Willy Tiedjen

Wilhelm Emil Martin Tiedjen, known as Willy Tiedjen, was a German painter and draftsman associated with the late Munich School and Impressionism. A pupil of Heinrich von Zügel at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, he worked across animal subjects, rural genre, and maritime and harbor scenes, as well as portraits and still lifes. Early notices credit Alfred Lichtwark with encouraging his talent and arranging a scholarship that enabled his Munich studies. Active in Munich’s exhibition life, he showed at the Glaspalast and in association venues in Munich, Berlin, Aachen and elsewhere. He maintained a private teaching studio and, from 1906, ran a school for landscape and animal painting that admitted women as well as men. In the late 1930s he exhibited at the state Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung in Munich, where two paintings were purchased for Adolf Hitler’s collection. His work circulated internationally by the 1920s.