Herbert Gustave Schmalz 1856-1935

Newcastle, George Hughes;

Newcastle, Mawson, Swan and Morgan:

Private collection

Herbert Schmalz was born in Ryton-On-Tyne near Newcastle in 1854, where his father Gustave Schmalz had settled as a prosperous merchant and German Consul after moving from Dantzig in Northern Germany in the 1840s. Herbert's maternal grandfather was the famous marine artist John Wilson Carmichael (see lot 387) who had been captured at the age of fifteen and forcibly shipped off to the Peninsula War as a cabin boy were he developed his love of the sea.

Herbert's introduction to working life was less harrowing. At the age of seventeen he moved to London and enrolled at the South Kensington Art School and after a short time became a student at the Royal Academy where his contemporaries were Frank Dicksee, Stanhope Forbes, Arthur Hacker and Arthur Cope. After graduation at the Academy Schools, he studied at Antwerp before returning to London and settling in Kensington where he established a reputation as a painter of classical and exotic images of history and literature.

Schmalz lived for the majority of his working life at 49 Addison Road, where his neighbours were William Holman Hunt, Valentine Cameron Prinsep and Frederic Leighton, all of whom were fascinated by Eastern themes in their art. Kensington was the most fashionable of all artist colonies in London and the studios built by the more prosperous artists were among the most notable statements in Victorian domestic architecture. Schmalz large house and adjacent studio, were built by the architect John Simpson in the heart of the colony. He had formerly lived in one of the Holland Park Studios, opposite the home of his close friend and mentor Lord Leighton.

The influence of Leighton upon the work of Schmalz is clearly evident in Flowers of the Levant, which depicts a beautiful woman dressed in a costume of Damascus and in an Arabic setting with the striped marble walls which often appear in Leighton's pictures of this type. Leighton had painted several such images in the mid 1870s, including Old Damascus; Jew's Quarter c.1873-4 (private collection) and even more pertinent, The Light of the Harem (private collection). The later picture was one of Leighton's first depictions of the famous artist's model Dorothy Dene, who became Schmalz' mistress and favourite model. She was almost certainly the model for Flowers of the Levant.

Schmalz had met Dorothy Dene (her real name was Ada Alice Pullen) around 1887 and married her sister Edith two years later. Dorothy and Edith's mother had died in 1881 and her father had deserted the family, therefore the Pullen girls had made their own way in the world, on the stage and in artist's studios. Schmalz introduced Edith and Dorothy to a world of artists and they were persuaded to pose for those in Schmalz' circle, under the names of Edith and Dorothy Dene. Leighton's portrait of the younger Dene sister, Lena entitled Letty (her real name was Isabell Helena Pullen) was sold in these rooms, in June this year. Dorothy is the model most accociated with Leighton and appears in many of his most important works, including The Bath of Psyche, The Return of Persephone (Leeds City Art Gallery and Museum) and The Daphnephoria (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight). Dorothy also posed regularly for Schmalz, her demure beauty being perfect for his angelic maidens and priestesses, until her premature death in 1899, when she was only forty. The Flowers of the Levant is one of the most beautiful images of Dorothy, painted as an exotic woman of Damascus. We can well imagine her dressed this way at one of Leighton's costumed soiree's in his famous Arab Court, hanging from the arm of Schmalz and avoiding the eye of his wife.