Der Jungfrauenturm (Qiz Qalasi) in Baku am Kaspischen Meer. 1880.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated lower left. 74,5 x 111 cm (29,3 x 43,7 in).
With inscription on verso of stretcher.

PROVENANCE: Private ownership Austria.

Born in Oberbachem near Bonn in 1818, Paul von Franken attended the elementary and preparatory classes at the Düsseldorf art academy for one year only for financial reasons. In 1842-44 he studied in Brussels and Antwerp. Until 1849 he lived in Dresden, where he met his later wife, the portraitist Helene Köber. Then he returned to Düsseldorf. Together with his wife, he moved to her hometown Mitau in Latvia in 1852. Paul von Franken made hid first large landscapes and successfully participated in exhibitions in Riga. The following year they traveled over St. Petersburg and Moscow to Tiblisi from where he repeatedly visited the Caucasus Mountains. The landscape and ethnographic sketches made there would serve Franken as sources of inspiration for the rest of his life. In 1860 the couple broke up, Franken returned to Bad Godesberg and Düsseldorf. In the following years he traveled to Luxemburg, Paris and Italy. In his paintings he worked up the newly gained impressions, on and off he reverts to the Caucasus motifs. From 1862 on Franken was a member of the renowned Düsseldorf artist group "Malkasten" and became established as the "Caucasus painter". He increasingly was occupied with landscapes, after his early oeuvre had been dominated by genre scenes and portraits. Impaired by a stroke, he was ill for most of the rest of his life and did not create much art. In 1884 Paul von Franken died. [CB].