Seel, Adolf
Seel, Adolf
painter
born: 01.03.1829 in Wiesbaden
died: 14.02.1907 in Dillenburg
Seel was the same age as Ludwig Knaus, who was also born in Wiesbaden. In 1844, Seel went to the Düsseldorf Academy of Art and studied in the studio of Wilhelm Sohn (1830-1899). He specialized early on in architecture and genre painting.
He left Düsseldorf in 1850 to continue his studies in Paris from 1851. From 1852, he repeatedly spent time studying in Italy. In 1870 and 1871 he visited Spain, where he was particularly interested in Moorish buildings. He brought back oil paintings from the Alhambra, which still fascinate viewers today because of their precise, realistic painting. He chose ingenious perspective views of architecture as his motifs, which he enlivened with light and shadow. His travels took him to Portugal and the north coast of Africa. In 1873 and 1874 he traveled to the Orient. In Egypt and Palestine, he again devoted himself to detailed architectural pieces in oil, with and without staffage, and painted watercolors and gouaches depicting subtly executed characters from Arab folk life.
Seel received many honors. Among other things, he was an honorary member of the "Belgian Watercolorists" association. In 1876 he was awarded the Great Golden Medal of the City of Vienna and in 1878 the Golden Medal in Berlin for his paintings. In Wiesbaden, the Nassauischer Kunstverein e.V. organized an exhibition of oil paintings and watercolours in the town hall in 1907 after his death.
Literature
Fäthke, Bernd: Wiesbadener Maler des 19. und Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts, Wiesbadener Leben 9/1987 [p. 33].
Liesegang, Erich: Introduction. In: Nassauischer Kunstverein e.V. (ed.): Ausstellung von Gemälden Adolf Seel's, Ernst Oppler's und J. G. Dreydorff's, Wiesbaden 1907 [p. 3 ff.].