwin

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Portrait of Emma Elwin, née Neussel, drawn by Luise von Martens (1828–1894). Graphite on paper, 1853. Private collection Germany.

Emma Elwin: On her way home. Oil on canvas, ca. 1870.

Emma Elwin, born Emma Louise Dorothea Auguste Neussel (* 1824 or 1825 in Hagenburg, Schaumburg-Lippe; † 4 November 1900 in Honnef, Rhine Province), was a German genre, portrait and still life painter of the Düsseldorf School..

Part of the female network of the Düsseldorf School

Her teacher in Düsseldorf was Karl Ferdinand Sohn, one of the central figures of this school of painting. She belonged to a network of his students that also included, among others, Julie Countess von Egloffstein, Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann, Luise von Martens, Marie Wiegmann and Clara von Wille. In the middle of the 19th century, this group of women gave the Düsseldorf School of Painting an innovative direction that was only recognised and appreciated a good hundred years later. While some of her fellow artists attracted a certain amount of attention and made a career for themselves during their lifetime, Emma Elwin's fate is more typical of a woman in the second half of the 19th century who, despite her obvious talent, was only able to escape the role constraints in which she was bound at the time to a limited extent.

Later life

Daughter of the bailiff Georg Friedrich Neussel and his wife Caroline née Hoffmeister, Emma Elwin married the British officer Robert Baker Elwin (1826–1881). The latter last served in the British Army with the rank of Lieutenant in the 3rd Montgomeryshire Rifle Volunteer Corps, resigning from that position on 15 December 1861. The couple had a daughter, Emilie Johanna (b. 20 June 1858 in London, † 1948); and a son, Seymour Clarke Jarvis (b. 28 October 1859 in King's Lynn, Norfolk).

By 1877 at the latest, Emma Elwin was living in Düsseldorf-Pempelfort. The address book of the mayor's office of Düsseldorf lists her for that year as the wife of Robert Elwin and as a resident of Pempelforter Straße 67; in 1882 she lived – still as a "wife" – at Feldstraße 70. The address book of 1887 lists her as Elwin's "widow" and at the address Rosenstraße 28. Her son-in-law at that time was already the Brazilian-born Swiss painter Robert von Steiger, who had married her daughter on 11 October 1882. When Emma Elwin moved to Honnef in 1890, but was still registered at Mozartstraße 13, her daughter and son-in-law lived there with their three children.

Elwin died in Honnef in 1900 at the age of 75.

Recognition

Emma Elwin worked as a genre painter in Düsseldorf, where she was represented at exhibitions of the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen from 1873 to 1877. She lived temporarily in Staines-upon-Thames near London, from where she entered an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1879 with a portrait and a still life. It may have been a portrait of her daughter, as it was titled Miss Elwin; the artwork was specifically praised as "interesting technically for the painting of blue velvet and other textures".

Today, Emma Elwin's works are mainly in private hands. They can also be found on the public art market.

Literature

Elwin, Emma. In: Ulrich Thieme (ed.): Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. Volume 10: Dubolon-Erlwein. E. A. Seemann, Leipzig 1914, p. 494 (Text Archive - Internet Archive).

References

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