Emil Block German 1884-1966
The Flying Dutchman, c.1920s

£1,450

Gouache on paper
Signed with artist’s monogram (lower right)
46cm × 36cm (65cm × 54cm framed)

Emil Block completed an apprenticeship as a painter in Leipzig, then working in the studio of church painter Richard Schultz until 1904 and in the studio of Richard Hesse between 1913 and 1945. He painted murals for restaurants and cafés, designed stained glass windows, and carried out various types of restoration work. He taught himself to paint portraits, figurative subjects, landscapes, and still lifes. Block increasingly worked as an oil and watercolor painter and as a draftsman. He painted portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and animal pictures, as well as allegorical and mythological scenes. This work definitely has a homoerotic flavour, with the Flying Dutchman heroically standing on the bow of his vessel draped only on a cloak, and a naked oarsman in the foreground, possibly fleeing the scene.