Hans Thoma was born on 2 October 1839 in
Bernau,
Grand Duchy of Baden in the
Black Forest,
Germany. He was the son of Franz Joseph Thoma (b. 1794, d. 1855), a
miller, and Rosa Thoma (née Mayer, b. 1804, d. 1897), who came from a family of
artisans. Her grandfather, native of
Menzenschwand, was the great-uncle of
Franz Xaver Winterhalter and
Hermann Winterhalter.
Education Thoma was trained in the basics of painting by a painter of
clock faces. among others. Des Coudres had a major influence on his career. Thoma also studied under
Hans Gude, but rebelled against Gude's
realism. He completed his studies in 1866.
Years of wandering After stints in Basel and
Düsseldorf (1867–1868), Thoma traveled to Paris in 1868 with
Otto Scholderer. There, he was particularly impressed by the works of
Gustave Courbet and the
Barbizon School. Thoma then moved to
Munich, arguably the art capital of Germany at the time, where he lived from 1870 to 1876. In 1874, he traveled to Italy for the first time. At one point, he moved to
Frankfurt. In 1877, Thoma married the flower and still-life painter
Cella Berteneder. He traveled to England in 1879 and was scheduled to exhibit at the Art Club Liverpool in 1884. A second trip to Italy followed in 1880. Thoma was friends with
Arnold Böcklin and was closely associated with the Leibl Circle. His reputation became firmly established following the exhibition of some thirty of his paintings at the Munich Art Society in 1890.
Frankfurt and Kronberg From 1878, Thoma lived in the
West End of Frankfurt, in a house adjacent to the painter Wilhelm Steinhausen, sharing a household with his wife, his sister Agathe, and Ella, the adopted niece of his wife. At one point, he met Samuel Spier, a
Marxist SDAP politician and scholar living nearby, as well as his wife, the writer and art critic Anna Spier. Both the Spiers as well as other friends of Steinhausen supported Thoma financially with commissions. Anna Spier wrote articles and a biographical book about him; Thoma created an
ex libris and a portrait of her, which is now housed in the
Germanisches Nationalmuseum in
Nuremberg. From 1886 to 1899, Thoma lived at 150 Wolfgangstrasse in Frankfurt, from 1896 to 1898, he resided in
Oberursel at 20 Taunusstrasse (today Altkönigstr. 20). Inscriptions on both buildings attest to this. During this time, he also created a
frieze with mythological scenes in the
Palais Pringsheim in Munich. For a time he hosted the writer
Julius Langbehn. The builder of his residence, Simon Ravenstein, commissioned several works from Thoma, the first of which being the painting of Ravenstein's house in 1882. Thoma was closely associated with the painters of the Kronberg Artists' Colony. In 1899, he and his family moved to
Kronberg, where they took up residence in a flat with a studio next to the
Friedrichshof castle, a move Thoma regarded as a visible expression of his long-awaited recognition as a painter.
Karlsruhe In 1899, Thoma was appointed professor at the Karlsruhe Academy and director of the
Karlsruhe Art Gallery, now the
Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe. He held this position until 1920. During his tenure, he decorated the
Thoma Chapel in the gallery, which is still open to the public today. In 1919, a new wing housing the Thoma Museum was opened to celebrate his 70th birthday. The Karlsruhe period was overshadowed by the death of his wife Cella in 1901, an event that deeply affected Thoma, leading to years of depression. In the following years, he continued to live in Karlsruhe with his sister. By around 1910, he was regarded as one of Germany's most esteemed painters. The dictionary ''Meyer's Großes Konversations-Lexikon
of 1909 described him as "one of the most beloved painters of the German people", a designation again invoked in 2013 by the Städel Museum in Frankfurt during the exhibition Hans Thoma: "Favorite Painter of the German People"''. From 1905 to 1918, Thoma served as a member of the First Chamber of the Baden State Parliament, having been appointed by the
Grand Duke. In October 1914, he was among the signatories of the
Manifesto of the 93, which sought to defend German militarism at the beginning of
World War I and denied the occurrence of war crimes in Belgium. In 1919, Thoma's 80th birthday was celebrated at an event organised by
Ernst Oppler and
Lovis Corinth. Hans Thoma died in
Karlsruhe in 1924 at the age of 85. ==Style and legacy==