Lot 226: SASCHA SCHNEIDER ENGRAVING

Rare Early 20th c. Wood Engraving by Sascha Alexander Schneider (German 1870-1927), "Feeling of Dependency", 1894. In frame under glass measures 15"21"x1". Weight 3 pds. Weight Rudolph Karl Alexander Schneider, commonly known as Sascha Schneider, was a German painter and sculptor. Sascha Schneider (1870 -1927) achieved mainstream critical and commercial success in turn-of-the-century Germany despite his work's striking homoeroticism. Appointed painting chair at the Weimar-Saxon Grand Ducal Art School, and a recipient of prestigious aristocratic commissions, Schneider was once a celebrated painter. Today he is practically unknown, even in Germany. If his name is mentioned at all, it usually is only as the illustrator of the hugely successful Karl May novels, a German adventure series set in the American West. Schneider was born in Saint Petersburg in 1870. During his childhood his family lived in Zurich, but following the death of his father, Schneider, moved to Dresden, where in 1889 he became a student at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. In 1903 he met best-selling author Karl May, and subsequently became the cover illustrator of a number of May's books including Winnetou, Old Surehand, Am Rio de la Plata. A year later in 1904, Schneider was appointed professor at the Weimar-Saxon Grand Ducal Art School. During this period Schneider lived with painter Hellmuth Jahn. Jahn began blackmailing Schneider by threatening to expose his homosexuality, which was punishable in Germany at the time. He was forced to resign from his prestigious post at Weimar University and flee to Italy, where homosexuality was not criminalized at that time. In Italy, Schneider met painter Robert Spies, with whom he traveled through the Caucasus Mountains. He then traveled back to Germany, where he lived for six months in Leipzig before returning to Italy, where he resided in Florence. When the First World War started, Schneider returned to Germany again, taking up residence in Hellerau (near Dresden). After 1918, he co-founded an institute called Kraft-Kunst for bodybuilding. Some of the models for his art works trained here. Schneider, who suffered from diabetes mellitus, suffered a diabetic seizure during a ship voyage in the vicinity of Swinemünde. As a result, he collapsed and died in 1927 in Swinemünde. He was buried in Loschwitz Cemetery, Germany.

good, light toning