The Fritz Neumann trace was originally discovered by Simon : Fritz Neumann used the same paper stamp mark (posts which feature some detail photographs of the stamp mark are tagged ).

It’s not clear yet, what this mark means. It could be added by the paper manufacturer (not very likely since in some cases it looks like it has been applied after the printing process), the printer or maybe it’s a sign of the printing studio.

But as Simon already pointed out, this trace is quite difficult to follow, since there had been several artist with that name. This leads to some wrong attributions and age determinations. It’s save ta say that various unprofessional (dubious) art traders use this uncertainty to increase the age of their offerings and thus the price. They don’t even care whether certain things (like types of sailings boats) have existed at that time or not. Or if the work has been created after the attributed creator died.

The different Fritz Neumann’s

There are also some Fritz Neumann’s listed in the German Wikipedia , but the relevant ones don’t have entries. “Fritz Neumann (Bildhauer)” and “Fritz Neumann (Maler)” are born in the same year. The fist one is in the Thieme-Becker and Vollmer . The second one is probably our FN2.

To be able to distinguish between the work of our candidates we use a code (FN1 to FNX).

• Hermann Fritz Neumann (1858 - 1920) - FN1 - To old to be our one as well. Seem to have made etchings of dogs (Alsatian), uncolourised. Sometimes it seems that prints get attributed to him, that have been created by “our” Fritz Neumann: For example here is a small remark about a stamp mark on this page . Here is another one. The blind mark showing the Holstentor seem to be an (older ?) variant of the mark we are searching for.

  Even though this Fritz Neumann isn’t in either the Thieme-Becker or the Vollmer, there is an entry in “Brümmer, Franz: Lexikon der deutschen Dichter und Prosaisten vom Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zur Gegenwart. Bd. 5. 6. Aufl. Leipzig, 1913, S. 119 ”. But it’s related to his work as author.

• Fritz Neumann (1881 - 1919) - FN2 - To old to be our one, different style. Painter of battle scenes and cossacks.

• Fritz Neumann-Hegenberg (1884 - 1924) - FN3 - Also to old. Expressionistic artist.

• Fritz Neumann (1928 - 2014) - FN4 - Death note . A short biography is available in German. There seem to be a printed catalogue with some of his works.

  

  He is listed on the list of past exhibitions of the Kunstverein Nordenham (A city near Oldenburg in the north of Germany). And there are several hits if you search for him in the archive of the local newspaper of Oldenburg.

• Fritz Neumann - FNX - there indeed is another Fritz Neumann (1897 - 1984), who left not much traced behind, at least none that have made it to online searchable archives. See the blog article on a find in a newspaper archive .

Signatures

There are some signatures of some of our candidates available on the net. Note that wrong attributions, even by experts, make this assignments unreliable. Some additional samples can be found on the original blog entry .

• FN1: No clearly attributed sample yet

• FN2:

  

• FN3: Can probably be ignored, no sample yet

• FN4: No sample yet

• FNX: This is the signature we’re looking for:

  

  

  

  

Works by (some) Fritz Neumann’s

Some examples are posted on this blog and tagged as “Fritz Neumann” . This list isn’t complete and it won’t be. These are just to examples to distinguish between different styles

What we know about him

• Must have been active between the 50ies and 70ies of the 20th century
• Must have some affection for maritime subjects, maybe spend (at least parts) of his life near the sea
• By the current location of his prints he’s from Europe, maybe from the North of Germany

Other Ideas

• Maybe his real name isn’t “Fritz”, maybe it’s only a nick name, like for “Friedrich”. “Ric” could also be a nick name for “Friedrich”.