[Lv] W. WOLFGANG BREUER (1895-1927), Sailboats in Sopot, 1923

watercolor and gouache on pencil underdrawing, paper, 23.5 x 33.5 cm; signed and dated p. d.: W.W.Breuer. 23; on the reverse in pencil: Ostsee Zoppot; unframed.

The author of this watercolor was during the first war as a German officer in the territories of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Courland and Lithuania, and left drawings and watercolors of towns and villages from this area. After the war ended, he stayed for two years with his relatives Emil and Jan Breuer, well-known philanthropic activists with landed estates near Lviv. Their sister Berta married her daughters to landowners: Jaroszyński and Roman Scipio del Campo, president of the Lviv Society of Friends of Fine Arts. Breuer then made views of Polish villages and portraits. He met and befriended the famous Bruno Szulc from Drohobych, whom he portrayed and a sketch for this portrait has been preserved. Breuer is an artist yet to be discovered, as he died young, and most of his oeuvre has been found with his family from near Lviv and is currently being compiled.