Description
Emil Rieck *1852 † 1939
Untitled. View of the city
Execution: Oil on canvas
Date: around 1980
Dimensions: 49 x 66 cm / 57 x 74,5 cm with frame
Signed: signed lower right
Provenance: Original work from private collection
Condition: wooden frame minimally damaged at the side
Emil Rieck was a German landscape, genre and theatre painter. Initially, the young artist worked as an assistant painter at the municipal theatre in Hamburg.
In 1875 he became a theatre painter at the Albert Theatre in Dresden. In 1879, the later director Nikolaus Graf von Seebach brought him to the Royal Court Theatre, today’s Dresden Semper Opera House, as theatre and court painter.
As a theatre painter, Rieck created numerous and extremely valuable decorations for plays and opera. For example, he created an impressive stage set for the Richard Strauss opera Salome, which premiered on 9 December 1905. So it was no coincidence that other theatres were also interested in Rieck’s work, such as the Vienna Court Opera, for which he also created decorative designs. As an illustrator he drew for the printing and publishing house C. C. Meinhold & Söhne, Dresdens as well as created postcards for the Universal Postal Union.
In 1910 Emil Rieck gave up his profession as a theatre painter. Around this time, the artist settled in Moritzburg, where most of his landscape, animal and genre paintings were created. Today, Emil Rieck’s paintings are offered at numerous German and foreign auction houses. In addition, paintings by Emil Rieck hang in the Moritzburg town hall and in the house of Prince Alexander of Prussia.
