William Ernst Ehrich

William Ernst Ehrich (12 July 1897 – 10 August 1960) was a successful Western New York sculptor, ceramicist, public monument artist, educator, and WPA supervisor in Buffalo (see the Federal Art Project). His FAP assignments included decorative art work at the Buffalo Zoo and Buffalo City Hall. He also taught at the WPA school in Buffalo, NY. An exhibiting and award-winning regional artist, Ehrich later moved to Rochester to teach sculpture at the Memorial Art Gallery and the University of Rochester until his death in 1960.Ehrich was noted by Harold Olmsted in the Western New York Albright-Knox Gallery’s survey of Painting and Sculpture from Antiquity to 1942, for “attain[ing] a modest national reputation for his figurative sculpture…”.

Life

William Ehrich was born in Königsberg, East Prussia (now Kaliningrad) where he lived until immigrating to the US with his wife, Ruth, in April, 1929.  Ehrich fought on both fronts as a soldier in the German Army during WWI. It seems that he fared well as a prisoner with the Russians by being chosen as an unofficial camp artist. This was a story recounted to Harold Olmsted and retold in the Charles Burchfield Center exhibition catalog for Our Legacy of Art in Western New York (1971).

Ehrich had 3 sisters and 4 brothers, of whom 3 became architects.  In Königsberg he studied sculpture and ceramics as a scholarship student at the State Art School (Kunst- und Gewerkschule) . There he studied under the direction of Hermann Brachert, Franz Andreas Threyne, and Erich Schmidt-Kestner, influences he brought to his sculptural work in Western New York. In March 1916 Ehrich’s studies were interrupted when he was inducted into the German Army. He returned to art school in Königsberg in 1920. Ehrich worked on several important public artworks for his professors’ commissions at this time (see: Education), all of which were lost in the bombing of Königsberg and East Prussia in WWII.

Ehrich immigrated to Buffalo, New York in 1929 under sponsorship of an uncle, where he first worked carving Kittinger furniture. From 1933 to 1938 he taught sculpture at the WPA art school in the city and in 1937, because of unusual success as a teacher, was invited to teach for a traveling Gallery position in Rochester, New York. Ehrich was required to step down from the Institute in 1938 to direct the Federal Art Project for the city. Popular at the Memorial Art Gallery, in 1939 he was awarded an appointment at the University of Rochester and in 1941 moved from Buffalo to Rochester. William Ehrich died in 1960, just after creating a bronze foundry at the University of Rochester, for which he studied in Munich with the sculptor Heinrich Kirchner.

Education

Ehrich became a woodcarver’s apprentice in his hometown of Königsberg in East Prussian and later a scholarship student educated in the German expressionist sculptural tradition at Konigsberg’s State Art School. . Here, Ehrich trained under several artists known for public works before becoming a public sculptor and, eventually, a Federal Art Project supervisor and art professor upon immigrating to the United States.

During his studies at the State Art School, Ehrich was hired by his senior professors to execute works for them. In 1929 Ehrich collaborated with his professor, Erich Schmidt-Kestner to carve the reliefs around the entrances of the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) in Königsberg. The travertine reliefs above the doors representing travel by water, land, and air and arrival and departure were executed by Ehrich. There were two art schools in Königsberg while Ehrich was an art student - the Kunst- und Gewerkschule, where he was enrolled, and the Kunst Akademie where his mentor,

Among the works that Ehrich executed for Cauer, photographs confirm that he sculpted the heads of Copernicus, Kant, Herder, and Corinth which were placed above the main door to a school on Lehndorfstraße, which was completed in 1927. After the final destruction of Königsberg and the Russian conquest in 1945, the Russian occupancy removed traces of German identity, but many buildings and some art survived. The Neue Burgschule school survives today as Gimnasium No. 1 in Kaliningrad, but the heads were destroyed in 1945. They reflected Ehrich’s early ability as a monumental public sculptor that continued in Western New York..

A note sent to Ehrich by Cauer in 1929 documented Cauer’s recognition of Ehrich’s under-recognized assistantship as a professional sculptor.

