Hahn, William

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Hahn, William

A student in Dusseldorf of Emanuel Leutze, William Hahn became a friend of William Keith and followed him first to Boston in 1869 and in 1872 to San Francisco where they shared a studio in the Mercantile Library Building.

There he became a painter of animal, interior, still life, and genre scenes including crowed alleys of Chinatown. It was the genre scenes for which he was primarily known. By 1876, he was Director of the San Francisco Art Association.

He was born in Ebersbach, Saxony, Germany and at age fourteen entered the Royal Academy in Dresden and studied for five years with Julius Huebner. He then spent two more years in Dusseldorf and received much recognition including the purchase of his paintings by the King of Saxony.

From San Francisco, he made many sketching trips including to Yosemite, Sierra Nevadas, Alaska, and to Southern California. He also traveled East, exhibiting in 1878 at the Academy of Design in New York and the Brooklyn Art Association.

In 1882, he married Adelaide Rising, and they traveled extensively in Europe with the plan to return to California. However, he died in Dresden in 1887 at the age of fifty eight.

His work is in Oakland at the De Young Museum, at the National Gallery in Dusseldorf, and the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, New York.

Source:
Edan Hughes, Artists in California, 1786-1940

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