Georg Sauter

A hundred and twenty years ago Georg Sauter had an international reputation.  Born in Germany, England played a key part in his life but all was disrupted by his internment at the outbreak of the First World War.

From 1884 he studied painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.  To broaden his knowledge he made study trips to Holland, Belgium, France and Italy and next lived in London from late 1889 as a painter and lithographer.  Here in 1889 he married Lilian Galsworthy (1864–1924), sister of the playwright and novelist John Galsworthy.  They had a son, Rudolf Helmut Sauter (1895 London – 1977 Stroud), who was a painter, draftsman and graphic artist and illustrated the works of his uncle John Galsworthy.

Through Lilian’s family Georg gained entry to an artistic and literary circle which included the painters Hubert Herkomer, John Lavery and George Frederick Watts.  He also became close friends with the American painters Joseph Pennell and James Whistler, the latter’s influence being evident in his work.  Georg was most closely associated with Whistler in the 1890s, particularly in the context of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, being a founder and acting as Honorary Secretary during Whistler’s Presidency from 1898-1903.  Another bond between them was that both felt torn between their old and new home countries.  For Georg this both came to a head and was decided for him early in the First World War.

Georg had never become a fully naturalised British citizen.  Although he was married to an English wife, and despite representations made for him by John Galsworthy and other friends, Georg was interned as an enemy alien in December 1915 and was repatriated to Germany early in 1917.  He first went to Jena where he had support from a family he had met in England in 1906.  He lived in Jena until at least 1923.

After Georg had been interned in 1915, his family had never been permitted to visit him.  Later, in 1918, his son Rudolf was also interned until 1919.  Lilian’s health was badly affected by these events and she never recovered, dying in October 1924.  Following Lilian’s death, John and Ada Galsworthy went abroad, Rudolf and his wife Vi joining them in Merano and Georg in Venice.  Georg had never returned to England since his repatriation and had become permanently embittered against Britain by his experience.  There is no evidence that he attempted to either see or communicate with Rudolf again after the Venice trip.  In 1926 Georg married Valda Broad (who died in December 1937) and settled in Berlin.

The present painting dates to that 1924 visit to Venice.  Georg produced other views on a similar scale during his stay.

In 1938 Sir John Lavery wrote to Georg’s widow that he “did more to spread a knowledge of what was best in art than any man of his time”.