Name Helga Cramm | ||
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Helga von Cramm (1840-1919), was a German and Swiss water-colourist and graphic artist.
Contents
- Some paintings with prices and location exhibited in her lifetime
- Her aristocratic family
- Helga von Cramm and the poet and hymn writer F R Havergal
- Books containing illustrations by von Cramm
- References
Baroness Helga von Cramm lived in Britain, Switzerland (St. Moritz), Germany and Italy (1880 - 1892, and Florence, 1884).
In the United Kingdom, from 1877, she exhibited at the:
Society of Women Artists (33 or 34);Royal Scottish Academy (2);Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (1);Dudley Gallery (2);Fine Art Society (1);Glasgow Institute (1);Grosvenor Gallery (1);Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts (1);Royal Society of British Artists (3),and at a few other places such as the Graves Gallery in 1908.Her SWA showings: 1877 (x1); 1879 (x4); 1880 (x4); 1881 (x3); 1882 (x4); 1883 (x3); 1884 (x3); 1885 (x3); 1886 (x1); 1889 (x2); 1890 (x2); 1892 (x2); 1901 (x1); 1910 (x1).
Some paintings, with prices and location, exhibited in her lifetime
View of the Dent du Midi, Canton Valais, £21 (SWA, 1877);The Daubenlake on the Gemmi-Sunrise, £30 (RSBA, 1878);Varese, £25, & Stressa, Lago Maggiore, £25 (RSBA, 1878);The Jungfrau, 42 guineas, (RHA, 1878);Castle of Chillon, £52 (SWA, 1879);Pitlochrie on the Tummel, £45 (SWA, 1880);San Terenzo, £63 (SWA, 1882);Sunset, Zermatt, £25 (SWA, 1883);The Madonna del Sasso, Lake Maggiore, £40 (SWA, 1892);Autumn Leaves, Hyde Park, £7 (SWA, 1901);Madeira, £25 (SWA, 1910).Her aristocratic family
Freiherrin/baroness (Freiin) Helga was the eldest child of Wolf Frederick Adolf Freiherr von Cramm-Burchard (Rhode, Landkreis Gifhorn, North Saxony 1812– Baden-Baden 1879), by his wife, Hedwig (1819- Wiesbaden 1891) daughter of Philipp Lebrecht von Cramm-Oelber (1819–1891). Helga's father, Wolf Frederick Adolf, son of Friedrich Karl August von Cramm, (1768-1816) by Charlotte Sophie von Uetterodt, (1786-1858), having been brought up in the Court at Brunswick, educated at the court of knights, served in the Brunswick Cuirassiers (cuirvasser), was an equerry and an hereditary Chamberlain and Lord of the Kings Bedchamber (that of William VIII of Braunschweig). Later he retired to his estate at Rhode. Her brother Aschwin Thedel Adelbert Freiherr v. Sierstorpff-Cramm, (Lohndorf, Bavaria, 1846 - Woynowo 1909), is one of the four great-grandfathers of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, 1980-2013, now Princess Beatrix, and mother of the present king, Willem-Alexande. Helga was thus a great-great aunt of the former Dutch Queen.
In 1885 aged about 45 and he c72 (only a year younger than her father), she married landed Brunswickian politician (Kammerpräsident & landwirtschaftlicher Politiker) Erich Griepenkerl (1813–88). Sadly, this son of Friedrich Konrad Griepenkerl (1782-1849) and brother of Wolfgang Robert Griepenkerl (1810-1868) died three years later.
Helga von Cramm and the poet and hymn writer F. R. Havergal
Frances (Fanny) Ridley Havergal (1836-1879, aged 42) and her sister, Maria (1821-1887), met Helga (with a Miss Carmichael) in Champéry, in the south-western Swiss canton of Valais, late summer 1876.
This lead, 1879 - 1880, to v. Cramm illustrating collections of Havergal's poems.
The meeting is described in the Memorials of Frances Ridley Havergal.
Another Champéry friendship was with theBaroness Helga von Cramm. We were stayingin the same pension ; and a few words the firsttime we met resulted in many pleasant en-twinings of work. I give my sister's reference tothe fact, in a letter to Mr. W_ _ .One of my Champéry gains was the Baroness Helga v.Cramm ; such an artiste, every picture is a poem, sucha soul in all she paints ; her two specialities [sic] are Alpinescenery with the weirdest effects of snow and clouds, andthe marvellous [sic] beauty of the tiny Alpine flowers. Wellnow, of course, she wants to paint for Jesus somehow !So I suggested that we might do something together,and we would first ask Him to give me half-a-dozen nicelittle Easter verses (new ground to me!), and then thatHe would hold her hand, and make her do some ex-quisite flowers. so the verses all came tumbling in thatevening !This also resulted in a sonnet, addressed by Frances Ridley Havergal to her friend, Baroness Helga von Cramm.
To Helga. (September 19, 1876, Champéry)
COME down, and show the dwellers far below
Dowering each blossom born of sun and snow :His tints, not thine ! Thou art God's copyist,Thy blue snow-shadows, and thy weird white mist.Reveal His works to many a distant land !He is thy Master, let Him hold thy hand,At His dear feet lay down thy laurel store,Which crimson proof of thy redemption bore.In The autobiography of Maria Vernon Graham Havergal, (published by James Nisbet, edited by her sister Jane Miriam Crane, 1887), there is mention of the: .. steep path to Eisenfluh, from whence Helga painted her marvellous [sic] Moonlight on the Jungfrau, .. and in the same volume a diary entry reads thus:
Havergal died about nine days later from peritonitis at home in Caswell Bay, Swansea, 3 June 1879.