There are some accreditation issues involved in these early works executed by William Ehrich as a talented young art student working on the commissions of famous art professors in Königsberg like Cauer and Schmidt-Kestner.

The train station reliefs William Ehrich carved in Königsberg for Schmidt-Kestner are considered incorrectly attributed to Schmidt-Kestner a claim corroborated in the German art history text by Mühlpfordt, Herbert M. (Holzner Verlag, Würzburg 1970, pp. 67, entry 3).

Early work

Upon immigrating to the U.S. with his wife, Ruth, in 1929, Ehrich worked briefly with Kittenger. Ehrich found a market mass during the depression producing sets of china animals from original plaster molds. These, as well as his ceramics, reflect Ehrich’s training in Königsberg with Franz Andreas Threyne (1888–1965). Ehrich won numerous prizes in exhibitions for his ceramics in exhibitions in New York City, Rochester, Syracuse and Buffalo.

William Ehrich became a popular sculpture instructor through open demonstrations at the city’s WPA adult school. Through this appointment, Ehrich produced public works, including the wooden sculpture of St. Andrew displayed at Buffalo’s St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. His popularity as a resulted in an WPA appointment as project manager of the Buffalo Zoo expansion (1938–1939). Ehrich’s notes indicate that he directed sculptural work at the entrance gates and fountain and the sgraffito decorating the exterior of the animal houses.

Ehrich sculpted a bronze tablet honoring Mayor Roesch for the foyer of Buffalo City Hall in 1937 before his WPA appointment in 1938, and would continue to make similar plaques as a public works artist, especially as a resident sculptor and professor at the University of Rochester from the 40s until 1960. William acquired this talent for commemorative bronze tablets, including the four Tannenberg tablets, in East Prussia. He would hand carve inverse text in plaster blanks in his own font to produce a desired inscription. Then a plaster positive was made from the carved blank for the bronze foundries.

William Ehrich’s reputation in Western New York grew, and by 1937 he was teaching a 1-day class in Rochester. The director increased his position at the Memorial Art Gallery to a salaried appointment, and Ehrich moved to Rochester for his professional artist years.

Professional career

Ehrich purchased a home in Rochester, NY in 1941 and taught at the MAG following a day’s work at his university studio, doing so six days per week. Around 1950, Ehrich introduced copper enameling as a new class at the MAG. In 1954 he created a large sunflower from individually enameled copper petals, the University symbol, now mounted on the Hajm Gymnasium at the University. For his exhibition and commission work, William Ehrich’s wife Ruth Ehrich did most of the business management and correspondence necessary for marketing, shipping, and travel.

Ehrich later became head of the sculpture department. In 1950 he was chosen to create the Goethe monument for the city of Rochester, NY, which was placed in Highland Park. With John Slater of the University of Rochester he also created the Eastman Centennial Monument located on the University campus.

In addition to public works and works in private collections, Ehrich’s sculptures and drawings can be found in the permanent collections the Albright-Knox Gallery and Burchfield Penney Art Center, both museums in Buffalo, NY. They can also be found in the MAG in Rochester.  In Ehrich’s first one-man show in New York City in 1941, his work had “favorable notices from critics” and his work was “likened … [to] Barlach”. This marks what would continue as the critical establishment of Ehrich’s “modest national reputation for his figurative sculpture under the considerable stylistic influence of Barlach”, although Ehrich himself did not in fact study with Barlach. Ehrich was known for his carved and polished fieldstone and abstract expressionist style.

Ehrich won awards while exhibiting his work throughout western and central New York and New York City, including ceramics, drawings and especially sculpture. This included a Patteran Prize in 1938 at the Albright-Knox Gallery. Ehrich also won the The Menno Alexander Reeb Memorial Prize several times for sculpture and drawing.

In 1955, Ehrich received a new studio and sculpture classrooms at the University of Rochester after advancing his position and was experimenting with lost wax bronze casting. His new foundry was built at the university in 1959 and produced a number of works that year. Ehrich died in 1960. His records can be found at the Smithsonian.