Mathilde Block
Mathilde Block (pseudonym: Mathilde Block-Niendorff; née Auguste Betty Julie Mathilde Block) was a German painter and embroiderer. Her artworks and paintings range from pencil portraits to embroidered quilts and have been exhibited in numerous art expositions throughout the world. Life. Early life. Mathilde Block was born on July 10, 1850, in Niendorf an der Stecknitz in the Duchy of Saxe-Lauenburg. She was the daughter of Julius Friedrich Block (1806-1854), who was a pastor in a local Roman Catholic church, and his wife Auguste Henriette Wilhelmine Block, née Rosa (1819-1908). When Mathilde was three years  old, her father died. A small parsonage widow's house was built for her mother, Mathilde, and her two siblings, into which they moved when it was finished creating. Mathilde Block used to draw since she was a kid. The oldest documented evidence of her early drawing skills is five portraits of Niendorf farmers, which she is said to have drawn at the age of twelve. Mathilde was tutored by her mother, supported by her father's successor, Pastor Fiedler. After discovering her talent in art, she was sent to Ratzeburg for a year and a half, where she attended  secondary school. Back in Niendorf, at the age of sixteen, she started her first job as a teacher for two and a half years. To be able to support her mother, who lived only on a small pension and some manual labor, she looked for a better-paid position as a tutor in Burg Stargard at Stargard Castle. She stayed there for four and a half years. During the following year and a half, she devoted herself to training in drawing. She also received a scholarship. Career. In October 1875, she moved to Berlin. She received a two-year freelance  position from Crown Princess Victoria in the "Viktoria-Pensionat" or "Viktoria-Stift" (retirement home in Erfurt) from the Lette-Verein and attended the association's arts and crafts drawing school. At the same time, until July 1, 1877, she also took courses in the drawing school of the Vereins der Künstlerinnen und Kunstfreundinnen (Association of Berlin Women Artists). One of their lecturers there was Professor Adolf Eybel. In recognition of her efforts and the successes she had already achieved, she received a silver medal from the "Lette-Verein" in January 1877. In September 1877, she applied to the Prussian Academy  of Arts for being a drawing teacher, for that she had to give an exam. She passed the exam with good grades. She worked as a drawing teacher in Berlin, meanwhile, she also took private lessons from Gustav Graef, also in whose studio she had begun oil painting. On March 4, 1878, Mathilde received another scholarship for two years from the "Landscape Collegium of" the Herzogtum Lauenburg in Ratzeburg, retrospectively until the beginning of the year, for which she had previously applied in writing. Other painters with whom Mathilde Block took private lessons in Berlin over the years included Karl  Gussow, Franz Skarbina, and Friedrich Geselschap. In 1892 she joined the Society of Friends of the Academy of Arts (De Akademie der Künste) in which she remained until 1927. She won three prizes in the club's art competitions. Death. Mathilde Block died on June 21, 1932 in Pinneberg. She was buried in her old home in Niendorf, as she had wished beforehand, in the cemetery next to the church where her father was the pastor.