Robert Hermann Sterl

German, (1867–1932)
Robert Sterl began his studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden. In 1894, he worked in Hamburg in architectural studies and opened a drawing studio for women in Dresden. In 1904 Sterl closed his school and began teaching at the Art Academy in Dresden where he received a professorship in 1909. Sterl was a member of the Berliner Secession—an art association founded by Berlin artists in 1898 as an alternative to the conservative state-run Association of Berlin Artists. During World War I, Sterl worked as a war painter, on the western front in 1915 and the southern front in 1917.

In addition to the usual impressionist subject matter, Sterl painted musicians and workers, especially quarrymen. He was sympathetic to liberal causes, producing many socially conscious works. Two of his paintings were labeled "degenerate art" by the Nazi Party in 1937 and removed from the Galerie Neue Meister. In the post-war years, his works were praised for some of the same reasons the Nazis had condemned them.