Biography
Wilhelm Schroeter
(A.k.a. Schröter or Schroeder)
Born 1849 in Dessau, Germany
Died 1904 in Karlsruhe, Germany
Wilhelm Schroeter was a landscape painter who studied in Dusseldorf, Germany in 1868-69 and again in 1871. Records indicate that he was an active artist in Milwaukee for three brief but important years 1886 - 1888. Schroeter was among a small group of professionally trained artists who came to Milwaukee from the German-speaking states of Europe. They came to work for the American Panorama Company, which was located at 628 West Wells Street. The American Panorama Company, a pre-motion picture entertainment business, produced enormous narrative paintings that were several stories high and hundreds of feet long. Research supports that he worked with August Lohr and F.W. Heine and about 20 other artists on these panoramas: Storming of Missionary Ridge/Battle of Chattanooga, Battle of Atlanta and Jerusalem on the Day of the Crucifixion. The popular, but brief, episode of panorama painting ended well before the turn-of-the-century.
Some of these important panorama artists stayed in the United States, primarily in Wisconsin, while others like Schroeter returned to their homeland. In Schroeter's case, he returned to study at Karlsruhe in1889-1890 and later became a professor of painting there.
Around the turn-of-the-century, several of his American landscape paintings were widely exhibited in Germany. It is presumed that these Wisconsin landscapes remain somewhere in Germany, where he was known as a painter of winter landscapes, and became professionally known under the surname Winter-Schröter. His son Erich Wilhelm Schröter (1898-1972) was also an accomplished artist in Germany.
Because Schroeter was in Wisconsin for a relatively short period of time, his studio paintings are rare.
Selected Group Exhibitions
1972 Karlsruhe Orangerie, Germany
1989-90 Charles Allis Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin's Artists From The Late 19th Century into the 20th
Century, from the collection of Robert Brue
© 10/23/2007 Museum of Wisconsin Art, West Bend, Wisconsin 6/2/2010