The Anglo-Ethiopian Society
Lecture - The Sketchbook of Eduard Zander (1813-1868). Views of Northern Ethiopia
Dorothea McEwan
Tuesday 21st April 2009
6:00pm at the German Historical Institute, 17 Bloomsbury Square, London, WC1A 2NJ.
Eduard Zander, born in 1813 in Gröbzig, Germany, learned about the German naturalist Georg Wilhelm Schimper in 1834, when Zander moved to Munich to train as painter. Schimper had been on botanical collecting expeditions in North Africa and he had gone to Ethiopia in 1837. Zander decided to join him and arrived in Adua, Tigray in December 1847. Together they went collecting plant specimens in the Semien Mountains and, in addition to his work, Zander found time to draw and to paint.
His drawings of landscapes and people are characterised by clarity of form and economic use of line. The documentary dimension of the naturalistic approach in Zander’s work is emphasised through a total absence of passages of light and shade.
The 29 drawings presented in the exhibition are from the sketchbook of Eduard Zander, kept in the British Museum, London, and from the Zander collection in the “Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie” and from the “Stadtarchiv”, both in Dessau, Germany.
The German Historical Institute London (GHIL) kindly invites members of the Anglo-Ethiopian Society to join their other guests at the opening of the exhibition. If you would like to attend then please register by sending an email to: Anita Bellamy at GHIL
Dr Dorothea McEwan, the curator of the exhibition, will give a special lecture on Eduard Zander at the exhibition opening.