Der Marinemaler Geo Wolters (1866-1943)

Abstract

The marine painter Geo Wolters (1866-1943) was a native of Hamburg. He did not enjoy an academic education as an artist, but trained privately with the marine painters Hermann Rudolf Hardorff and Friedrich Wilhelm Schwinge. He was not only a painter, but also a very successful racing sailor who won a considerable number of international prizes. He is the only German marine painter to have possessed a license "auf kleiner Fahrt" (i.e. for navigation in the North and Baltic Seas up to 61° north and in the English Channel). Artistically, he was interested primarily in small ship navigation on the Lower Elbe. This is also the subject of a portfolio containing twenty etchings of the year 1925 - undoubtedly the most important work to have come out of Wolters’s studio. Yet he also devoted his attention to small ship navigation and the small harbours on the Lower Elbe in his numerous oil paintings. Wolters is known above all in Hamburg and on the Lower Elbe, where his paintings are often also traded on the art market. He did not leave behind a catalogue of his oeuvre.