Note: An art historian from Utrecht University working on her master’s degree in art history alerted me to the existence of another accomplished artist in my family tree, Gertrude “Traute” Steinthal. Born in Berlin in 1868, she began her artistic career there before moving to Paris in 1899 during the Belle Époque era. She died in 1906 when she appeared to be on the verge of attaining recognition. She seems to have specialized in painting portraits of German-Jewish social elites, though any surviving works are likely to be in private collections and difficult to locate.
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Possessing no musical, judicial, medical, stomatological, nor artistic skills which abound in my family tree, I’m always fascinated when I find yet another closely related ancestor endowed with such deftness. I learn about such individuals sometimes through my own research, other times through the contribution of readers. The subject of the current post is Gertrude “Traute” Thomine, née Steinthal, whose mother was Jenny Bruck, one of my great-great-aunts. I learned about Traute from Brianah “Bri” Lee, an art historian working on her master’s degree in art history at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. I’d never previously heard of Traute Steinthal.
As Bri initially explained, she was the daughter of Jenny Bruck (1835-1902) and Gustav Steinthal (1825-1895). Jenny was the younger sister of my great-grandfather Fedor Bruck (1834-1892). (Figure 1) Jenny (Figure 2) and Fedor were among my great-great-grandfather’s Samuel Bruck’s eldest children. Samuel (1808-1863) (Figure 3), to remind readers, was the original owner of my family’s hotel/restaurant in Ratibor (today: Racibórz, Poland), the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. For frame of reference, Traute was my first cousin two times removed, though this is of scant import.
Bri Lee first came across Traute Steinthal while doing preliminary research on the Union des Femmes Peintres et Sculpteurs, Union of Women Painters and Sculptors, and learned she’d exhibited with them from 1903-1906. Taken by her intriguingly titled works, she decided to further investigate and quickly realized that, while very talented, not only had she never heard of Traute but no one else had either. As Bri put it to me, “I quickly realized that she was a successful painter and sits at a pivotal intersection of Belle Époque history. Then I found a photograph of her (Figure 4), and a sketch, and I knew I had to complete this research.” (personal communication) Bri also found low resolution photographs/illustrations of two of Traute’s paintings (Figures 5-6) and an enhanced copy of her signature. (Figure 7)
Like most people who contact me these days, Bri found me through my blog. She reached out while I was in Europe preparing to fly to Paris dealing with another accomplished family artist, my father’s first cousin Fedor Löwenstein. As I reported in Post 189, I traveled to Paris to retrieve three paintings confiscated from him by the Nazis at the Port of Bordeaux in December 1940 and shipped to the Jeu de Paume in Paris. The three paintings, among 25 seized by the Nazis, survived the Nazi rampage to destroy so-called degenerate art.
Having already collected a lot of information about Traute before finding me, Bri hoped I could fill in her biography and help locate any surviving images of the artist and her artworks. She is particularly eager to locate a portrait of Jenny Bruck painted by her daughter in 1892 and find any documents that might be preserved within the family. Having previously been unaware of Traute, I was unable to assist in this regard.
While Traute was born in Berlin in 1868, she relocated to Paris around May 1899, according to Bri, likely with her mother Jenny. In October 1899, she got married in Paris to Alexander Edmond Thomine in Paris, familiarly called “Edmond,” an engineer and the Director of the French affiliate of the Babcock & Wilcox company. Knowing I would be meeting with representatives of the French Ministry of Culture and Paris’ Musee d’art et d’histoire Judaïsme (mahJ) and aware of Traute’s connection to Paris, I asked several art historians I know if they’d ever heard of her.
David Zivie (Figure 8), my contact at France’s Ministry of Culture and the chef de la Mission de recherche et de restitution des biens culturels spoliés entre 1933 et 1945, Head of the Mission for Research and Restitution of Cultural Property Looted between 1933 and 1945, graciously undertook a search through the archival databases he has access to. David found and sent me Traute and Edmond’s 1899 marriage certificate (Figure 9); a marriage announcement from Le Figaro dated the 17th September 1899 (Figure 10); Traute’s February 27, 1906, death certificate (Figure 11); a death announcement from Le Figaro dated the 28th February 1906 (Figure 12); and another death announcement in La Vérité dated the 2nd of March 1906. (Figure 13) David also sent me information on the sale of three of Traute’s oil paintings from artprice.com (Figure 14), a database of art market information with a coverage of more than 700,000 artists of fine art with over 30 million auction results. While this was new to me, Bri had already found all this information.
Quoting from one of Bri’s emails, below is some of what she’s learned about Traute Steinthal:
“There are a handful of contemporaneous profiles written about Edmond available on Gallica and RetroNews, two of which speak to Traute. It seems she was well respected socially in her time, and from what I can garner, connected to Jewish and German communities even after her move to France. Strikingly, she is recorded in public registry books as a painter even after her marriage- something that speaks to her professionalism and dedication, as well as, perhaps, her relationship to her husband. In fact, from the little I can gather, it does seem as though they were a good pair, with Edmond supporting her artistic practice, attending society events with her, and likely, connecting her to French artists who would eventually nominate her to the Société des Artistes Français. Sadly, she would exhibit her most works, and be accepted to this society, only a month before her death. Her obituary notes she was 38, however, if her birth date of 1 May 1868 is correct, then she would have been only 37 years old. I managed to identify a few days ago that she is buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery. To my understanding, Traute never had children.
As of right now, I have a fairly clear timeline of public events from 1892 to her death in 1906, simply by tracking the digitized newspapers and periodicals that speak to her. However, her time studying is still very vague, as is, of course, her personal experience of it all. I am hoping as I continue my research to be able to piece together her early life, her time studying art, her experience as a German Jew, then as both German and a Jew in France (the Franco-Prussian War had done much to make relations between both nationalities difficult, then to add on rising antisemitism, as well as the hardship for her simply as a woman painter of the time…). I am also attempting to find as many images as possible of her works and hopefully locate a handful that remain in private collections- though this is undoubtedly the hardest part of this research journey. Given she painted portraits of many German-Jewish social elites, I fear that many works from before her move to France are likely lost.”
In closing, I would add that given the unexpected success I’ve achieved over the years uncovering information about the subjects of my blog posts and finding descendants of some, I hold out hope that a reader may stumble on this post and add to what is known about Traute Steinthal. This would indeed validate Bri Lee’s valiant efforts.
