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Old masters |
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Surviving documents, although far from complete, show how in the first half of the 1920's Hess increasingly receives commissions to produce copies of works from old masters in museums around Europe. The work serves not least to refine his ability for psychological insight in portrait painting. In this respect he may be called a modern Van Dyck; his artistic development followed a similar path and he finished by copying paintings of the Flemish artist. In the catalogue to the travelling exhibition of Rediscovery (Palermo 1974) the art critic Marcello Venturoli observed: "... Although he always painted with consumate professionalism, with complete awareness of the artistic context in which he was at that moment working - whether traditional or avant-guard - Hess never scorned, indeed found pleasure, in the sober manual work of copying on commission: from the old masters of the Flemish school to Veronese, Titian and Velasquez. Economic circumstances did not permit him to live from his own art alone, and he understood his art was also craft of the highest order. Art for Hess was both erudite and popular, craftsmanship and avant-guard experimentation." Thanks to letters and photographs in the possession of the artist's sister Emma Hess we have an idea of some of the paintings which Hess was commissioned to copy.
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 from Van der Meulen - Staatliche Museen Kassel (Copy carried out on commission by Christian Hess in 1923) – unknown owner |
 from Titian - Madonna of the Cherries - Kunstshistorisches Museum Vienna (Copy by Christian Hess carried out in 1923 on commission from the jeweller Karl Faas of Pforzheim) |
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Antonie Van Dyck |
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The German art critic Hans Eckstein writes of this period of Hess' artistic development in the catalogue to the travelling exhibition of Rediscovery (Palermo 1974): ..."After his studies were completed Hess had to keep busy in the search to make some money. In a jeweller in Pforzheim he found not a patron but a source of commissions for copies of old masters displayed in museums in Vienna and Florence ... He learned from the old masters but he reserved the right to find his own way of expressing form and colour which he found in nature. In the beginning much of Hess' painting is clearly influenced by the Munich school..."
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