Gustav SÜS

Konrad Gustav Süs, also known as Süß (June 10, 1823, in Rumbeck, now Hessisch Oldendorf; December 23, 1881, in Düsseldorf), was a German painter, illustrator, and children’s book author. After attending high school in Rinteln, Süs studied at the Kassel Academy of Arts and later at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main under professors Johann David Passavant and Jakob Becker. To support himself, he wrote children’s fairy tales, which he illustrated himself. These tales received great acclaim and were partly translated into English and French. He also became known for his illustrations of the Swinegel-Hare story.

From 1848 to 1850, he painted studies and portraits in his hometown. From 1850, he lived in Düsseldorf, where he attended the Academy of Arts under Karl Ferdinand Sohn until 1851 and opened his own studio at Jägerhofstraße No. 13 in 1854. In 1861, his son Wilhelm was born in Düsseldorf, who also became an artist. In the 1870s, Süs lived in the house of the factory owner Müller at Schadowstraße 34 corner of Victoriastraße and moved around 1875 to the house on Rosenstraße 28, where he lived until his death.

In his paintings, Süs primarily depicted animals, mainly poultry. Many of his works, often rooted in humor, became widely disseminated through color prints and photography, such as the motifs “The First Thought” and “The Chick Sermon.” His images were sometimes accompanied by texts, creating illustrated fairy tales published in books like “Swinegel’s Travel Adventures” or “The Tale of a Nightingale.”

Among Süs’s private students were the German genre and portrait painter Hedwig Greve, the painter Maria Süs (presumably his daughter), who married the retiree Eduard Müller in 1881, and the Luxembourg portrait painter Thérèse Glaesener-Hartmann.

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